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Theater
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Transcript of Theater
Theater
The First Musical Instruments
Greek Myths
Pan and Siring
The Last Instruments
Anciant Theater in Greece
The Greek theatre (AE theater) or Greek
drama is a theatrical tradition that flourished
in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC. Athens, the political and military
power in Greece during this period, was the center of ancient
Greek theatre.
Attending the theater in ancient Greece was a
great festive occasion. The statue of Dionysus, god of wine, was carried
through the streets, leading a procession
to the outdoor hillside theater where the plays were to be
performed.
Several plays, all religious and nationalistic in
character, were shown in one day. The
spectators thrilled to the dramatic stories of gods and heroes and had the
added excitement of witnessing a contest,
for the best playwright was awarded a prize.
Greek theater had its origins in
song and dance. The song was
the ancient dithyramb, a
choral narrative in honor of
Dionysus, sung to the
accompaniment of the lyre. The
dances depicted the harvest work
and festivals honoring dead
heroes.
According to legend, Greek tragedy as we
know it was created in Athens, ca. 530 BCE by a man known as
Thespis. Thespis' true contribution to drama is unclear at best, but he is forever immortalized in a common term for performer, thespian.
More is known about Phrynichus. He won his
first competition between 511 BC and 508 BC. He produced tragedies on
themes and subjects later exploited in the golden age
such as the Danaids, Phoenician Women and Alcestis. He was the first poet we know of to use a historical subject. He is
also thought to be the first to use female characters
(though not female performers).
It is in ancient Greece that the origin of
western theatre is to be found. It
developed from a state festival in
Athens, honoring the god Dionysus. The Athenian city-state
exported the festival to its numerous allies in order to promote a
common identity.
The word τραγοιδία, from which the English word tragedy is derived, is "goat-men sacrifice song".
Until the Hellenistic period, all tragedies were unique pieces written in honor of Dionysus, so
that today we only have the pieces that were still remembered well enough to have been repeated when repetition of old tragedies became fashion. It was considered a decline of the original, one-
time-played tragedy.
Tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (~486
BC), and satyr plays were some of the theatrical forms to emerge in the world.
Greek theatre and plays have had a lasting impact on Western drama and culture.
Tragedy and comedy were viewed as
completely separate genres, and no plays ever merged aspects of
the two. Satyr plays dealt with
the mythological subject matter of the tragedies, but
in a purely comedic manner.
The masks were used to show the emotions of the characters in a play, and also to allow actors to switch between roles and play
characters of a different gender.
Melpomene is the muse of tragedy and
is often depicted
holding the tragic mask. . Thalia is the
muse of comedy and is similarly associated
with the mask of comedy.
The Greek theaters were magnificent structures. Fifteen or twenty thousand
spectators sat in bleacherlike tiers
built on a hillside in an arc around the acting and dancing space, called the
orchestra.
These theaters had remarkable acoustics. In the theater at Epidaurus, which still stands, a match struck in the orchestra can be heard in
the farthest seat.
In the beginning no scenery was used. As
the theater developed, a skene structure of columns with three entrance ways was added behind the
orchestra space. (A number of our theater words began with the
Greeks. Skene has become the English
word scene. Theater is from a Greek word
meaning “a place for seeing.”)
Modern Theater in Greece
The theatre was originally founded in 1880 with a grant from George I and Efstratios Rallis to give
theatre a permanent home in Athens. The
foundations for this new project were laid on Agiou Konstantinou
Street and the building itself was designed by the famous Austrian
architect noted for many other public buildings in Athens at the time, Ernst
Ziller.
The foundations for this new project were laid on Agiou Konstantinou Street and the building itself was designed by the famous
Austrian architect noted for many other
public buildings in
Athens at the time, Ernst
Ziller.
Despite problems getting the building done in time, it was
eventually completed in the late 1890s and in
1900 Angelos Vlachos is
appointed as the Director.
The National Theater began to expand
it's operations and in 1901 a Drama School opens, in
the same year The Royal Theatre
opens its doors to the public with a monologue from
Dimitris Verardakis.
Following the first performance the theatre begins to
expand in popularity among Greece's upper
and upper middle classes and stages more productions.
One of the most famous of the period
was Aeschylus. Oresteia is staged in a prose translation by Yorgos Sotiriadis.
The production sparks off a long linguistic conflict, as students from the School of Philosophy, incited
by their classicist professor, Yorgos Mistriotis, march down
Agiou Konstantinou in an attempt to halt the performance. The
episodes that follow, known as the Oresteiaka, result in one death and
ten injuries.
