International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital

Media

ISSN: 1479-4713 (Print) 2040-0934 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpdm20

Staging supernatural creatures in a computer-

based visualisation of London’s sixteenth-century
Rose Theatre

Joanne Tompkins & Lazaros Kastanis

To cite this article: Joanne Tompkins & Lazaros Kastanis (2017) Staging supernatural creatures in
a computer-based visualisation of London’s sixteenth-century Rose Theatre, International Journal
of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 13:1, 4-20, DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2017.1280306

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2017.1280306

Published online: 23 Jan 2017.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA, 2017
VOL. 13, NO. 1, 4–20
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2017.1280306

Staging supernatural creatures in a computer-based

visualisation of London’s sixteenth-century Rose Theatre
Joanne Tompkinsa and Lazaros Kastanisb
a
School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; bOrtelia Interactive
Services, Brisbane, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This paper argues for recreating performance techniques from early Rose Theatre; dragon;
modern theatre by deploying a computer-based visualisation of the Marlowe; visualisation;
Rose Theatre, a London venue from the 1590s. It focuses on one cultural heritage;
spectacular performance feature in early modern theatre, the performance
dragon, which communicated a combination of excitement, fear,
and dread. This era marked a transition between the end of both
pagan beliefs and an unquestioned acceptance of Christianity,
and a more human-centred (and inquisitive) moment in early
modern thinking. Yet the effect of such creatures does not
disappear instantly: they continued to yield a fearful awe.
Theatrically, this time was extremely dynamic in form and topic,
but little is known about the detail of actual performative
techniques used at the time. Dragons were known to have been
staged at the Rose, as documented by the theatre’s owner, but no
detail on its size or the manner of its ‘performance’ remains. To
illustrate the potential of digital visualisations for theatre generally
and to explore how this dragon may have worked in a detailed
virtual model of the Rose Theatre, we track practicalities of size
and manoeuvrability; venue questions regarding scale; and
theatrical matters of visual impact and effect.

The literary and music scholar, Charles Rosen, makes a compelling case for understanding
and interrogating art forms that have a historical component but that are performed in the
contemporary moment; he advocates shunning approaches that either hold firmly to the
past or disregard it altogether, insisting that:
[t]here are basically two ways to kill a tradition. The first is a stiff-necked adherence to estab-
lished practices [that] … rests on a belief that works of art or of general culture are fixed
objects, forever unalterable, and incapable of development in time. The second way is a
process of radical modernization that takes no account of history and brings the tradition
up to date while ignoring the social and artistic ideals that made possible its creation and
development, setting aside the history of its reception, and regarding the tradition as if it
were just created today or, at best yesterday. (2012, 397)

While the genres at the core of Rosen’s work are music and literature, his argument applies
to theatre as well: this position is productive for the investigation of performance aspects
of historical theatre, the topic of this paper. Specifically, we explore how several spectacles,

CONTACT Joanne Tompkins j.tompkins@uq.edu.au

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 5

notably the religiously and historically laden dragon figure, popular in playscripts in early
modern English theatre, might have been realised on stage. Such a study requires a con-
siderable degree of adherence to the historical record, while, as will become clear, our
methods introduce a great deal of contemporary technology; an argument in this realm
requires acknowledgement of the limits and merits of both worlds to enliven, and not
kill, the performance tradition of the early modern stage.

Visualising the Rose Theatre

Our exploration of the dragon device requires investigating the historical record as well as
technological developments in heritage visualisation, because there are no theatres
remaining of an appropriate size and age that might accommodate our experiments. It
is fair to assume that Shakespeare’s Globe in London, the reconstruction of a venue some-
what like the early modern theatre in which Shakespeare’s plays were performed in the
seventeenth century, could stand in for other venues, but there was considerable variation
among venues at the time; further, Shakespeare’s Globe has, as Bowsher and others note,
been modified to suit contemporary building requirements (2011, 455, 459). Before we
illustrate the particularities of the dragon as a performative technique, we contextualise
our work in the field, briefly explain the visualisation theatre venue that we have devel-
oped, and situate the notion of spectacle in early modern theatre. This paper outlines
our findings about how a dragon might function in a virtually reconstructed theatre,
what that means for performance, and how that knowledge extends digital humanities.
Finally, we argue for a contextualised understanding of the potential for visualisation in
the development of theatre history.
The use of computer-based visualisation is mainstream in some disciplines, such as
archaeology where heritage visualisation is a standard feature in research and in wider dis-
semination to public audiences (see Stuart Dann among many others [2013]). While this
technology is increasingly helpful in recreating examples of cultural heritage that have
been lost from contemporary understandings (Refsland et al. 2000, 20–21), it is less
often deployed to establish how theatrical performance operated historically. Our work
attempts to redress this imbalance, particularly since in most cases, there is no other
recourse for investigating historical performance since the original theatres no longer
exist. The recreation of theatres per se is not new: Theatron began walk-throughs of Euro-
pean theatrical venues several decades ago, while the Kings Visualization Lab (KVL) has
pioneered the reconstruction of heritage venues, including theatres (see for instance
the work of Hugh Denard [2007] among others at KVL; Theatron, http://www.theatron.
org, is now a part of KVL). What distinguishes our work from these projects and teams
that also use visualisation is that we explore in more depth the specific contexts – here
performance techniques and tactics – that help define a greater understanding of a
venue and, in our case, its theatrical operations, particularly the many performative func-
tions of a specific theatre.1 The Rose Theatre is part of perhaps the most influential period
in the development of English-speaking theatre, given the popularity of plays by William
Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (among others).
Our virtual reconstructions of actual theatres – and the performance devices within
them – illustrate how one early modern theatre could have operated, when there is
little contemporary awareness of the peculiarities of this venue, let alone the performance
6 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

