Transcript File - Hart Theatre Arts 1A & 1B

Greek Theatre Through
Medieval
An overview
Review Origins
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Where did theatre begin and why?
What role has it played in ancient civilizations.
Tribal – Stories and ritual
Religious – Community and ritual
Governmental – creating a common belief and
system of justice
• First recorded formal theatre … Egypt…
Egypt
• The world's earliest report of a dramatic production comes from
the banks of the Nile. It is in the form of a stone tablet preserved
in a German museum and contains the sketchy description of
one, I-kher-nefert (or Ikhernofret), a representative of the
Egyptian king, of the parts he played in a performance of the
world's first recorded "Passion" Play somewhere around the
year 2000 B.C. This Egyptian Passion bears a notable
resemblance to the Passion Plays of the twentieth century. Its
purpose is obviously to keep vivid in the minds of the faithful the
sufferings and triumph of a god.
In the case of the Egyptian "Passion" the central figure was the
legendary king-divinity, Osiris. According to the historical
legend, Osiris ruled wisely. He was treacherously murdered and
his body was cut in pieces and scattered. His wife, Isis, and his
son, avenged his murder, gathered up the pieces of his body for
pilgrimage relics, won back his throne and established the cult
of Osiris-worship.
The acting of those days must certainly have been quite as
realistic as that of any modern stage, for later Greek historians
tell us that many actor-warriors died of the wounds received in
the "sham" battles between the enemies of Osiris and the forces
led by his son, Ap-uat. The play closes with the resurrection of
Osiris as a god and the foreshadowing to all the faithful of their
own final resurrection.
Greek Theatre Vocabulary
• Catharsis – The purification or purgation of
emotions caused by tragic experience
• Pathos – a quality that evokes pity or sandness
• Hamartia – a tragic flaw leading to the
downfall of a tragic hero or heroine
• Hubris – excessive pride
• Deus ex machina – Explained later
• Periaktoi – Three sided trianular sets that can
be turned for change of scenery
GreekVocab. continued
• Aristotle’s three unities – (later slide)
• Dionysis – Ancient Greek God of wine, fertility, and
theater. Inspired ritual madness and joyful worship.
• Skene- background building of Greek and Roman
theatre. Source of scenery.
• Proskenion – raised platform on which the actors
performed – in Renaissance becomes proscenium
(the picture frame for box theater)
• Satirist – mocks the follies and shortcomings of
established people or conventions.
• Orchestra – the circular playing area used as a stage
in Greek Drama
Greek Theatre
• IT is to the Greeks that we owe the first great plays. Aristotle, a
philosopher and teacher born in the first quarter of the fourth
century, became not only the most important mouthpiece of
Greek dramatic criticism, but also one of the most important
influences in all the history of literature. He analyzed the plays of
the fifth century as well as those of his own time, classified the
kinds of drama, and laid down rules for the construction of
tragedy.
• Aristotle was not a playwright himself but his criticism set the
standard for plays of the period and his “rules” for what is a good
play remained the standard for centuries thereafter.;
• ARISTOTLES THREE UNITIES
• The most famous of the Aristotelian rules were those
relating to the so-called unities--of time, place, and
action. The unity of time limits the supposed action to the
duration, roughly, of a single day; unity of place limits it to
one general locality; and the unity of action limits it to a
single set of incidents which are related as cause and
effect, "having a beginning, a middle, and an end."
Concerning the unity of time, Aristotle noted that all the
plays since Aeschylus, except two, did illustrate such unity,
but he did not lay this down as a rule.
• All drama required dramatic action or which would induce
“pity and fear” or Catharsis for the audience.
Thespis
• Early Greek theatre was a religious celebration for
the God Dionysus. Dithyrambs or musical odes
were written to be sung by a chorus. Thespis, an
early actor and playwright was thought to be the
first person to step out of the chorus and speak as
a character individually, thus becoming the first
actor. It is from Thespis actors got their name
“thespians” meaning character who speaks alone.
Aeschylus- 525 - 456 BC
Improvements Introduced by Aeschylus
Many were the improvements which Aeschylus
introduced, especially in diminishing the
importance of the chorus and in adding a second
actor, thus giving prominence to the dialogue
and making it the leading feature of the play. He
removed all deeds of bloodshed from the public
view, and in their place provided many
spectacular elements, improving the costumes,
making the masks more expressive and
convenient, Finally, he established the custom of
contending for the prize with trilogies, or series
of three independent dramas. This form
remained the format for all the great playwrights
of the period for two centuries.
