How to enjoy a theatre

1. How to enjoy a theatre Helen Wang National Penghu University

2. Medieval drama • With the establishment of Christianity came an age of faith throughout medieval Europe, in which the way of life was dominated by the church. • Liturgical drama (church services) was always in Lain and not in the vernacular, and formed an integral part of the church service. Such activities were theatrical, involving impersonation (with symbolic costumes and ‘props’, dialogue and action.

3. All medieval drama is didactic drama, teaching and spreading the Christian faith, promoting the godly way of life and condemning vice. In effect the church acknowledged that drama can be a powerful medium of propaganda and utilized it accordingly.

4. The plays were based on Bible stories, the lives of saints, the life, death and resurrection of Christ, vices and virtues, angels and devils. • All plays were written verse and all drama continued to be ‘occasional’ drama, that is, presented on special occasions only because it was open-air drama, performances were limited to spring and summer. • The performers were mainly amateurs. The style of acting was probably very simple to match the simplicity of the text.

5. The features of medieval acting seem to have been a loud voice and a strong physical presence to convey authority. • For those people who think that religious drama is dull and dutiful, here is an exciting, spectacular medieval play combining the bawdy and beautiful, the devilish and the heavenly.

6. In the Middle Ages theatre buildings were still unknown temporary stages were given in daylight. The most usual form of outdoor staging is known as the booth stage. • By far the most exciting form of staging in medieval times is known as ‘in the round’ or ‘place and scaffold’ presentation. The play’s action takes place in the circular arena, and on and between the various central and perimeter stages.

7. Music, song and dance were often mixed in with the ‘matter of the play’. • Interludes were simply presented, no stage being required. Indoors, they just ‘took the floor’ in Tudor halls or large chambers; the booth stage was perfectly adequate.

8. The Renaissance to the interregnum • The Renaissance movement was responsible for revolutionizing the content and form of drama. The atmosphere of study during the Renaissance made drama a subject of eager investigation by academics in mid-sixteenth-century England. • The action should take place at the same location and the plot line should be confined to a continuous single action.

9. As for subject matter, biblical topics and stories and religious dogma had to be dispensed with, the world was the playwright’s oyster. But it is interesting that development was cautious. • Renaissance drama is sharply distinguished from medieval drama in that it deals more with man’s relationship with man and less with his relationship with God.

10. Man’s present life on earth became the central issue of many plays, especially in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. • Renaissance drama is different from earlier drama in that it often requires interpretation. But with the growth of drama, and the move away from familiar material and familiar structures, late Renaissance plays became complex.

11. The first playwright to cause any real stir in English theatre was Christopher Marlowe. • As late as the end of sixteenth century, when theatre became a commercial venture, plays were often printed and put on sale without mentioning the name of the playwright.

12. Shakespeare explored almost the whole range of drama—comedies, tragedies, history plays, dark comedies and the later non-naturalistic drama known as the romance plays. • The final phase of Shakespeare’s work produced plays markedly different both in form and content from any of his earlier work. Time is seen as a healing agent, helping to mend the torn fabric of life. The plays are set in strange and remote lands; the plots have an almost fairy-tale quality; the action is often more symbolic than naturalistic.

13. All Shakespeare’s work is written in verse and prose of incomparable quality and is brought to life on stage by a succession of vivid characters which have become household names.

14. Renaissance theatre buildings • In terms of theatre history the Elizabethan and Jacobean period is of immense importance. The shape of the playhouse was that of the contemporary bull or bear-baiting houses. • 1642-60: the interregnum • Theatre was eclipsed by a greater drama of real life played out between king and country, which culminated on a public scaffold with the execution of Charles I in 1649.

15. Restoration and the eighteenth century • Sir william Davenant and Thomas Killigrew both began with makeshift theatres adapted from indoor tennis courts until purpose-built theatres became available. • Davenant, with his company called the Duke’s Men, early introduced scenery and theatrical machinery into his theatre, while Killigrew with his King’s Men opened without scenery but was forced to follow suit when the new concept of staging instantly caught on.

16. The theatre attracted only the upper classes, few workaday people attended. It depended on the season. • Once new playwrights had begun writing for the stage, three main kinds of drama appeared, reflecting contemporary trends in social tastes and morals: comedies of manners, heroic tragedy and musical dramas.

17. The Restoration comedy of manners has often been attacked as valueless and unimportant. In spite of the fact that most of these comedies are restricted to casts of leisured aristocrats and the upper classes. • The position of divorce and marriage in the late seventeenth century is also being highlighted.

18. But a good production of a fine Restoration comedy will prove a thoroughly enjoyable theatrical experience, for many of the plays are highly amusing, witty and ingenious. • Musical dramas were also very much in vogue during this period. • The building itself was rectangular with a fan-shaped auditorium.

19. Actresses were now beginning to play the female parts. Acting must certainly have been freer, particularly as many plays. • Restoration stage were still only painted on canvas flats. • This period is important for the creation of the theatre monopoly, the introduction of actresses and the first female professional playwright, the newly designed indoor theatres with their scenes and machines and the greatly increased use of music.

20. Drama at the beginning of the century is labelled ‘sentimental’: it is pious, moralistic, elegant but rather dull. • Musical appreciation and love of opera grew as the eighteenth century progressed, and Italian opera singers found ready favour in London. Because of the monopoly, a large number of music dramas or plays with music were presented.

21. After the middle of the century the theatre began to attract more and more people, mainly from the middle and lower classes. • 18th century theatres: Scenery and machines grew more important and complex, stages being fitted with several trap doors, bridges, fly galleries, machinery for raising and lowering scenic pieces through the stage floor.

