Theatre History Midterm Study Guide

Athenian Hegemony

Athens' dominance over the other Greek city-states in the 5th century BCE, after the Persian Wars. Its wealth and power funded the arts and theatre.

Dithyramb

A choral hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus. It is seen as a possible forerunner of tragedy.

Thespis

Traditionally the first actor, who stepped out of the chorus to speak as a character (c. 534 BCE). The word "thespian" comes from his name.

Myth

Traditional stories about gods and heroes. They supplied most Greek tragic plots.

City Dionysia

The annual Athenian festival honoring Dionysus, with processions and competitions in dithyramb, tragedy, comedy, and satyr play.

Tragedy, Comedy, Satyr Play

The three dramatic genres of the festival. Tragedy is serious and mythic, comedy is humorous, and satyr plays are bawdy burlesques with a chorus of satyrs. A tragic playwright presented three tragedies plus a satyr play.

Archon

The chief Athenian magistrate who selected the playwrights and assigned a choregos to each.

Choregos

A wealthy citizen who financed the chorus (training and costumes) as a civic duty.

Theatre

a form of live performance in which performers present a story, character, or event to an audience, usually in a designated time and space. Definitions vary, which is part of why the first unit asks what counts.

Ritual

a set of actions repeated in a prescribed way, often tied to a belief system or community purpose (a harvest rite, a coming-of-age ceremony). Participants usually matter more than spectators.

Performance

the broadest term. Any action presented or framed for others, from a religious rite to a sports game to everyday behavior. Theatre is one kind of performance.

Ritual Origin Hypothesis

the theory that theatre grew out of ritual, as ceremonies gradually shifted from serving a spiritual purpose to being watched for their own sake. Associated with early anthropologists and Aristotle-era speculation about Greek drama, and now widely questioned because there is little direct evidence.

Efficacious

intended to produce a real effect, such as healing, bringing rain, or securing divine favor. Ritual is typically efficacious. Theatre is often seen as more entertaining.

Sacred vs. Secular

sacred means connected to the divine or religious. Secular means non-religious or worldly. Many scholars see theatre's history as a movement between the two, with the line often blurry.

Methexis

participation or sharing in an action, as opposed to watching it. Ritual often involves methexis, where everyone takes part. It is usually contrasted with mimesis.

Popular Entertainment

performance aimed at general audiences for enjoyment, such as street shows, acrobatics, and variety acts, as distinct from "high art" or religious performance.

Imitation / Mimesis

representing or imitating reality, actions, or people. Aristotle treated it as central to drama, and it marks a performer showing something to an audience rather than doing it directly.

Storytelling

narrating events, usually by one teller to listeners. It overlaps with theatre but may lack full enactment by multiple actors.

Archive

material records of the past, like texts, scripts, images, and artifacts. Scholars have traditionally favored archives because they last.

Repertoire

embodied knowledge passed through live practice, like gestures, songs, dances, and techniques. This pairing comes from Diana Taylor's work and highlights that much performance history survives through bodies rather than documents.

Passion Play

a medieval religious drama depicting the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is an example of sacred theatre.

Aeschylus

The earliest of the three great tragedians (c. 525-456 BCE), credited with adding a second actor. Works include Oresteia and Persians.

Sophocles

Credited with adding a third actor (c. 496-406 BCE). Works include Oedipus Rex and Antigone.

Euripides

Known for psychologically complex characters and questioning the gods (c. 480-406 BCE). Works include Medea and The Bacchae.

Chorus

A group who sang, danced, and commented on the action, often representing the community.

Ode, Episode

An ode is a choral song. An episode is a scene of dialogue between actors, set between odes.

Protagonist

Literally the "first actor," and by extension the main character.

Climactic Drama Structure

A tightly plotted structure that starts late in the story, builds through cause and effect to a climax, then resolves.