Plays- Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers,
Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes
Sophocles 495- 405 BC
Sophocles was perhaps the greatest of
the Greek poetic writers. Added the
third actor to the play. Wrote and
performed in many of his over 130
plays. Only 7 complete plays remain
but they are considered amongst the
greatest plays ever written in any time.
His towering portrayals of men caught
in their struggle with fate and destiny
are the hallmark of great Greek theatre
and all tragedy thereafter. Three of his
extant plays are considered the best
ever written. They include:
Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus,
Antigone, and Electra
Euripides 480-406 BC
Euripides was less respectful of the Gods and theatre
traditions. His plays were more humanistic and
tended to criticize war and social conventions which
made him controversial and sometimes unpopular.
Many of his plays had woman protagonists. He
employed Deus Ex Machina (God in a Machine)
freely. This was device which would bring a
convenient end to the tragic events. However, his
plays hold up very well today, due to their humanistic
viewpoint, feministic and antiwar themes and are the
most often performed professionally today especially
his most famous plays;
Medea,Trojan Women, Helen, Hecuba, Iphigenia in
Tauris, Phoenecian Women, The Bacchae
Deus ex Machina
Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase meaning "God from the Machine." It describes
an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced
suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (eg.
having the main protagonist wake up and realize it was all a dream). The phrase
has been extended to refer to any resolution to a story which does not pay due
regard to the story's internal logic and is so unlikely it challenges suspension of
disbelief; allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, but more
palatable ending. In modern terms the Deus ex machina has also come to
describe a person or thing that suddenly arrives and solves a seemingly insoluble
difficulty. While in storytelling this might seem unfulfilling, in real life this type of
figure might be welcome and heroic.
The notion of Deus ex machina can also be applied to a revelation within a story
experienced by a character which involves the individual realizing that the
complicated, sometimes perilous or mundane and perhaps seemingly unrelated
sequence of events leading up to this point in the story are joined together by
some profound concept. Thus the unexpected and timely intervention is aimed at
the meaning of the story rather than a physical event in the plot.
The Greek tragedian Euripides is notorious for using this plot device.
Masks from the Greek Theatre
Comedy
King Creon
Tragedy
Medea
Woman
Actual artifact of
mask
Aristophanes 448-385 BC
He wrote forty plays, eleven of
which still survive, and his plays are
the only surviving examples of what
is called Old Comedy. These are
plays with a satiric edge and often
ribald humor but still literate and
poetic in presentation. He is still
considered one of the greatest comic
writers of all time and like Euripides
he takes pot shots at social
conventions.
His most famous plays are;
The Frogs, The Birds, Lysistrata
The Wasps, and The Clouds
Roman Theatre
• The Romans who conquered the Greeks in 250 BC had
little theatre to speak of of their own. The copied Greek
conventions for a while but eventually moved toward
spectacles like gladiatorial combat and ribald spectacle for
theatre. They cut the Greek orchestra in half and added
seating and walls to prevent the audience from being
splattered by gore from the events. Eventually they
developed a colloseum type of theatre which is imitated
today in our football stadiums. There were three
playwrights whose work remains important though seldom
performed mainly because they were the models for
Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers. These writers
were Senecca, Terence and Plautus
The Dark Ages
• As Christianity began to take hold during the reign
of Constantine, all theatre was banned by the early
Roman and Orthodox Catholic churches and
disappeared entirely as a literary form for over 600
years during the period called the Dark Ages
where no great intellectual or scientific
developments occurred in the western world.
Theatre perhaps continued in the form of
storytelling and folk theatre, but no new literature
emerged until the early 1100’s. AD.
Medieval Theatre
• The rebirth of theatre ironically was created by the
same source which ended it previously, the
Catholic Church. Monks and priests began to
depict scenes from the Bible in tableau to illustrate
to the illiterate masses the stories of Jesus.
Eventually the tableaus became dumb shows and
then lines were given to characters. They were
first performed in the church and then moved
outside and eventually performed by the people of
the parish as a form of celebration and
competition.
Types of Medieval drama
• Mystery plays told the stories from the bible as a
kind of instruction to the masses and were mostly
those of the Old Testament
• Passion Plays told the story of Christ particularly
of his last days and crucifcifiction and resurrection
• Morality plays were tales of good vs. evil which
told of the path to salvation.
• Saint Plays told stories of the lives of the saints
• Pageant and Cycle plays were performed by the
town guilds during religious holidays and were
performed on Pageant Wagons which could fold
Folk Drama and Traveling
theatre
• Rural towns would often portray popular folk
stories like those of Robin Hood and act out these
tales for the amusement of the citizens.
• Commedia Del Arte style troops of traveling
players also began to circulate in the 1400’s and
portrayed comic tales with stock characters which
became well known to the viewers of these plays.
Pageant Wagon