traditions that it would have needed to support. Such visualisation brings to life samples of
performance derived from engravings, sketches, and photography to illuminate theatre
history’s past and future. An increased awareness of historical performance reinforces per-
ceptions of the structure and aims of theatre at the time while also urging a reconsidera-
tion of how such theatre is performed today, in a manner that retains Rosen’s awareness of
the importance of not ‘killing the tradition’. Given an absence of equivalent bricks-and-
mortar venues, critics tend to make assumptions about matters regarding theatre architec-
ture and performance, or what Julian Bowsher refers to as ‘dogmatic assumptions’ (2011,
459). In an attempt to explore the record with the benefit of digital technology, we inves-
tigate the development of performance special effects that were written into the play-
scripts of the day, the effects of which frequently come to be understood differently
when these scripts are given the opportunity to be performed. We are thus able to
extend the potential for visualisation in the sphere of theatre history to provide the
means to investigate how performance took place in the late 1590s: we recreate perform-
ance techniques within their performance contexts, rather than having to rely on theatres
that have been heavily renovated (if they have not been removed from the landscape
altogether).
The Rose Theatre is the basis for our investigation: it operated from 1587 until 1603 (and
was demolished in 1606). It would likely have remained completely overshadowed by the
nearby theatre, the larger and ultimately more successful, the Globe, were it not for two
factors: a surviving diary (or account book) kept by the Rose’s owner, Philip Henslowe,
detailing all matters that occurred at the Rose, including plays performed, props and cos-
tumes purchased, renovations executed and paid for; and the discovery and preliminary
excavation of this theatre’s archaeological remains in 1989 (see Rutter [1999] for a moder-
nised and contextualised version of this document). The partly excavated theatre foun-
dations can still be visited; they are near the site of the reconstructed Shakespeare’s
Globe, on London’s Bankside. The office block that now sits above the Rose’s foundations
makes further excavations unlikely, prompting our interest in recreating a virtual version of
this theatre, in the absence of an ‘actual’ venue. The Rose was a smaller theatre than the
better known Globe, but it was still fashioned in the round, open-to-the-elements shape
that Shakespeare’s Globe retains today. Andrew Gurr speculates that
‘[a] rough estimate of the audience at a very popular play in the enlarged Rose (the lost play
Hercules, on 6 January 1596), based on the half-gallery takings plus a guess at the yard figures,
indicates a possible audience of about two thousand two hundred fee-payers’ whereas the
Globe and other larger theatres were thought to seat 3000 patrons. (1992, 157–58)

The Rose had several extensive renovations in its relatively short lifespan, suggesting that
the theatre was successful at least for some years: after all, Henslowe would not have had
the inclination or the funding to renovate if the theatre was not bringing in numerous
patrons regularly. Henslowe’s surviving diary begins in 1592; it enumerates the perform-
ance of over two hundred plays until its closure in 1603, including those by leading
writers of the day such as Marlowe and Shakespeare. All of Marlowe’s plays appear in Hen-
slowe’s diary, indicating that all his plays were performed at the Rose, as were several of
Shakespeare’s early plays. Yet while this much is known, there are still many matters that
remain mysteries, such as how special effects were staged in such venues: only by recreat-
ing these special effects on visualised stages can we begin to gauge the effect they could
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 7