Aristotle, The Poetics

The earliest surviving work of dramatic theory (c. 335 BCE). It names six elements of tragedy (plot, character, thought, diction, music, spectacle) and ranks plot as most important.

Catharsis

The purging of pity and fear that tragedy produces in the audience.

Hamartia

An error in judgment or flaw that leads to the hero's downfall, often called the "tragic flaw."

Anagnorisis / Recognition

The moment a character moves from ignorance to knowledge, such as Oedipus learning who he is.

Theatron

The "seeing place," the audience seating area built into a hillside.

Orchestra

The "dancing place," the circular area where the chorus performed.

Skene

The building behind the orchestra, used for costume changes, entrances, and as a backdrop. It is the origin of the word "scene."

Parodos

The side passageways used by the chorus and audience to enter. It also names the chorus's entrance song.

Periaktoi

Rotating triangular prisms with a different scene painted on each side, used to change settings.

Mechane

A crane that lifted actors, such as gods, into the air. It gives us deus ex machina.

Ekkyklema

A wheeled platform rolled out from the skene to reveal interior scenes or the aftermath of offstage violence.

Rabinal Achí / Xajoj Tun

A Maya dance-drama from Rabinal, Guatemala. Xajoj Tun is its older name and means roughly "dance of the tun" (a wooden drum). It was written down in the 1850s by a French priest, Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gave it the name Rabinal Achí ("man of Rabinal"). The story centers on a warrior of Rabinal who captures an enemy K'iche' warrior, puts him on trial, and sentences him to death. The captive gets to dance, drink, and speak before his execution. Its themes include honor, loyalty, territory, and ritual obligation. It is still performed annually during the town's festival.

K'iche' (K'ich'e) language

A Maya language of the Guatemalan highlands. It is the language family of the Popol Vuh (the K'iche' creation story), and the Rabinal Achí is performed in a closely related K'iche'an language (Achi). The text matters because it is a rare example of Indigenous American drama preserved in its original language.

UNESCO World Heritage

The Rabinal Achí was recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity (2005), and later placed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2008).

Mayan World

Four Corners / Four Sides

Syncretism

The blending of different religious or cultural traditions into a new form. In the Rabinal Achí, it shows in the mixing of Maya traditions with Spanish Catholic ones, such as the performance being tied to a Catholic saint's feast day and organized through Catholic lay brotherhoods.

Middle Ages

The period in European history from roughly 500 to 1500 CE, between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. The Christian Church was central to daily life and shaped most theatre of the time.

Feudalism

The social and political system in which lords granted land to vassals in exchange for loyalty and military service, while peasants worked the land. It organized society into fixed ranks, with the Church as another major power.

Hrosvit (of Gandersheim)

A 10th-century German canoness who wrote six Latin plays modeled on the Roman playwright Terence but with Christian themes such as chastity and martyrdom. She is often called the first known female playwright. It is debated whether her plays were ever staged.

Liturgical Drama

Religious drama in Latin, performed inside the church by clergy as part of worship, growing out of the liturgy (especially at Easter and Christmas).

Tropes (Quem Quaeritis)

A trope is an expansion added to the liturgy. Quem Quaeritis ("Whom do you seek?") is the Easter trope in which angels at Christ's tomb speak with the three Marys. It dates to about the 10th century and is often cited as the starting point of medieval drama.

Platea

The open, neutral playing area in front of the mansions, where action moved between locations.

Mansion

A small scenic structure representing a specific location, such as Heaven, Hell, or Jerusalem. Mansions stood side by side, so many locations were visible at once.

Vernacular Drama

Drama in the local language rather than Latin. It moved out of the church into town squares and was increasingly performed by laypeople.

Mystery Plays (Cycle Plays)

Sets of short plays dramatizing biblical history from Creation to the Last Judgment, often staged on the feast of Corpus Christi. Major English cycles come from York, Chester, and Wakefield.

Miracle Plays

Plays about the lives and miracles of saints or the Virgin Mary.