The Royal Theatre announces that it is stopping its performances indefinitely. The theatre remained closed,
occasionally playing host to foreign theatre companies, until 1932. It remained closed until
The National Theatre was founded, under an act of parliament signed by the
education minister, Yorgos Papandreou, on 30 May.
remained closed, occasionally playing host to foreign theatre
companies, until 1932. It remained closed until The
National Theatre was founded, under an act of parliament
signed by the education minister, Yorgos Papandreou, on 30 May.
Russian Theater
Russia came late to theater. By the time
of the first professional theater
performances in Russia in the mid-17th century, the
Spanish, English and French theaters had already experienced their Golden Ages
and produced playwrights such as
Shakespeare, Calderone and
Moliere.
The earliest entertainers were the skomoroki,
itinerant court -attached jesters-
musicians- singers-story-tellers, who
often performed with bears and puppets, perhaps as early as the tenth Century. The theater's roots were folkloric rather
than liturgical.
The church was by turns friendly and hostile to the theater. They abhorred
the skomoroki but encouraged church-
sponsored theater. One of their earliest
predictions in the 1400s was the church produced "Fiery Furnace" in Kiev
where townspeople masquerading as
Chaldens burned three choirboys impersonating Israelite youth in a pulpit-
cauldron.
The skomoroki were officially attached to
the court in 1572, but their performances were forbidden by
order of Tzar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1648. The people thought
they possessed magical power and Alexei's advisors viewed them as a
threat to the court.
They fled to the north, continued to perform in the countryside and centuries later
their skills reappeared in
public performance in the circus, the
fairground balagan and variety arts
estrada theater.
The Kiev Academy helped establish a
formal dramatic repertory in late
17th and early 18th Century. Their plays
on biblical and historic themes, expressed pro-
tzarist sympathies and incorporated realistic elements,
songs and dances.
Some private theaters were built
in Kiev, in Saikonospanssky
cloister, in Novgorod
seminaries and at the bishop's house in Rostov. Novices
were actors and performed in plays
such "Sinner," "Christ Christmas and Resurrection,"
"Saintly Martyr Evodia," "The Second Lord's
Advent."
In 1672, Tzar Alexei Mikhailovich, who had banned the skomoroki in 1648, changed his attitude toward the
theater and invited a German Lutheran
pastor, Johann Gottfried, to stage a play in honor of his
son's birth, the future Peter the Great.
Alexei's daughter, Princess Sophia
Alekseevna, was the author
of the first Russian tragedy
"Martyr Ekaterina." After
the death of Alexei in 1674, the theater was
closed.
Peter the Great sponsored the first
secular public theater under the leadership of the German actor -manager Johan
Kunst. Plays were produced in German
and Russian. Attendance was encouraged by
eliminating road taxes on
performance days, offering free
admissions and issuing Royal
decrees.
Peter favored plays dealing with the
victories and deeds of the Russian
army and allegories of his reforms
performed by the students of the Greek-Slavonic Academy which
had been established in
1701.
A theater constructed in Red Square in 1702 called "The Comedy Chramina" ("The Temple of Comedy") was used by Kunst's German
troupe and performed plays by Moliere, Calderone and
other European playwrights. Comic
interludes were popular. No formal theatrical tradition was established and the
theater was closed in 1704.
Empress Elizabeth invited the Yaroslav
actor Fyodor Volkov , his brother Grigory and the dramatist director Alexander
Sumarokov to establish the first
permanent professional theater in
Russia in 1756 on Vaslievsky Island in
St Petersburg.
Plays were written in Russian by
Sumarokov and Lomonosov and
others but they were conceived in a
lusterless neoclassic pattern in imitation of the French comedy
and tragedy and failed to remain in the
Russian repertory.
Catherine loved the theater and it thrived during her reign. She
viewed the theater much as Peter I had. In
1777, Catherine authorized the building of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and in 1779
added the Imperial School for the training
of Russian actors, singers and dancers.
During Catherine's reign, Denis Fonvizin wrote
"The Brigadier" (1769) and "The Minor" (1791) establishing the Russian
satirical comedy of manners and the first
steps toward a national comedy of social realism
with native character, linguistic and topical
elements. This play is still regularly performed on
Russian stages and remains a Russian
favorite.
Under Alexander I and Nicholas I the number of theaters
increased, "Russian Realism"
became the leading aesthetic
principle and important non-imitative plays
were written in the Russian language.
Konstantin Stanislavsky, a textile magnate
and amateur director and actor,
and Vladimir Nemirovich-
Danchenko, a prizewinning
dramatist, critic and head of the drama section of the Philharmonic School met on June 23, 1897.
They wanted more realistic acting and stage design and
plays appealing to the growing progressive
urban audience desiring more than
the light fare preferred by the bourgeois
audiences of the Maly and commercial theaters. Their
innovations were to eventually
revolutionized world theater practice.