have had on their audiences and, thereby, their contribution to the theatrical record of
plays then and their revivals today.
The computer-based visualisation of the Rose Theatre was made with Autodesk Maya
by Ortelia, a software company that designs VR versions of cultural spaces.2 Decisions
about the three-dimensional (3D) model of the Rose Theatre were based on documents
that included the detailed excavation data from Greenfield and Gurr’s (2004) accounts
of the 1989 excavations and Bowsher and Miller’s (2009) work. The process of digital
reconstruction closely follows traditional building practices. That is, the theatre was recon-
structed from the ground up. A basic floor-plan based on Bowsher and Miller’s interpret-
ation of the archaeology was used as a starting point. The floor-plan was then overlaid
with brick foundations. This was followed with the erection of the wooden framework
of the theatre on top of the foundations and included the basis of the stage. Numerous
decisions needed to be made in the construction of this VR model, particularly since
the findings of the archaeologists only provided so much indication of the shape of
matters such as the upper stories. The foundations nevertheless narrowed our choices
considerably. The dimensions of the framing timbers were based on detailed descriptions
of building techniques and materials employed during the Tudor era, in particular the Eli-
zabethan period (Schofield 1991, 7). The height of the tiers is based on the measurements
for the Fortune Theatre, built in 1600, for which a building contract (and thus more precise
measurements) remains. The lowest tier was set out to be 12 ft high (3.66 m). The middle
tier was 11 ft (3.35 m) while the third (the highest) tier was to be 9 ft (2.75 m) (Gurr 1992,
170). It is not certain whether there were two tiers or three in the Rose Theatre, and of
course the foundations cannot confirm this, while panoramic maps of London of the
day are not conclusive. Critics tend to assume that there were three tiers (as does Gurr
1992, 157), given the number of patrons that were to have been accommodated in the
venue. Of course VR reconstructions permit the rendering of a venue that takes into
account both options. We expect that the Rose Theatre tiers would have been similarly
sized, even if its overall volume was smaller and if there were some variations. The final
step in the reconstruction was the addition of walls, roofing thatch, windows, doors,
and stairs. This part of the process presented challenges because no physical evidence
for these features remains. The description of the external walls is based on images of
the day of the Rose Theatre and the panorama etchings of Bankside, as well as surviving
structures of similar age. The construction and look of the internal walls, doors, and stair-
ways are based on the physical constraints of the underlying building framework. Descrip-
tions of other theatres of the era such as the Globe add data to aid placement although a
reasonably high level of conjecture – within the frame of possibility for theatrical require-
ments – becomes necessary. Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate the current Rose Theatre 3D
reconstruction.
From our investigations in simply building the model, we have been able to challenge
the assumed historical and performance record of the Rose Theatre (see Tompkins and
Delbridge 2009; Delbridge and Tompkins 2012). Our reconstruction also raises issues
about how performance took place on such a small stage, one that is differently shaped
than others of its day (the final renovation has a more lozenge-shaped stage than the tra-
ditional square or rectangle stages). The small size of the venue would have likely meant
that movement in and around it would have been awkward, particularly for the numerous
audience members that could have been accommodated in it. Further, the model has
8 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

Figure 1 and Figure 2. An external and internal view of the Rose Theatre 3D VR reconstruction.

illustrated the darkness of the venue, even in summer, although the actors’ eyes would
have been shielded from the sun, given the location of the stage.

Theatre and visualising spectacle

Rather than investigating the nature of the venue further, this essay addresses the
staging of one of the many devices that elicited spectacle in early modern theatre.
By spectacle, we mean a performance technique that elicited wonder, excitement,
and/or awe. Of course spectacle has always been a part of theatre, from ancient
Greek theatre on. The nature of spectacle changes, however, to suit the times. Spect-
acle in this context is not the pictorial splendour that graced indoor stages of the eight-
eenth- and nineteenth-century European stages, nor the more politicised spectacle that
Guy Debord popularised towards the end of the twentieth century (1995). As a major
form of entertainment and as a forum for the communication of ideas, theatre at this
stage of the early modern era was competitive. Audiences, who came from many quar-
ters of society, wanted to see a range of plays. Thus theatre owners would engage in
various activities to encourage patronage: remounting the most popular plays, and, in
the case of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, paying other writers to write new (and ‘improved’)
scenes, following Marlowe’s untimely death in a pub brawl at the age of 29. Such revi-
sions were expected to entice those who thought they knew the narrative to return to
see it once more in its new form. Dr Faustus’s frequent staging at the Rose contrived to
entertain, scare, and unsettle audiences, all at the same time, but its excitement also
provoked serious thought about the nature of the world. Spectacle was one means
of encouraging audiences to return: theatre’s contribution to spectacle was well
known; Tom Bishop even noted that spectacle was simply ‘a regular part of English
drama around 1600’ (1999, 229). Yet just how this spectacle was achieved is not
always clear, given theatre history’s favouring of narrative interpretation rather than
performance practices.
The success of the Rose was likely founded in its continuing to produce plays that audi-
ences wanted to see. Helen Cooper argues that the absence of spectacle would not have
been well received in theatre at the time:
Early in the 1590s, the Queen’s Men required a bearsuit. They were about to stage a drama-
tized version of Valentine and Orson, a romance about an empress falsely accused of adultery
who gives birth to twins in a forest, only to have one of them snatched away by a bear. The
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 9

text does not survive, but it would have been a big disappointment to the spectators if the
bear had not put in an appearance: they knew the story already, and would have been
waiting for it. […] The omission of the bear on stage would have been sorely felt. (2004, 1)

There were, then, expectations that particular (promised) special effects would have been
realised in performance. In fact spectacle designed to appeal to audiences was not necess-
arily just woven into a play’s narrative: Anthony Turner notes that ‘[o]ccasionally a magi-
cian would be introduced into a play specifically to provide an excuse for spectacle’
(2007, 348).