Morality Plays

Allegorical plays showing an everyman figure tempted by vice and called to repentance and salvation. Everyman is the best-known example.

Second Shepherd's Play

A play from the Wakefield Cycle that combines a comic story of Mak, a sheep stealer who hides a sheep in a cradle, with the Nativity. It is a good example of comedy and the sacred mixing, and of everyday English life in a biblical story.

Confraternities

Lay religious brotherhoods that organized and performed plays, especially on the Continent. A well-known example is the Confrérie de la Passion in Paris.

Trade Guilds

Associations of craftspeople who, in many English towns, financed and produced individual plays of a cycle. Guilds often chose stories related to their trade, such as shipwrights staging Noah.

Passion Plays (ex. Oberammergau)

Plays depicting the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Oberammergau, in Bavaria, has staged one since 1634 after a vow made during a plague, roughly every ten years.

Pageant Master

The person responsible for organizing a production, including rehearsals, costumes, props, and finances.

Pageant Wagon

The wheeled stage on which one play of a cycle was performed and moved from station to station. Evidence of what they looked like is limited.

Processional Staging

A system in which plays were performed on wagons that moved through town to a series of stations, so each audience group saw the plays in sequence. It contrasts with fixed-site staging (mansions around a platea), more common on the Continent.

Hell-Mouth

A scenic piece showing the entrance to Hell as the gaping jaws of a monster, often with smoke, fire, and noise. It was a popular spectacle.

Allegory

A story in which characters and events symbolize abstract ideas, such as Good Deeds or Death in Everyman. It is the key technique of morality plays.

Shamanism

Practices in which a specialist (a shaman) communicates with spirits, often through trance, song, and dance. It is seen as an early root of performance in China and Japan, including spirit possession and ritual dance.

Silk Road

The network of trade routes linking China, Central Asia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. It carried goods, religions (especially Buddhism), music, and entertainers, which influenced Asian performance traditions.

Confucianism

A philosophy stressing social harmony, hierarchy, family duty, and moral conduct. It shaped attitudes toward theatre, so plays often carried moral lessons, and performers generally had low social status.

Xiqu

The general term for traditional Chinese theatre ("song theatre"), combining song, speech, mime, acrobatics, and martial arts. Peking opera is one example.

Nanxi

"Southern drama" from the Southern Song dynasty (12th-13th centuries), generally considered the earliest fully developed Chinese theatre form. It grew out of folk traditions and usually told romantic stories.

Character roles (sheng, dan, jing, chou)

The four main role types of Chinese theatre. Sheng are male roles, dan are female roles, jing are painted-face roles (powerful or rough male characters), and chou are clowns or comic characters.

Zaju

"Variety play," the dominant drama of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). Typically it has four acts and one principal singer who performs all the songs. Guan Hanqing is its best-known playwright.

Snow in Midsummer

A zaju by Guan Hanqing. Dou E, a young widow, is wrongly executed and vows that three signs will prove her innocence, including snow in midsummer. When they happen, her case is reopened. The play deals with injustice, corrupt officials, and the supernatural.

Shinto

Japan's indigenous religion, centered on kami (spirits or gods) in nature and ancestors, and on rituals of purity. Its ritual dances (such as kagura) are among the roots of Japanese performance.

Buddhism

Arrived in Japan from China and Korea around the 6th century. It shaped performance through themes of impermanence, attachment, and the salvation of troubled spirits, which are central to noh.

Gigaku

A masked dance-drama introduced to Japan from Korea and China in the 7th century (traditionally 612 CE), associated with Buddhist temples. It faded by around the 10th century, but many of its masks survive.

Dengaku

"Field music," a form linked to rice-planting rituals that developed into professional music and dance entertainment. It influenced noh.

Sarugaku noh

"Monkey music," an entertainment of comic mimicry and acrobatics that developed into noh. Early on, sarugaku and dengaku troupes competed and borrowed from each other.

