Festival Theatre: Greek, Roman, and Medieval Theatre Experiences.

Since the very earliest times, some from of theatrical activity has existed, although surviving records permit us to trace it back with any certainty for only about 25 hundred years.

In the theatre, awareness of the past is important for other reasons as well.

In a book of this length, it is impossible to treat every from the theatre has taken in the past and present.

During the first two thousand years of its existence, Western theatre was markedly different from the professional and commercial theatre that we know today and that has flourished only during the past 4 hundred years.

This type of theatre flourished in ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe, although in each the difference were as important as the similarities.

Theatre in the Western world can be traced back the ancient Greece, and especially to Athens, usually considered the cradle of Western civilization.

The belief in the ability of human beings to make significant decisions contrasted sharply with the beliefs of earlier societies that people are pawns of supernatural forces or all-powerful tyrants.

Dionysus, the god in whose honor plays were presented, was the god of wine (one of the principal products of Greece) and fertility.

By the 15th century B.C Athens held 4 festivals in honor of Dionysus each year, at 3 of which theatrical performances were offered.

Our 1st record of a theatrical event in Athens is the establishment in 534 B.C of a contest for the best tragedy, a form that also originated in Athens.

From Thespis’ name we derive the term thespian, still used reference to actors.

A satyr play was short, comic or satiric in tone, poked fun at some Greek myth using a chorus of satyr, and was presented following the tragedies.

Of the surviving tragedies, Oedipus the King by Sophocles is often considered the finest.

Plays were performed in the Theatre of Dionysus, on the slope of the hill just beneath the Athenian Acropolis (a fortified area including the Parthenon, the city treasury, and other buildings considered essential to the city’s survival).

Originally, the slope (without any seating) served as the theatron (“seeing place”, the origin of our word theatre).

A flat terrance below the slope served as the orchestra (dancing place), in the middle of which was placed as altar (thymele) dedicated to Dionysus.

This arrangement was gradually converted into a permanent structure.

On the side of the orchestra opposite the audience was the skene (“hurt” or “tent”, the origin of our word scene).

Once its possibilities as a background for the action were recognized, the skene was elaborated into a structure 25 to a hundred feet long and probably 2 stories high.

The space (called paradoi) at either side between the skene and the auditorium were used as entrances and exits for performers and perhaps by spectators before and after performances.

The scene house (as, later, Shapkespeare’s theatre) probably served as a formalized architectural background for all players, even those set in woods, on seashores, or outside caves.

A wheeled platform, the eccyclema.A cranelike device, the machina. (The overuse

of gods to resolve difficult dramatic situations led to any contrived ending being labeled a deus ex machina -god from the machine - ending)

Form our standpoint, one of the most remarkable things about the Theatre of Dionysus is its size.

One May Divide performers in the Greek theatre into four categories: actors, chorus, supernumeraries, and musicians. All were male.

By the time Oedipus the King was produced, around 430 B.C, the rules of the contests restricted the number of speaking actors to there for each author.

Same actor might have to play several roles and that the same three actors appeared in all three of the tragedies presented by a competing dramatist.

Supernumeraries(extras) could be used, but they were not permitted to speak lines.

The tragic chorus was composed of fifteen men

This official also paired the dramatist with a choregus, a wealthy citizen who bore the expense of training and costuming that dramatist’s choruses and of the musicians who accompanied the choruses during their training and during performances

A great deal of emphasis was placed on singing and dancing

The chorus served several functions in Greek drama. First, it was treated as a group character who expressed opinions, gave advice, and occasionally threatened to interfere in the action. Second, it often seemed to express the author’s point of view and to establish a standard against which the actions of the characters could be judged. Third, it frequently served as the ideal spectator, reacting to events and characters as the author would like the audience to react. Fourth, it helped to establish mood and heighten dramatic effects.

The principal musical accompaniment in Greek tragedy was provided by a flute player.

The flute player wore sandals, one with clapper on its sole for beating time. Both percussionist and flutist, he also seems to have composed the music he played.

All of the performers, except the musician, wore masks of lightweight wood, cork, or linen.

A variety of clothing was used for stage purposesThese conventions suggest that performance in

the Greek theatre was highly formlized.

The City Dionysia included five days of perfromances

The performances were open to everyone, but the audience was composed primarily of men and boys.

The atmosphere probably resembled a mixture of religious festival and athletic event.

Performances seem to have begun at dawn.The division of the play into a prologue and five

episodes separated by choral passages is typical of Greek tragedy.

The first episode begins with Oedipus’ proclamation demanding that anyone with knowledge of the crime come forward and placing a cures on the murderer.

It is interesting to note that while the first four episodes move forward in the present, they go successively further back in time.

The second episode builds logically upon the first.

