Theatre History Outline

1. The Poet-Centered Theatre

Greek Dramatic Forms:

• Dithyrambs
• Tragedies
• Mimes
• Comedies (new and old)

Earliest fixed theatre (c. 540 BC):

Orchestra, Theatron, Skene in Theatre of Dionysus in Athens.

Greek Festivals with theatre:

• City Dionysia festival of Athens, begun in 534 BC, later included plays. Each March for several days; had 3 days of tragedy which included 3 tragedies and a satyr play by one author each day. Also dithyramb competitions, processions, and - later - comedies.
• Lanaia in January was most appropriate for comedy, because it didn't attract non-Athenians.

playwrights:

• Aeschylus (525-456 BC)
• Sophocles (495-406 BC)
• Euripides (480-406 BC)
• Aristophanes (445-388 BC)
• Menander and minor playwrights

Roman Dramatic Forms:

• Farces
• Mock Battles
• Mimes
• Comedy
• Pantomimes
• Tragedy

playwrights:

• Plautus (254 -184 BC)
• Terence (195 -159 BC)
• Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)

Medieval secular theatrical activity (c. 600 AD):

• Fair entertainers
• Minstrels and bards
• Folk and pagan ritual plays

2. Symbol Referenced Staging

Evolution of liturgical drama (c. 1200 AD):

• Development from Easter and other tropes.
• Expansion into enactments of Christ's Passion (c. 1300)
• Expansion into a series of playlets depicting the ecclesiastical history of mankind.
• Departure from the Church (c. 1400)

Renaissance theatrical activity (c. 1500):

• Processions, tournaments, and pageants
• Interludes and moralities at court
• School plays
• Continuing medieval secular and liturgical forms

James Burbage built the first English theatre building - the Theatre - in London in 1576. It was essentially a game arena with a booth and a trestle stage in the ring.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote 36 plays.

• Writing in London for a licensed company by the 1590s.
• Notable contemporaries: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), Ben Johnson (1572-1637)

3. Framed Staging

17th Century French Neoclassicism:

Corneille, Racine, Moliere

English Restoration Comedy of Manners (1650-1730)

Congreve, Wycherly

18th Century English Bourgeois Drama (considered Comedy of Manners to be immoral)

Sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy

Reactions against bourgeois drama (return to "laughing comedy")(late 18th Century)

Goldsmith, Sheridan

Late 18th Century development of German Romanticism

• Goethe, Schiller
• Early forms of melodrama

4. Realistic Staging

19th Century Realism and Naturalism

• Influenced by Darwin, Taine, Freud
• playwright: Zola
• Well-made Play: Scribe, Sardou
• Melodrama: Boucicault, Daley

Modern Drama (1870)

Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov

Emergence of the Director (1870)

Georg II (Duke of Saxe-Meiningen), Richard Wagner

Independent Theatre Movement:

Andre Antoine

Modern Acting:

Stanislavsky

5. Technological Theatre

Modern Stagecraft:

Craig, Appia, Reinhardt

Theatre in America:

• Resident companies
• Combination companies and development of The Road
• The Syndicate and the Shuberts

Twentieth Century theatrical styles:

• Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism
• Theatre of Cruelty: Artaud
• Epic Theatre: Brecht
• Existentialism: Sartre
• Theatre of the Absurd: Becket, Pinter, Ionesco, Genet

Breaking out of Broadway:

• Off-Broadway (1950s) (Quintero, Public Theatre, Joe Papp)
• Off-off Broadway (1960s) (Café La Mama, Tom O'Horgan, Hair)
• Regional Theatre movement (1960s & 1970s) (Trinity Rep, Arena Stage)

The renaissance of the 1960s

• Ford Foundation
• National Endowment for the Arts