Why study theatre history? Context of a play
Every play is made in a context: a time, a place, a society, a kind of stage and an audience. To understand or perform an old play well, ask:
- Social and political context: who had power, what people believed, what was allowed to be said.
- Theatrical context: the shape of the stage, lighting (daylight or candles or electric), sets, costumes, masks.
- Acting conventions: how actors moved and spoke (big and stylised, or natural).
- Audience: who came, where they sat, how they behaved.
Researching theatre: use reliable books, theatre museums, recordings, interviews with practitioners, photos of productions and reviews; note your sources.
Ancient Greek and Roman theatre
In Athens (from about 534 BCE) plays were performed at festivals for the god Dionysus, as a competition.
- Theatre space: the theatron (curved hillside seats, for up to about 15 000 people), the orchestra (round dancing floor), the skene (stage building used for entrances and painted backgrounds).
- Tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides): serious stories of heroes and gods. Comedy (Aristophanes, later Menander): jokes about society and politics.
- Conventions: all actors were men; masks showed character; a chorus sang and commented; violence happened offstage.
- Aristotle's Poetics discussed plot, character and catharsis (release of pity and fear).
Rome copied and adapted Greek plays (Plautus, Seneca), built freestanding theatres and loved spectacle.
Classical Asian theatre
- Sanskrit drama (India): the Natyashastra, credited to Bharata (roughly 200 BCE–200 CE), is a huge guide to acting, dance, music, stage and audience. Its idea of rasa (the mood the audience tastes) and bhava (the emotion the actor shows) still shapes Indian performing arts. Great playwrights include Bhasa, Kalidasa (Shakuntala) and Shudraka. Acting used four kinds of expression: body (angika), voice (vachika), costume and make-up (aharya) and inner feeling (sattvika).
- Noh (Japan, from the 1300s): developed by Kan'ami and Zeami. A roofed square stage, a bridge (hashigakari) for entrances, masks, music and slow, precise movement. Kabuki (1600s) is colourful and popular, with bold make-up and a runway into the audience.
- Chinese opera (such as Peking opera) mixes song, speech, acrobatics and symbolic costumes and make-up.
- Folk forms in many countries, such as Indian Yakshagana, Kathakali and street theatre, keep these traditions alive.
Medieval, Renaissance and Elizabethan theatre
- Medieval Europe (about 900–1500): theatre grew again inside churches, then moved outdoors. Mystery plays told Bible stories on pageant wagons pulled through towns; morality plays like Everyman taught right and wrong.
- Commedia dell'arte (Italy, 1500s–1700s): touring companies, stock characters with masks (Arlecchino, Pantalone), improvised scenes and physical comedy. It influenced comedy across Europe.
- Elizabethan and Jacobean England (about 1576–1642): round or many-sided open-air playhouses like the Globe; a thrust stage with the audience on three sides; poorer people (groundlings) stood in the yard. Plays were in daylight with few sets, so words painted the scene. Writers: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson. Boys played women's parts.
- Spanish Golden Age (Lope de Vega, Calderón) used courtyard theatres (corrales).
Proscenium, neoclassicism and realism
- 1600s–1700s: indoor theatres with a proscenium arch (a picture frame), painted perspective scenery and candle light. Women began to act on many European stages. French neoclassical writers (Molière for comedy, Racine for tragedy) followed strict rules.
- 1800s: melodrama with clear heroes and villains, big gestures, music and stage effects; gas, then electric light.
- Realism and naturalism (late 1800s): Ibsen (A Doll's House), Chekhov, Strindberg and others showed ordinary people and social problems in real-looking rooms (the box set). Actors behaved as if a fourth wall separated them from the audience.
Modern and contemporary theatre
- Stanislavski (Moscow Art Theatre): a 'system' for truthful acting: given circumstances, objectives, the 'magic if', emotion memory. It shaped film acting and 'method' acting.
- Brecht: epic theatre. He used the Verfremdungseffekt (making the familiar strange): songs, placards, actors speaking to the audience, visible lights, so people think about society instead of just feeling.
- Artaud (theatre of cruelty: shock the senses), Grotowski (poor theatre: only the actor's body), Peter Brook (the empty space), Theatre of the Absurd (Beckett, Ionesco), physical theatre and devised theatre.
- Spaces: black box studios, in the round, traverse, promenade and site-specific theatre. Postcolonial and intercultural theatre mixes traditions, for example the Indian playwrights and directors who combined folk forms with modern ideas.
Acting styles in context
Acting style follows the stage and the time:
- Huge open-air spaces (Greek): masks, big voices, large gestures.
- Codified styles (Natyashastra, Noh, Kabuki): set gestures and movements learnt over years.
- Close crowds, daylight (Elizabethan): direct speech to the audience, asides and soliloquies.
- Melodrama: exaggerated poses and emotions.
- Realism / Stanislavski: natural, inner truth, fourth wall.
- Brecht: 'showing' a character, breaking the fourth wall, asking the audience to judge.
Key formulas and definitions
- Greek theatre: theatron (seats) + orchestra (dancing floor) + skene (stage building)
- Natyashastra: rasa (audience's taste of emotion) + bhava (actor's emotion)
- Stage shapes: open-air → thrust → proscenium → black box / in the round
- Realism: box set + fourth wall + natural acting
- Stanislavski = truthful feeling; Brecht = audience thinks (Verfremdung)
- Context of a play: society + stage + conventions + audience
Worked examples
1. Why did Greek actors wear masks and use big gestures?
Theatres held thousands of people in the open air. Masks showed the character clearly from far away, helped one actor play several roles, and big gestures and voices reached the back rows.
2. Shakespeare's plays describe the time of day and the place in the words. Why?
Plays were in daylight with few sets and no lighting changes, so the lines had to tell the audience that it was night or that they were in a forest.
3. A director stages Ibsen's A Doll's House. Which stage shape and acting style fit its original context?
A proscenium stage with a realistic box-set room, and natural acting behind a 'fourth wall'.
4. A group performs a street play about water saving and asks the audience questions in the middle. Which theatre maker's ideas does this use?
Brecht's: breaking the fourth wall so the audience thinks and judges. The audience all around also links to theatre in the round.
Common mistakes
- Thinking theatre history is only European. India, Japan, China and many other cultures had rich theatre traditions, some older than or as old as the Greek.
- Mixing up the orchestra (Greek dancing floor) with the modern orchestra (musicians).
- Thinking the proscenium stage is the 'normal' or oldest stage. Open-air, thrust and in-the-round spaces are far older.
- Thinking Stanislavski and Brecht wanted the same thing. Stanislavski wanted the audience to believe; Brecht wanted the audience to think critically.