Recreating the dragon

We examine one form of engendering spectacle on stage: we recount the process of creat-
ing supernatural creatures such as, in this case, a 3D dragon, in the Rose Theatre. Dragons
(and comparable otherworldly creatures) were popular in the plays of the day: Alan Dessen
and Leslie Thomson’s A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 lists the
plays that include beings such as angels, apparitions, devils, dragons, enchanters,
fairies, fiends, furies, ghosts, spirits, and witches. They explain just ‘how little evidence
has actually survived about the staging of plays in this period’ (1999, viii), a situation
that our work attempts to explore. Our analysis is grounded in the plays that were
known to have been performed at the Rose Theatre, a venue of considerable complexity
given the large-scale plays that were performed on its stage of unusual shape and small
size. We concentrate on the final iteration of the theatre, the version that existed after
the 1594 renovations, since this covers the stage at its most versatile, particularly once
Henslowe installed a hoist to raise a throne in 1595 (Rutter 1999, 91). It is also the
longest part of the Rose’s history where the performance record can be corroborated
by Henslowe’s diary.
The dragon, a creature of both dread and fascination, is intelligent but governed by
instincts, powerful (even able to fly) but able to be defeated. It continues to have a promi-
nent place in iconography (for instance, St George) and religious imagery. Of the seven
plays that Dessen and Thomson (1999) find to contain dragons specifically in the early
modern era, two were known to have been performed at the Rose: Marlowe’s Dr
Faustus and Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,3 both popular crowd-pleasers.
Both have complex plots that rely only marginally on dragons (which is the norm for plays
that use such creatures), but the dragons nevertheless provide a supernatural context that
was fashionable in theatre of the day. Friar Bacon combines magic that is thwarted with
effects that are realised on stage, but the spectacle of the dragon does appear on
stage, with the dragon required to climb into a tree that is also located on stage. Not all
the promised magic is effected in this play, which is itself important: early on, Friar
Bacon promises to build a brass wall around England with the help of the (talking)
head of brass (or brazen head) which will protect England from its enemies. The head
does speak, but falls and smashes before Friar Bacon can hear its message. This action
and several others in the convoluted plot prompt him to renounce magic. The (re)creation
of convincing effects that dragons and other markers of the supernatural would have
offered was essential to satisfy the audience’s expectations of spectacle at the theatre
and to reflect the massive shifts in the formation of world thought in Europe, ideas that
were being played out in theatre at the time.
10 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

The dragon presents several significant challenges: the first is technological whereas
the second is philosophical. Understanding the theatrical mechanisms of the day assists
in not only better appreciating the plays’ narratives, it also enhances our awareness of
the important larger, philosophical mood in which the theatre participated. Kristen
Poole argues that the interest in theatrical spectacle contributed to a wonder that was
part of the zeitgeist at the turn of the seventeenth century which included a ‘changing
cosmic landscape [… that] would profoundly transform not only terrestrial and planetary
order, but eschatological geography as well’ (2011, 4). Jonathan Sawday, meanwhile,
suggests that this division between earth and the heavens is associated with a conflict
between utopian and dystopian forces:
[i]n the European Renaissance, the clash of these two positions, one of which was character-
ized by optimism, the other by pessimism, was rooted in both classical myth and Christian
theology. And this clash, in turn, was to produce the idea of mechanical culture or the
‘machine world’. (2007, 3)

The traditional order manifests in a magic that itself becomes fragmented and in tran-
sition. Kara Reilly connects this to the schism within the Catholic Church: she clarifies the
place of spectacle in the form of the automaton, arguing that ‘[s]tatues that were smashed
in the church by Iconoclasts are re-membered (literally put back together) in the secular
theatre […] in the form of hydraulic moving statues’ (2011, 19). This, she maintains,
signals ‘ongoing cultural anxieties about the persuasive power of images’ (47). Whatever
the anxieties about these images, theatre was a key location for exploring their figuration,
and many such aspects are played out in plays that deal with the supernatural, and
dragons and dragon-like creatures.
These ideas are recognised to be central to a play like Dr Faustus which marks a signifi-
cant interest in other worlds, and spectacle was one of the ways in which such other
worlds were performed (attracting a new and bigger audience along the way). Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay also explores these ideas, although since it is set over two
hundred years earlier, with actual English historical figures (including King Henry III and
the Prince of Wales, Edward [later Edward I], and Eleanor of Castile), it forestalls its use
of magic and the place it might have in a changing world. Its contribution to the shifting
philosophical debates is, then, mitigated somewhat, whereas Dr Faustus is able to present
a more radical option. Andrew Sofer argues that the philosophical changes that Marlowe’s
play represented – the shift to the world order and to humans’ place in it – are achieved by
means of its magic and the uncertainty that it offers: ‘Faustus unleashes the energies of
conjuring precisely by blurring the boundary between representing magic and performing
it’ (2009, 13) in order to ‘keep […] its audience off balance’ (14). Yet this ambiguity required
that the spectacle work. Sofer continues,
[t]o hold the position that Faustus’s magic spells do not really work […] is to slight the play’s
certified power to terrify Elizabethan audiences even as it entertained them. […] Without ques-
tion, Faustus’s diabolism disturbed its Elizabethan spectators, who could never be
sure whether they were watching black magic or a simulacrum of it. (2009, 21; original
emphasis)