Though Jocasta has called oracles into question, she obviously does not disbelieve in the gods.

The scene not only reveals the truth to Jocasta, but also it diverts attention from the murder of Laius to the birth of Oedipus.

A choral song is followed by the entry of the Herdsman.

The final episode is divided into two parts. A Messenger enters and describes what has happened offstage. The ”messenger scene” is a standard part of Geek drama, because Greek sensibilities dictated that scenes of extreme violence take place offstage.

Oedipus the King is structurally unusual, for the resolution scene is the longest in the play.

Oedipus’ act of blinding himself grows believably out of his character, for his very uprightness and deep sense of moral outrage cause him to punish himself by thrusting pins into his eyes.

In drawing his characters, Sophocles pays little attention to the physical level.

Sophocles does give brief indications of age for other roles.

On the sociological level of characterization, Sophocles again indicated little

Sophocles is principally concerned with psychological and ethical characteristics.

Creon is given even fewer characteristics.Unlike a modern play, then, in which

characterization is usually built from numerous realistic details, here the characterization is drawn with a few bold strokes; the most important traits are psychological and moral.

In addition to the three speaking actors, a great many supernumeraries are required, many of whom no doubt appeared in more than one scene.

We have already looked at its skillful construction and its concern with the moral taboos of incest and patricide.

In addition, it develops themes of universal relevance.

The contrast between human being seeking to control their destiny and external forces shaping destiny is clearly depicted.

It is significant that no attempt is made in the play to explain why destruction comes to Oedipus.

Another motif – blindness versus sight – is emphasized in poetic images and in various comparisons.

In addition to tragedy and satyr plays, Athens developed a distinctive comic drama.

Five comic dramatists competed each year at the Lenaia, buteach presented only one play.

Numerous authors wrote Old Comedy, as the plays written prior to 400B.C are called, but only eleven comedies have survived and all of these are by Aristophances(448-380B.C). His play mingle slapstick, fantasy, lyrical poetry, personal abuse, literary and musical parody, and serious commentary on contemporary affairs

Old Comedy has several typical features: a prologue, during which the happy idea is introduced; a parodos, or entry of the chorus; an agon, or debate over the merits of the happy idea, ending in its adoption; a parabasis, or choral passage addressed to the audience, most frequency filled with advice on civic or other contemporary problems; a series of episodes showing the happy idea in practice; and a komos , or exit to feasting and revelry.

After the fifth century B.C., Greek drama declined in quality, although not in quantity.

A round two hundred years after the first performance of Oedipus the King, Rome became a major power, eventually gaining control of Greece, the entire eastern Mediterranean, and most of western Europe and northern Africa.

As in Greece, theatrical performances were part of religious festival, although in Rome they might be for any of several gods.

The Romans were great assimilators, accepting, borrowing, or changing those things that seemed useful or desirable.

Although the taste for full-length scripted drama sharply declined after the mid-second century B.C., the demand for theatrical entertainment actually increased steadily.

Because playscripts survive and artifacts relating to other kinds of theatrical entertainment often do not, accounts of theatrical activities usually emphasize performances based on full-length written scripts.

The Roman theatre resembled that of Greece in many ways. The Romans were ambivalent about anything derived from Greece, which they considered to be decadent.

As in Greece, the expenses of theatrical production were assumed by the state.

In addition to underwriting production expenses, the Roman state also supplied the theatre in which the plays were presented.

The scale of the Roman theatre was comparable to that of the Greek.

Admission to this theatre was free, seats were not reserved, and audiences were often unruly.

By the time of Plautus and Terence, there seems to have been a number of theatre companies.

The actors wore Greek costumes similar to those of daily life, although there may have been some exaggeration for comic purposes.

Roman comedy does not deal with political or social issues but rather with everyday domestic affairs.

Of all Roman Comedies, Plautus’ The Menaechmi has perhaps been the most popular. It served as the basis for Shakespeare’s Comedy of Error as well as for a number of others, including the American musical The Boys from Syracuse by Richard Rodgers.

The Menaechmi begins with a prologue that carefully lays out the background of the action and goes over important points more than once.

Plautus has little interest in social satire. Instead, he concentrates on the ridiculous situation growing out of mistaken identity.

As in most Roman comedy, the characters in The Menaechmi are types rather than individuals.

A company of six actors could easily perform the ten speaking roles in The Menaechmi.

By the beginning of the Christian era, Rome seemed to have forgotten its earlier emphasis on gravity.

In addition to comedy, the Romans also wrote tragedy.

The Roman preference for variety entertainment and short plays drove regular comedy and tragedy from the stage.

In addition to the mimes, late Roman festivals increasingly emphasized blood sports, which, along with mimes and variety entertainment, remained integral parts of religious festival until around A.D.400.