22. Garrick was influential in attempting to establish more historically accurate costumes for period plays.

23. 19th Century • Audiences were mainly working and lower-class; the upper classes at the beginning of the 1800s went to the opera and the two patent houses. • Two important events in the history of the theatre occurred in the early decades of 1800. Gas lighting was introduced, and the much resented monopoly of the two patent theatres was broken.

24. Plays and casts had to be found and trained, audiences had to be weaned away from musical shows and variety entertainments. • Through the decades that followed, plays containing attractive plots and dialogue and indeed, offering some reflection on contemporary society began to emerge.

25. The theatre in the second half of the century went through a period of enormous change, matching the equally profound movements going on in economic and social life. • Melodrama: The action is accompanied by orchestral music. As far as English theatre is concerned, the term was first used to denote a particularly dramatic kind of play performed with music and song throughout.

26. Theatre in its many forms became the main relaxation for the Victorians; it was inexpensive, all tastes were catered for from opera to music hall, classics to melodrama, and there was a growing repertoire of straight plays. • By the 1880s and 1890s all classes attended the theatre and glittering ‘first nights’ attracted the aristocracy and upper classes.

27. Late 19th century theatres: Theatres were becoming elegantly appointed and sumptuously decorated with ornament and gilt plasterwork, floors were carpeted and seating made comfortable. The stage offered greater and greater scenic splendors, many of the major theatres being equipped with impressive hydraulic machinery.

28. The bulk of the drama continued to offer relaxation and delight, the kind of entertainment sorely needed by the masses of ill-paid wage-earners. • Characterization became psychologically deeper and social issues were treated frankly. Dialogue began to acquire a literary flavour as well as a note of social and philosophic enquiry.

29. Naturalism in European drama • Naturalism in drama was a movement away from the artificial melodrama of the contemporary theatre which bore absolutely no relation to real life. It sought to give on-stage an illusion of the real world through naturalistic plots, dialogue and behavior. • Naturalism aimed at creating an illusion of everyday life—a photographic image; realism went for the reality without necessarily giving a photographic picture.

30. The pioneer of plays of naturalism and social relevance was Henrik Isben. Ibsen spent a lifetime devoted to the theatre. Essentially Ibsen was a poet, much of his work is written in verse and even his prose has that extra imaginative charge of poetry.

31. In France, the trend towards naturalism was confirmed by the existence of ‘little theatres’ – theatres specially created to promote the new drama. • Playwrights increasingly turned to writing works of symbolism.

32. However in England during the second half of the century, the requirement of a particular individual to be responsible for the artistic production of a play became an increasing necessity. • The rise of scenic realism and the arrival of the first plays with a social message, it was apparent that coordination was becoming necessary. The director was to be responsible for the play’s artistic impact; to guide, instruct, coach and generally to ensure that the audience noticed not only the star actors but also the play itself and its message.

33. All aspects of theatrical art—acting, stage design, lighting, costumes and so on—had to contribute to a balanced whole. The director became the actors’ guide, mentor and stimulus and the over-all interpreter of the playwright’s script.

34. From the Edwardians to the angry young men • Attempts at serious drama continued to be somewhat hesitant in the early 1900s, but several dramatists in Britain persisted in their efforts to write and have produced plays which were not simply entertaining, but also works of consequence.

35. During the Edwardian era amateur theatre became established on a nationwide footing, resulting in the formation of the British Drama League in 1919. Theatre had become a truly popular art form; acting groups and theatre societies proliferated and amateur drama festivals created a healthy rivalry.

36. The United States of America • Between 1940 and the mid-1950s American theatre dominated the English-speaking world. • Craig pioneered many developments in stage design and advocated a theatre of non-realistic décor and atmospheric lighting, in which the visual impact was of paramount importance and the director was a dictator.

37. Theatre today • In 1956 the drama reflected in one particular play and in the feelings of one particular young man the culmination of a mood—the mood of the post-war years. After the Second World War and after a decade of readjustment to peace, the brave new world so long promised was failing to materialize. The post-war generation was becoming disillusioned, critical, and outspoken.

38. Although the form of the play was traditional, its tone was new. It was abrasive, outspoken and forceful. The tone of the play demanded attention.

39. Fringe theatre in Britain • Fringe theatre has been known variously as avant-garde, off-West-End, underground, alternative or non-mainstream theatre. Standards of performance and production range from the atrocious to the polished.

40. Most theatres in use today belong to this group and were probably built in the late 19th or early 20th century, hence the term ‘traditional’. The over-all shape is rectangular with a raised stage placed squarely across one end stretching from side wall to side wall. A proscenium-arch stage is also called a picture frame stage.

41. The strength of pros. arch staging lies in its potential to offer a striking approximation of realism in scenic terms. • The term thrust stage is used where the stage is considerably extended into the auditorium and most of the action takes place on it. • The action is more immediate and the audience more readily involved.

42. Traverse staging is ideal for pageants, shows, large-cast plays, comedies and plays involving a lot of movement. It is unsuitable for serious, static, small-cast plays. • Advocates of theatre-in-the-round assert that it creates a much more vital and immediate performance for an audience than is possible in a traditional theatre.

43. The major disadvantage is that the audience will not always see the action from the best viewpoint, and will also have to contend with the actors’ backs for approximately half the performance.

44. The open-stage is a direct result of the anti-illusionist approach to drama of the 1960s of bringing the action out into the open from behind the pros. Arch, and of exposing the mechanics of theatre. An open-stage implies a thrust-stage or at least a convex shape curving out into the auditorium. Most modern theatres have abandoned the traditional rectangular shaped theatre-building and adopted a polygonal shape.