This potent symbol on the early modern stage thus performed an important theatrical and
philosophical role.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 11

Unfortunately, it is more difficult to ascertain how that role is enacted, that is, the
dragon’s actual position on stage. As Dessen and Thomson (1999) note, detailed stage
directions are absent: neither script provides much information about the dragon’s
appearance or location. The stage directions for Friar Bungay indicate only this: ‘Here
BUNGAY conjures, and the tree appears with a dragon shooting fire’ (Greene and Middle-
ton 1964, sd Sc 9, l. 84). The dragon appears to come from the trap door. Henslowe’s inven-
tory included a dragon, apparently for use in ‘Dr Fostes’ (Dr Faustus) (Rutter 1999, 137),
with no details about its size, shape, the materials with which it was made, and the way
(s) in which it might have been deployed.
Greene’s text suggests that the dragon rests in the tree and, aside from its activity
‘shooting fire’, may not have needed to perform any more; but to address the movement
of dragons in other plays of the time (as well as the performance of other supernatural
creatures), we experimented with the ‘flight’ of such a creature on this stage. The tech-
nology required to create a flying dragon is not mere speculation: Kara Reilly notes that
John Dee’s production of Aristophanes’ Pax at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1547
included the actor playing Trygaeus being transported in a flying beetle up to the
roof of the college (2011, 26). Large spectacular creatures were not unheard of at this
point in history. Coronation ceremonies in both 1487 (the coronation of Elizabeth of
York, wife of Henry VII) and 1533 (the coronation of Anne Boleyn) record the presence
of dragons or comparable monsters, even large-scale ones that concealed a human
operator who would activate sprays of sparks (Butterworth 1998, 82), so we decided
to be bold in thinking about the shape of a staged dragon; as well, a tiny dragon
could elicit laughter rather than a sense of amusement and a modicum of fear. We
opted for a dragon that was not simply operated by a human in a costume: a dragon
that is clearly not housing a human inside to operate it will accrue a greater sense of
spectacularity than a creature that is obviously being manipulated directly by a
human. We aimed to make the dragon fly from one fixed location (the tiring house,
the backstage area where actors ‘attired’) to another (the gallery above the main
entrance to the theatre), over the heads of the standing audience, using the technol-
ogies available at the time. Factors that needed to be considered for a venue like the
Rose are the dragon’s size, its line of travel, and its special features of emitting smoke
and fire (see Figure 3).
We addressed both the dragon’s construction and its management in considering its
size and shape: the dragon needed to be able to be manipulated by stage hands or
actors who were at that moment not required on stage. Based on images that Philip But-
terworth included in Theatre of Fire (1998), which outlines the history of numerous spec-
tacular devices, we devised a dragon made on a lightweight wooden framework which
could have been covered with painted papier mâché or canvas. Butterworth reproduces
images of dragon-like creatures from John Bate’s The Mysteries of Nature and Art (1635)
(see Figure 4) and John Babington’s Pyrotechnia, Or a Discourse of Artificial Fireworks for
Pleasure (also 1635) which detail the size and shape of dragons in books published just
a few decades later (Butterworth 1998, 88, 89), as well as potential ‘propulsion’ techniques
and details of spectacle such as fireworks. These images have informed the appearance of
Ortelia’s dragon: we assume that the dragon would have been relatively light, since
Babington’s dragons indicate a lightweight frame with a thin outer covering. This stage
prop would have been easy to transport and manipulate, but it may not have been
12 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

Figure 3. The dragon in flight, emitting fireworks and smoke to provide a fire effect.

particularly sturdy. Like costumes, it would have required repair or replacement from time
to time. The colour we have chosen is speculation, of course. Also like costumes, the actual
detail of fabric choice has been less important to us when we might discern the overall
spectacular effect. Bate appears to have created gunpowder-propelled dragons but we
have opted for a simpler, hand-winched version: the dragon hooks onto a rope that
then pulls it into place above the heads of the audience.
Once we decided to experiment with a flying dragon, we established that the most
impressive – but realisable – spectacle would be for the dragon to fly over the stage

