A Historical Overview of Theatre: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times, Slide di Inglese

Scarica A Historical Overview of Theatre: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times e più Slide in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THEATRE THROUGH THE AGES Theatre has been used through the ages as an artistic form of articulating human emotions and a thriving medium of communication. Besides being an entertainment, it also contributed for bringing social change. The artistic expression of a particular social system obviously reveals its cultural standards and socioeconomic status. The culture specific art forms invariably carry with them the myths and belief systems that are being associated traditionally with them. The theatre in Rome is most often associated with festivals, that are obviously religious. It is difficult to estimate how many days the Romans devoted to performance annually, since the number of official festival days differed from year to year and special celebrations were frequently permitted. The Christian drama of the Middle Ages initiated a new beginning for theatre, much later after the ancient theatres were closed due to different reasons. In ninth century, dialogue and action were added to the most sacred service of the Christian liturgy. For five hundred years the joyful news of the Resurrection, and the triumphs of prophets and saints were enacted as Christian performances. Much more spectacular scenes were the medieval religious cycles, financed by the merchant guilds for the midsummer trade fairs in the fast growing cities of the High Gothic period. About twenty five to fifty separate episodes were needed to cover the whole story of the fall and redemption of man, from the creation and the fall of Adam, through the passion of Christ to the Last judgment. Each episode needed a separate scenic unit, or mansion. Sometimes all the mansions were spread down a long platform as simultaneous staging. The mansions were placed in a large circle surrounding the audience in a medieval variant of theatre-in-the-round. While the church drama remained as formal, liturgical drama, sung in Latin in the church by priests highly trained in music, but the cycles of mystery plays were popular because of the usage of spectacular effects such as Devils appearing from the smoking hell-mouth amidst the beating of pot and pans. During Elizabeth’s reign, in 1574, regular weekday performances were legitimized. The Theatre was erected in London immediately outside the city boundary. Others followed, including the Curtain, the Rose, the Swan, and the Globe, where most of Shakespeare’s plays were first staged. At this time, professional companies operated under the patronage of a member of the nobility. In Shakespeare’s company, known as the Chamberlain’s Men (later renamed the King’s Men), the actors owned their playhouse, prompt books, costumes, and properties, and they shared in the profits. Other companies paid rent to the patron, who paid their salaries. There were very few rehearsals for a new play, and because the texts were not immediately printed (to avoid pirating by rival companies) each actor was usually given only his own lines, with the relevant cues, in manuscript form. No women appeared on the Elizabethan stage; female roles were taken either by boy actors or, in the case of older women, by adult male comedians. William Shakespeare William Shakespeare may have been born on St George Day 1564. His father was a burger of the town but also a glover and a farmer. The boy may have attempt the grammar school of the town, some says that he knew small Latin and less Greek and that he used to help his father in the shop. He married Anne Hatthwey of Stratford, who was eight years younger than him. After the marriage he left the town for a while with no clear explanations. An hypothesis is that he was convinced by of poaching on Sir Thomas Lucy and that he fled to escape the consequences. When he eventually came back to London, after performing various offices, he became part of the Lord Chamberlain’s company that performed in Court at the beginning, then at the Globe and finally at the Blackfriars. He was commuting between Stratford and London but in 1610 he left London for Stratford, where he wrote his last play. He died on April 23rd 1616. All the manuscripts of the plays have disappeared, at the time he didn’t print his plays and only after his death the scripts were sold. The sonnet The Italian sonnet The Petrarchan sonnet was a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter, usually each octave rhymed ABBA ABBA while sestet CDECDE or CDC DCD. The first one contained an issue and the second one the solution. At the end of the eighth line generally there was a turning point introduced by words like and, if, so, but, yet. The traditional theme is the non- returned love and desire of a lady, symbol of perfection. This interior conflict, between love and unhappiness, leads the poet to madness and despair. Representation of it is the frequent use of the oxymoron. The lady is beautiful but cruel, desirable but chaste. The English sonnet The Shakespearean sonnet was divided into three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The first one was used to present a theme and the second one included the conclusion. The rhyme difference is mainly thanks to Wyatt and