theatre history

Extra Notes

• Downstage is closer to the audience 

• Actors right 

• Improve = unscripted storytelling

Greek

• Seating - Theatron 

• Orchestra - stage

  • Greek chorus: singing and dancing as a group  

• Skene - backstage 

• Dionysus - god of wine 

• Thespas - first actor 

• Masks 

  • Comedy and tragedy 

Medival (500-1500 AD) 

• The major theme was religion 

• Actors were priests, nuns, choir boys 

• Church to the outdoors (pageant carts) 

• Religious scenes 

  • Miracle + Mystery 

  • Passion 

  • Morality

Renaissance (Early 14th Century) 

• It was the busiest period in theatre history = rebirth 

• Began in Italy

•  Playhouse indoor/lighting

• Proscenium arch 

• Painted scenery 

• Improv - comedies 

  • Main plots - lovers kept apart 

  • Stock actors - archetypes 

Shakespeare/Elizabethan  (1589-1613)

• Playwrights:

• Christopher Marlowe -  wrote under  Lord Admiral, feud with Shakespeare 

• Ben Johnson - army 

• William Shakespeare - ik him

• Partial roof - night sky 

• Raised platforms 

• Young males played the females 

• Funded by noblemen 

  • Alignment is no noblemen funded you  

• Court play 

• Civil War no more theatre 

• Soliloquy 

  • Inner monologue  

• Globe theater 

  • No roof 

  • Only at night 

Eastern Theatre:

• Bunraku - Japanese theatre 

  • 6th century AD

  • Puppets  

• Noh 

  • 12th-13th century 

  • Short plots and myths and legends 

  • Visual 

• Kabuki 

  • 17th century 

  • Influential 

  • Fantasy storytelling 

  • No masks, heavy makeup 

  •  raised wooden stage/boardwalk

• Peking Opera 

  • 18th century: 1790

  • Military propaganda 

  • Facial expressions, song, and dance

  • Color costumes - rank