Figure 4. A model for a dragon from John Bate’s The Mysteries of Nature and Art (1635). Courtesy of
Public Domain Review.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 13

and the heads of the groundlings who stood in the yard in front of the stage (see Figures 5
and 6). If this were possible, then the ‘mere’ appearance of a dragon on stage would be
simple. The line of travel for the dragon is based on, in the first instance, the archaeological
records that provide an accurate plan of the placement of the frame structure and walls of
the theatre, and thus provide exactly how long the rope needs to be (17.2 m). The known
limits of the building interior and stage allow the calculation of the line placement for the
dragon tow line, as well as its possible direction. This enables the angle of the dragon’s
travel to be established so that the lightweight dragon can be pulled the requisite dis-
tance. Having it fixed on a line would still ensure the spectacle, while keeping it manage-
able for an unknown number of assistants who may have been backstage. We have
experimented with the angle of the dragon’s travel; in fact a steeper angle is possible
that takes him to the top of the theatre (either the second gallery level (10 m), or even
the third level (12.5 m). Our decisions about the rope and winch option are based on
Tudor maritime inventories such as The Anthony Roll (2000) and material recovered
from the wreck of Henry VIII’s ship, the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545. Theatre not only
used the technology of ships, it also, in later years, employed sailors as stage hands
(Fazio 2000, 23), so there is a complementarity in the use of rope techniques. Evidence
from maritime history suggests that hemp rope was in wide use in shipping at the time
and therefore likely available for general use; further, it would have amply withstood
the stresses of the weight required by hauling the lightweight dragon in a theatre. The
rigging blocks commonly used in shipping at the time would have been readily accessible
and in common use. No doubt the ropes used in theatre and in shipping were used in
many other industries as well, but there was a connection between shipping techniques
and the theatre through, among other things, sailors’ employment on land.
We have located the anchor points of the rope that suspends the dragon inside the
backstage area at one end, and, at the other, on the first level tier opposite the stage as
shown in Figures 7 and 8. The dragon is hooked onto the anchored rope. The rope that
guides its travel could be secured at the gallery level before the performance begins,
with an anchor point positioned over the tiring house door on the inside, ready to be
moved to a hook and screw-eye at the back of the tiring house on the dragon’s cue. An
operator in the rear stage area could hang the dragon on the rope and light the fuses
of the attached squibs (the fireworks which are described below), without too much inter-
ference to or from other traffic in the tiring house. An operator on the opposite side of the

Figure 5 and Figure 6. The dragon in flight over the stage and then over the pit.
14 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

Figure 7 and Figure 8. The reconstruction of the dragon mechanics.

theatre space in the second tier gallery could simply pull the dragon across the theatre,
over the heads of the standing audience members. We imagine the dragon remaining
there until the play was finished, more or less out of sight of the main action, or in a pos-
ition where patrons could suspend their disbelief about its presence. Conversely, our pre-
liminary experiments show that a ‘closed’ rotating pulley system (like that for a
conventional clothes-line pulley) could have been operated by a single user in the back-
stage area, but that requires a more permanent rope system to be constructed in the
theatre. The mechanism that we have adopted is even simpler than the rope pulley
system that would have been used to rig sails on ships, but that is yet another option,
especially if the rope was pulled from backstage.

Contextualising the dragon within the visualisation

There were other practicalities that affected our thinking in developing the dragon for per-
formance at the Rose. The backstage area is small (approximately 17 m2), especially given
how many large-scale properties, actors, and costume changes were generally required for
theatre at this time (Figure 9). No other on-site storage appears to be apparent in the
venue or even nearby. We were therefore anxious to ensure that the dragon did not
take up too much space, amid chariots and other larger scale stage properties. We envi-
sage that when it was not needed, the dragon would hook on and off the rope, just as
it might be hooked on and off the tiring house ceiling or high up on its walls.
Unlike Marlowe’s enigmatic script (at least on the matter of the dragon), Greene’s script
stipulates that the dragon appears from the trap door in roughly the middle of the stage:
this could occur by lifting a (smaller) dragon from the trap door, using a hoist. A ‘trap’
dragon would need to have detachable wings for it to fit through the trap door, a
feature that could reduce the spectacle that the dragon is designed to introduce. In creat-
ing the dragon in accordance with archival evidence, we found it all but impossible for a
dragon that was a separate, inanimate property to emerge from the trap, unless it was
much smaller and therefore significantly less impressive as a spectacular object. There
is, of course, no certainty that it did emerge from the trap just because Greene’s script
suggested that it did.
To reinforce the otherworldly and metaphoric impact of a dragon, there would likely have
needed to be additional spectacles of fire, smoke, and noise. Theatre at this time used
thunder and lightning effects to indicate intimations of the supernatural (as well as storms
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 15