The Roman Empire rapidly disintegrated after being overrun by invaders in A.D.476. One

It is ironic, therefore, that the revival of the theatre owed most to the church’s discovery(during the last half of the tenth century) that the dramatization of biblical episodes was an effective means of teaching.

Historians usually divide the Middle Ages(or medieval period) into phases: early(approximately A.D. 900 to A.D. 1050), high(approximately A.D. 1050 to A.D. 1300), and late(approximately A.D. 1300 to A.D. 1500).

This type is usually referred to as vernacular drama.The earliest known example of a liturgical play (one

incorporated into the church service, or liturgy) dates from about A.D.970. It dramatized the arrival of three women at the tomb of Christ, the announcement by an angel that Christ has risen, and the subsequent rejoicing.

Around A.D.1200, some religious plays began to be performed outside the church, and by around 1375 a religious drama had developed independent of the liturgy.

This medieval religious theatre in some ways resembled that of Greece and Rome.

The production of the outdoor religious drama in England is usually associated with trade guilds that flourished beginning in the thirteenth century.

The increased prominence of secular groups seems also to have been at least partially responsible also to have been at least partially responsible for the church’s desire to incorporate ordinary people more fully into its activities.

The central feature of the Corpus Christi festival was procession through the town with the consecrated bread and wine.

In the British Isles, about one hundred twenty-five different towns produced plays at some time during the Middle Ages.

A major convention of medieval drama involves the way time is handled. Throughout the Middle Ages, humanity was thought to participate in two kinds of time: eternal and earthly.

The fluidity of time is also reflected in the structure of the cycles.

Staging also involved a number of conventions. There were no permanent theatre, so theatrical spaces were improvised.

Regardless of the type of stage or location, the staging conventions were the same everywhere. There were two parts to the stage space: mansions and platea.

Costumes were used to distinguish among the inhabitants of Earth, Heaven, and Hell.

There were frequently a number of spectacular special effects.

Let us look at the English cycle staged at Wakefield, a town in central England. The surviving manuscript of this cycle contains thirty-two plays, beginning with the Creation and extending through the Last Judgment.

The production of the Wakefield cycle was a community effort involving the town council, the church, and the guilds.

The decision to perform the plays apparently was made several months prior to Corpus Christi.

At Wakefield, processional staging appears to have been used.

In addition to providing the pageant wagon and its equipment, each guild had to supply performers and someone to oversee the production.

Costumes, for the most part, consisted of clothing in common use in medieval England and were usually supplied by the actors or borrowed.

Each guild rehearsed and prepared its play separately from the others

The council specified the places at which the plays would be performed

Before the spectators saw Noah and His Sons they had already viewed two others, The Creation and The Killing of Abel Noah.

The play begins with Noah praying to God and comparing God’s goodness toward all creatures with the ungrateful responses of those he has created, not only human beings but also Lucifer, whose rebelliousness has caused him to be cast out of Heaven.

The solemn tone of this opening expository scene, which takes up approximately one-third of the play, is abruptly broken when Noah returns home to his wife

Noah then turns to carrying out God’s orders and, without any assistance and within a space of twenty-five lines, builds the ship.

The action of the play is almost equally divided among three parts: One third is devoted to the opening expository scene; one third to the two scenes of bickering between Noah and his wife; and one third to the ship-building and onboard scenes.

There are nine roles, of which six are very minor-those of Noah’s sons and their wives.

All of the roles would have been played by men; having Noah’s wife played by a man probably contributed to making the quarreling and fighting more acceptably comic.

The script seems to demand stylized speech. It is written in sixty-two nine-line stanzas, each using the same structure.

Only one mansion is required – the shipBecause the spectators crowded around the

performance space, many spectators saw the actors at close range, and the total configuration of the playing places meant that the performance was viewed from a variety of angles.

In addition to religious plays, several other dramatic types were popular during the Middle Ages, among them moralities, farces, and interludes.

During the sixteenth century, the morality play was gradually secularized as its original moral concerns were replaced by new ones such as the ideal training of rulers and the content of a proper education.

A comic secular drama, farce , began to emerge around the thirteenth century, but because the form was not officially encouraged, it remained a minor though highly entertaining type, emphasizing the ridiculous and comically depraved aspects of human behavior.

The interlude was a nonreligious serious or comic play so called because it was performed between the parts of a celebration

There were many differences. In Greek theatre, the chorus played a large role, as did dance. In Roman theatre, the musical element was more equally distributed throughout the play and was associated with actors more than with the chorus. In medieval theatre, music was plentiful but followed no fixed plan. The theatre structures also differed.

The Greeks seem to have placed great emphasis on moral values and significant issues, whereas the Romans were more concerned with popular entertainment, and medieval theatre was tied to Christian teaching.