Howard, that, when they brought the sonnet to England, changed it into CDDC EE, leading to the Shakespearean innovation. All the sonnet written during the Elizabethan age were named after a woman, just as Petrarch’s ones. He Shakespeare introduced also the ideas of beauty, decay and art. For the first time women were recognised as professional actresses and playwrights. The most famous playwright was Aphra Behn (1640 – 89) while the first woman to appear on the professional stage in England is generally considered to be Margaret Hughes (1645 – 1719), who performed in a production of Othello at the Vere Street Theatre, London in 1660. The 18th Century Theatre A general decline in the level of playwriting during the 18th century was offset in large part by the emergence of some excellent actors and the building of hundreds of theatres throughout Europe. When the century began, theatre was largely a metropolitan and aristocratic pastime; by the time it ended, theatre had become a genuinely popular form of entertainment, and barely a British town worthy of the name didn’t boast a playhouse of some kind. But 18th-century theatres offered much more than what audiences saw on stage: sites for socialising and catching up with the latest news and gossip, they were places to see and be seen, no matter your social class. Stage technology changed rapidly during this period. One innovation was the use of ‘flats’ – hard surfaces painted to give the illusion of three-dimensional settings, which could be easily slid in and out to enable changes of scene. Another followed: the use of a stage curtain, to hide scene changes. Though candlelight was still the only available lighting technology, producers attempted to flood their stages with as much light as possible via the introduction of footlights and extra sidelights to show off sets and costumes to best advantage. Even more importantly, candles were taken out of auditoriums, leaving the audience area much darker and increasing the contrast with what was visible on stage Victorian drama To get around the restrictions of the 1737 Licensing Act, that restricted the production of plays to the two patent theatres at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in London and tightened up the censorship of drama, theatres introduced dramatic scenes with musical interludes. Melodrama and burlesque, with their short scenes and musical accompaniment, became extremely popular at this time. Eventually, the huge growth in demand for theatrical entertainment in the early 19th century made the patent theatres' system unworkable. New drama in the early 20th century The turn of the 20th century saw the emergence of two dominate trends in theatre: the dramatisation of contemporary, moral and social issues, and an interest in a simpler and more abstract staging of plays. Innovative work from abroad, particularly playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, was also influential in the shaping of this new drama. In 1899 the Stage Society was founded with the aim of supporting a theatre of ideas. Frustrated with the conservative nature of more commercial theatres, it presented private Sunday performances of experimental plays that had not been granted licences by the Lord Chamberlain. After a police raid on their first production it was argued that because these were private performances, the Lord Chamberlain's restrictions on Sunday performances and licensed plays were not applicable. The Stage Society won the case and other 'club' theatres opened with members paying a small subscription rather than an entrance fee. These theatres became the home of unlicensed, experimental and controversial plays – a situation that lasted until 1968 when censorship was finally overturned. 19th century spectacle The sophisticated technology and machinery of the late 19th century stage produced a succession of 'sensation' dramas in which special effects became the principal attraction. Scene painters, working with expert technicians, produced realistic reproductions of the natural world, using ropes, flats, bridges, treadmills and revolves. Street theater has an ancient origin. It occurred in the streets and squares of ancient Egypt and in Graeco-Roman culture. Most of the history of the theatre tells of shows held outdoors: in the markets, at fairs, in churches, in the courts of kings. This was happening a long time before indoor theatre was even thought of! From the 15th century until the 20th century, theatre was increasingly developed in enclosed spaces (theatre-type buildings) and all theatrical techniques born in the street gradually developed the characteristics of what is now known as "stage theatre". Street theatre was almost forgotten for a long time and only during the past century was it rediscovered and re-evaluated in full. A slow process of rediscovery that reached its apogee in Italy in the 1980s with ministerial decrees that sanctioned official recognition of street theatre. In the late 70s and early 80s there was great cultural growth. The ever developing and evolving indoor theatre then left the stage and returned to its origin, the streets to experiment with new forms of the craft. Today the square shows are gaining more space and recognition. The numerous events in the city, urban spaces such as well equipped and beautiful pedestrian squares allow for the increasing demand for street arts. Eva Barca