Figure 9. Plan of the backstage of the Rose.

themselves). Thunder was likely created by rolling a cannon ball across the wooden floor in
the tiring house, while lightning was suggested by squibs, the firecrackers that emitted both
sparks and an additional report. Butterworth describes how a squib ‘squirmed erratically to
produce a fizzing shower of sparks that sometimes ended in a small report. The unpredictable
behaviour of the firework induced a gleeful panic among spectators when thrown among
them’ (1998, 1). Made from a mixture of gunpowder, corn powder, and other (often smelly
but readily available) ingredients, squibs and larger fire effects could have created spectacle
where necessary, suggesting or intensifying magic and the supernatural, and provided a dis-
traction for the audience while actors or props were manoeuvred relatively unobserved:
these contributions to the theatricality cannot be underestimated. Butterworth notes, speak-
ing of a slightly earlier tradition of performance,
[p]ayments for rosin also occur in many of the Drapers’ accounts and it seems likely, that the
two demons of the Drapers’ Doomsday pageant and/or the person who kept the fire threw
quantities of powdered rosin on to the fire, enabling more spectacular ‘entrances’ and
‘exits’ to be made. (1998, 38)

Jonathan Gil Harris notes the theatrical power of these devices: ‘[l]ow-tech these fireworks
may have been, but they packed an explosive theatrical punch’ (2007, 465). It is likely that
the squibs produced more smoke than we have reproduced in the heritage visualisation so
far, although the smoke effects appear slightly more prominently in the version of the
model that incorporates more internal lighting: the shadows capture the smoke on
screen (see Figures 10–13).
The dragon could easily have several squibs positioned in its mouth and belly, with
fuses (lit as it left the tiring house) long enough to explode once the dragon passed
over the heads of the audience.
This dragon’s path, which passed over the heads of the audience, bringing the signifiers
of the supernatural close to them to intensify its meaning, satisfies the spectacularity
required by any play that included such a creature. The technology of the day
16 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

Figures 10–13. These images depict the effects of the firecrackers to evoke flame. The sounds from the
firecrackers reverberate through the VR model. The smoke is harder to depict in two-dimensional
images.

accommodated such devices, against a knowledge context that was shifting from a world
view which held a physical place for dragons to one where human agency and free will
were claiming more authority. Nevertheless, such creatures continued to have a
potency that was likely played out even more intensely in a small venue.

Conclusion
While it is interesting to speculate on and recreate the dragon’s appearance and use in
such a venue, this form of research provides another outcome in illustrating how visual-
isation can intervene in investigating theatre history and, here, theatre technology – in
addition to acting styles, physical gestures, blocking, and spatial and scenic arrangements.
Such explorations are important in learning more about the early modern theatre since the
rebuilding of theatres such as the Rose in bricks-and-mortar form is unlikely. The actual
reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London does provide some semblance
of the in-the-round experience that is comparable to the Rose, but the two theatres have
quite different dimensions, as well as differently shaped and angled stages. Further, the
suggestion of experimenting with flying dragons, complete with sparks, in the current
version of Shakespeare’s Globe would likely not be greeted kindly by the theatre’s
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 17

management. A greater degree of experimentation can take place with a VR visualisation:

