Professional Documents
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COURSE INSTRUCTOR:
HISTORY OF THEATRE
Medieval Staging:
moved outside
onto a porch that
was used as the
staging area
• Soon these stationary stages began to change. Stage construction soon took a turn to
something different, “pageant wagons,” which were basically small stages placed on a
wheeled wooden cart. This new type of stage changed the number of people who could
view the plays, instead of people having to travel to the church to see the play, the stage
and the play could now come to them.
• Usually these stages would have three
different parts and would represent earth,
heaven, and hell, usually with earth in the
middle of the others.
Elizabethan Theatre:
• Medieval theatre was presented on elaborate temporary stages
inside great halls, barns, or in the open courtyards of galleried inns.
• It was from these that Elizabethan timber-framed open-air
theatres took their form, such as the Globe in London.
• They were often multi-sided buildings, with a covered platform
stage against one side.
• The audience sat or stood in covered galleries around the other
sides or in the open courtyard. All the performances took place in
daylight.
• Under Elizabeth I, the drama was a unified expression as far as
social class, the Court watched the same plays the regular citizens
saw in the public playhouses.
• With the development of the private theatres, drama became
more oriented with the values of an upper-class audience.
Elizabethan Theatre:
Elizabethan Theatre:
17TH-CENTURY THEATRE
• The most lavish 17th-
century productions were
not open to the public. King
James I and later his son
Charles I commissioned
spectacular private
performances called
'masques' which involved
music, dance, opulent
costumes and extraordinary
scenery and special effects.
• They were performed once
or twice at one of the royal
palaces and were only seen
by members of the court.
Such lavish court
entertainments were
fashionable throughout
Europe as an expression of
princely power.
17TH-CENTURY THEATRE
William Shakespeare
• Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.
• His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, and these are regarded
as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly
tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth,
considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase,
he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other
playwrights.
17TH-CENTURY THEATRE
• After the execution of Charles I in 1642, theatrical performances were outlawed owing to
the threat of civil unrest. Theatres closed and many were demolished.
• Following the restoration of the monarchy twenty years later, interest in theatre resumed.
• The introduction of scenery and elaborate stage machinery to the English public stage in
the 1660s gave rise to blockbusting semi-operas. Many of these were adaptations of other
plays, often by Shakespeare. These had episodes of music, singing, dancing and special
effects. They even had transformation scenes.
• Later, a series of royal patents were granted to cities outside London. These became known
as “Theatres Royal”. Many still operate and were built in a restrained neo-classical style.
• Also in the eighteenth century, companies of players began to travel on regular circuits
between market towns. They set up their own theatres, called playhouses, which were
similar in shape and size. This enabled stock scenery to be easily erected and reused, which
made touring easier.
• Hundreds were built, of modest size and exterior. Their interiors were simple, consisting of a
rectangular flat-floored room with a stage that projected into the audience.
• People sat on benched seating on the floor in front of the stage, or on balconies against the
three remaining walls supported by columns or wooden posts.
Audiences
Theatre-going was a very different experience from that of today and actors often had to
fight to capture the attention of the audience, which could be rude, noisy and sometimes
even dangerous.
Going to the theatre was a social event and audiences were a mixture of both rich and poor,
who sat in different parts of the theatre depending on whether they could afford cheap or
expensive tickets. The upper class patrons usually sat in boxes so that they could see and be
seen, while the lower classes were squeezed into hot and dirty galleries at the top of the
building.
Alcohol and food was consumed in great quantity; people arrived and left throughout the
performance; playgoers often chatted amongst themselves and sometimes pelted actors
with rotten fruit and vegetables. Rioting at theatres was also not uncommon. The Drury
Lane theatre was destroyed by rioting on six occasions during the century.
Eighteenth-century Theatre
• In the early 1800s, theatre attendance lessened, owing partly to economic decline
and poor standards of acting and production. Patronage by the middle classes also
fell as a result of theatre’s increasingly bad reputation and raucous nature.
Consequently many closed or were converted to other uses.
• The Industrial Revolution saw many people from the country migrate to the
expanding industrial towns.
• However, in the more populated urban centers there was a significant increase in
theatre building.
• In 1843, the Theatres Act removed the patent monopoly and allowed other theatres
to present drama, with censorship still controlled by the Lord Chamberlain. This
encouraged the building of new theatres, invariably by speculators seeking profit.
19TH-CENTURY THEATRE
• The elimination of painted
sets and the wing and boarder
systems that had dominated
the Baroque period started in
the early 19th century
Prism interiors
Baroque theater
19TH-CENTURY THEATRE
• Painted scenery was increasingly
replaced by three-dimensional scenery
with which the actors could interact.
• The advent of the use of gas in 1803
made it possible to control lighting as
never before.
• Frederick Albert Winsor, an
entrepreneur, took out a patent on a
lighting apparatus based on gas in
1804.
19TH-CENTURY THEATRE
• Benches were
replaced by
individual seats.
• Safety measures
were practiced to
prevent fire.
• Safety measures were implemented. • Space above and below the stage
• Adequate sight lines. was greatly enlarged.
• Several elevator traps were installed.
Victorian invention and legislation
• The Victorian period saw a number of innovations that impacted upon theatre design.
• Lighting changed from candle to gas and then later to electricity as a result of stringent
health and safety legislation. However, both emitted a more brilliant light that enabled
directors to use lighting for theatrical effect.
• Further legislation required that audiences seated at all levels could be evacuated
quickly and safely in the event of fire or panic evacuations. Most theatre interiors used
a lot of wood, including seats, balconies and structural supports. Fire exits and escape
routes became a statutory requirement.
• The development of cantilevered balconies was another innovation. These steel-
framed structures covered with concrete did not need supporting columns that impede
the audience’s view of the stage.
• Concrete soon became a popular material for theatre interiors, not only for its
resistance to fire, but also because it could be moulded into elaborate curved forms.
Victorian invention and legislation
Tragedies such as the fire at the Theatre Royal, Exeter in 1887, in which more than 190
people lost their lives, led to more careful planning of new theatres or the
refurbishing of older ones.
Image showing proposals for the New Victoria Theatre (now the Apollo Victoria) in
London, 1928.
20TH-CENTURY THEATRE
• The period between the two world wars was one of social discontent, and saw the
rise of the Workers Theatre Movement. It used theatre as a way to advocate social
change and educate the masses. One of its achievements was the opening of the
Unity Theatre in London in 1936, in a reused chapel.