Noh

Japan's classical masked dance-drama, which took shape in the 14th century. It is slow, stylized, and minimalist, with chant, music, and dance, and often features ghosts and spirits.

Kan'ami

A sarugaku actor and playwright (1333-1384) and father of Zeami. He impressed the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and began shaping sarugaku into the more refined art of noh.

Zeami Motokiyo

Kan'ami's son (c. 1363-1443), who refined noh into a courtly art. He wrote many plays and the earliest major treatises on acting and aesthetics. He is associated with the ideals of yugen and hana ("flower").

Ashikaga Shogunate

The military government that ruled Japan from 1336 to 1573. Its shoguns, especially Yoshimitsu, patronized Kan'ami and Zeami, which helped noh become a refined elite art.

Character types (shite, waki, tsure)

The shite is the main character, often a ghost, god, or spirit. The waki is the secondary role, often a priest or traveler who encounters and draws out the shite. The tsure are companions to either.

Kyogen

Comic plays performed between noh plays. They use everyday language and satirize ordinary life, with characters such as servants and masters, in contrast with noh's solemnity.

Hashigakari

The bridge-like walkway connecting the mirror room to the stage, used for entrances and exits.

Kagami-no-ma (mirror room)

The room off the stage where the shite puts on the mask and prepares, seen as a moment of spiritual transformation.

Bashira

The pillars at the corners of the noh stage, which support the roof and serve as markers for actors' positions.

Kiritoguchi (hurry door)

A small, low door at the side or rear of the stage, used by chorus members, musicians, and stage assistants, or by minor characters for exits.

Noh mask use

The shite (and sometimes the tsure) wears a carved wooden mask. Tilting it changes its apparent expression ("brightening" and "clouding"). The waki, who plays a living man, does not wear one.

Yugen

"Mysterious depth" or profound, subtle grace. It is the aesthetic ideal of noh, favoring suggestion over explicitness.

Renaissance

"Rebirth," the period from roughly the 14th to 17th centuries marked by renewed interest in classical learning, humanism, and the arts. In England it flourished in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

Elizabethan Period

The reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). Professional commercial theatre grew rapidly in London, and playwrights like Marlowe and Shakespeare worked in this period. The reign of James I (1603-1625) is called Jacobean.

British Commonwealth/Interregnum

The period (1649-1660) after the execution of Charles I when England was governed without a monarch under Puritan influence. Parliament closed the theatres in 1642, and they stayed shut until the Restoration in 1660.

Protestant Reformation

The 16th-century religious movement that broke from the Roman Catholic Church. In England, the break under Henry VIII led to the suppression of the medieval religious cycle plays and to censorship of religious subjects on stage, pushing drama toward secular topics.

School Drama

Plays performed by schoolboys and university students, often in Latin (Plautus and Terence) to teach rhetoric and language. It trained future playwrights, and professional boy companies also grew out of choir schools.

University Wits

A group of university-educated playwrights of the 1580s and 1590s, including Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and John Lyly. They brought classical learning and poetic ambition to the commercial stage.

Christopher Marlowe

(1564-1593) A leading University Wit known for Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II. He is famous for his "mighty line" of blank verse and for heroes with extreme ambition. He died young in a fight.

Iambic Pentameter

A line of verse with ten syllables in five unstressed-stressed pairs (da-DUM, da-DUM…). Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse and was the dominant form of Elizabethan drama.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Marlowe's tragedy (c. 1592) about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil for 24 years of knowledge and power. It blends medieval morality play elements (Good and Bad Angels, the Seven Deadly Sins, hell-mouth) with Renaissance ambition and questioning.

Revenge Tragedy

A popular genre in which a hero seeks vengeance for a murder, often featuring ghosts, madness, a play-within-a-play, and bloody climaxes. It was influenced by the Roman writer Seneca. Examples include Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet.

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616) Actor, sharer in his company, and the leading playwright of the era, with around 37 plays plus sonnets. He worked with the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men.