there is no occupational health and safety concern, and the model is always available.
While additional archival evidence may be uncovered, it makes more sense to use the
tools that are at our disposal.
The exploration of the dragon is one of many experiments we have made with stage
properties that require more care to stage than costumes or hand-held props: these
include the ‘hellmouth’ that devours Faustus at the end of the play, other fire tricks,
appearing and disappearing trees that need to be able to be climbed, and different
types of devices for hoisting objects and actors, all of which are relevant to plays per-
formed at the Rose Theatre. Experiments with the trap door are yet another vital investi-
gation into the detailed workings of this theatre, but which are, for various reasons, unable
to be conducted at equivalent bricks-and-mortar theatres: Shakespeare’s Globe is a poor
copy of its original, given the occupational health and safety demands of the contempor-
ary era, among other factors. Certainly the ‘original practices’ ethos of Shakespeare’s Globe
in its early years was useful in understanding acting, audience interaction, performance
styles, and costume for performance there, but it is important to recognise that this
theatre is not an entirely accurate version of the one Shakespeare worked in, nor is it in
the same site. Nevertheless, the effect of our work is to achieve some understanding of
original practices in staging performance devices, albeit in a virtual venue. The most sig-
nificant feature of a theatre is that it tends to be occupied, making experimentation diffi-
cult at the best of time, unless one has rare unfettered (and ‘uncosted’) access to a venue.
There are simply no other adequate versions of the Rose to experiment with: visualisation
provides almost all the scope for our investigations.
Heritage visualisations present the opportunity for exploring and reconstituting other
aspects of early modern performance. Henslowe catalogued various other stage proper-
ties that delivered a spectacular experience: these would also be worth creating in
digital form. Furthermore, extensive theatre machinery was known to have been in
place in Italy, offering other options for digital reconstruction: Serlio, the Italian architect,
documented flying machines for theatre in the early sixteenth century so it is reasonable
to assume that at the end of this century, his machines – or versions thereof – had
appeared in England (Hewitt 1958). These too would be rewarding to build virtually.
Such developments in visualisation can provide a fuller understanding of the performance
context for theatre at the time, preventing the need for either overlooking the effects of
performance or making assumptions that are not based in spatial evidence. As Rosen cau-
tions, ‘equally disastrous’ are ‘[a]n uncritical effort to revive outmoded practices at all costs
or a ruthless attempt to modernize that shows little respect for the historical aura’ of, for
the purposes of this paper, theatre (2012, 418). This paper has illustrated a balance of the
two, seeking to examine the techniques of the past, using contemporary technologies
such that ‘[t]he most satisfactory and enjoyable approach will always be a juggling act
that keeps the nostalgia of the past and the exigencies of the present in balance’ (420).
The results of such explorations can, by extrapolation, also be applied to other theatres
of the day. This kind of research work has the potential to fill out the detailed (but inevi-
tably patchy) historical record that Dessen and Thomson (1999) have mapped. It provides
a contextualised understanding of the potential for visualisation in the development of
theatre history. Despite the ephemeral nature of performance itself, theatre is a material
practice that leaves physical evidence (archaeology, Henslowe’s diaries, clues within the
18 J. TOMPKINS AND L. KASTANIS

surviving texts). Beyond simply recreating buildings, we are, with virtual technologies, able
to speculate (by drawing on archival sources) about practices within the buildings, prac-
tices which otherwise are not able to be captured. Heritage visualisations also facilitate
a better means of analysing performance, in a format that simply reading playscripts
cannot: activating a text, establishing the parameters for performative devices, and then
‘testing’, however virtually, in a visualisation will always yield more palpable and affective
results than reading about performance as an abstraction. Theatre scholarship has tended
to focus on textual analysis rather than on performance practices in historical periods,
partly because of the availability of evidence; developments such as those that the
digital humanities techniques described in this paper offer the potential to shift the
focus to open up much more contextualised speculation– grounded in archival evidence
– about the nature of performance in this key moment of theatre history. In other words,
this approach provides a performance studies lens to theatre history, something that has
not been possible to date.

Notes
1. To further situate our work, we draw attention to Kirk Woolford’s motion capture practice
(2014); our work also draws heavily on Matthew Delbridge’s motion capture analysis (2015).
The project has some similarities to Rachel Hann’s utopian theatres (visualising unrealised
twentieth-century theatres) (2010) but Ortelia’s explorations are closer akin to David Saltz’s
(2005) now-defunct Virtual Vaudeville.
2. The company comprises the authors and Darren Pack. While the company’s interest in con-
temporary cultural heritage venues bears a cost, our historical explorations are planned for
dissemination by open access. Ortelia’s work adheres to the principles of London Charter
which sets out rules for visualisation.
3. Dating Dr Faustus is difficult. It was known to have been performed from about 1592 and was
published in 1604 in the form known as the A-text. The B-text was performed after Marlowe’s
death in 1593 and published in 1610. Friar Bungay tends to be dated as 1589–1590.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Sarah Thomasson for her helpful comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Joanne Tompkins is Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The
University of Queensland. She is the (co-)author of Post Colonial Drama (with Helen Gilbert, 1996), of
Women’s Intercultural Performance (with Julie Holledge, 2000), and A Global Doll’s House: Ibsen and
Distant Visions (with Julie Holledge, Jonathan Bollen, and Frode Helland, 2016); and author of Unset-
tling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre (2006), and Theatre’s Heterotopias: Per-
formance and the Cultural Politics of Space (2014). She is Editor of Theatre Journal. In addition to
conventional research, she has helped develop an innovative research tool to enable the analysis
of theatre space through computer-based visualisation. This interdisciplinary project, Ortelia, ana-
lyses and archives art gallery, museum, and theatre spaces, and exhibitions.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 19

Lazaros Kastanis is a director of Ortelia Interactive Spaces. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters
of Science Degrees. He specialises in the field of 3D information environments and interactive appli-
cations with particular relevance to the cultural heritage sector. In addition to his role with Ortelia
Interactive Spaces he has a successful research and teaching career in the field of simulation and
real-time 3D interactive applications using game engine technology. He is currently undertaking a
Ph.D. (by monograph) at Queensland University of Technology within the School of Electrical Engin-
eering and Computer Science under the discipline of Human Computer Interaction. His research
focuses on visualising uncertainty in digital archaeological reconstructions and how visualisation
techniques can be used to validate the digital reconstruction process.

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