Egyptian Roots

c.2500 bce
Ritual Enactment
Abydos Passion Play re-enacted the story
of the death and resurrection of Osiris

Greek Festivals
Festivals honored Olympian gods
Ritual Competitions
Olympics: Apollo
Athletics
Lyric Poetry

Drama: Dionysos
Dithyrambic Choruses
Tragedy
Comedy

Greek Theatre
6th - 4th century bce
Originated in festivals honoring Dionysos
Thespis (6th c. bce)
Tragedy:
Aeschylus (524-456 bce)
Sophocles (496-406 bce)
Euripides (480-406 bce)
Comedy:
Aristophanes (c. 485- c.385 bce)
Old Comedy: bawdy and satiric
New Comedy: social situations

Roman Theatre
2nd c. bce - 4th c. ce
Origins in Greek drama and Roman
festivals
Tragedy: Seneca
5 act structure
Revenge motif -- sensationalistic
Ghosts and supernatural
Comedy:Terence and Plautus
Boy meets girl, complications, boy
gets girl: marriage
Bawdy
Stock characters

Roman Spectacle
Gladiatorial combats
Naval battles in a flooded Coliseum
Real-life theatricals
Decadent, violent and immoral
All theatrical events banned by Church when
Rome became Christianized

Medieval Drama: 13th-15th C.

Arose from need to educate converted, illiterate
Christians about Christianity
Hrotsvita (10th c.), German nun, wrote plays
about Christian matyrs using structure based on
Terences Roman comedies
Liturgical drama
Mystery plays: Biblical tales
Miracle plays: Saints lives
Morality plays: Allegories

Italian Commedia dell Arte

La Commedia dell'Arte, "Artistic Comedy,
began in the second half of the 16th century
Based on set pieces, lazzi, that are
improvised with stock characters
A distinct group of actors gave birth to the
first nucleus of companies, and started doing
their acts on simple stages set outdoors
The mix of popular themes, complex stories,
acrobatic jumps and mellow love scenes
made it highly influential throughout
Europe

Harlequino

Elizabethan Theatre: 16th-17th C.

C
Protestant Reformation closed down
religious drama
Tudor love of spectacle and patronage of
drama
Elizabethan poetry -- love of language
Influenced by Roman theatre, Renaissance
ideas, medieval stagecraft and pagan
remnants
Important theatrical period even if
Shakespeare had never lived

French Neoclassical Theatre,

17th-18th C.
Modelled theatre on Greek and Roman examples
Disdained English Elizabethan theatres
messiness and eclecticism
Neoclassical Conventions
Decorum
Verisimilitude
Universal truths
Poetic: Alexandrines
5 act structure
3 unities: time, place action

Tragedy and Comedy

Rulers/nobility
Affairs of state
Unhappy ending
Lofty poetic style
Revealed the horrible
results of mistakes and
misdeeds committed
from passion
Racine

Middle class/bourgeosie
Domestic/private affairs
Happy ending often
deus ex machina
Ordinary speech
Ridicules behavior that
should be avoided
Moliere

German
Romantic
Theater: 18th19th C.

Strm und Drang

Looked to Shakespeare for
models
Sweeping historical and
tragic dramas
Johann Goethe and
Friedrich Schiller
Began to emphasize
historical accuracy in
costumes and settings
Improved theatrical effects
-- footlights, revolving
stages, theatrical machinery

Theatre of sentimentality
-- emotional appeal
Heroes and villains -and lily-white heroines
Wide popular appeal
Sensationalistic
Most widely performed
play of the 19th C:
Uncle Toms Cabin based
on Harriet Beecher
Stowes novel

Melodrama:
19th Century

Realism and Naturalism

19th-20th C.
Intellectual reaction against popular theatre
Theatre of social problems
Influenced by emerging disciplines of
psychology and sociology
Emerging importance of director
Realistic stage conventions:
Proscenium stage
Audience as fourth wall
Change in acting conventions
Continued developments in stagecraft

Realism and Naturalism

Middle class
Psychological
How can the individual
live within and influence
society?
Well-made play
Henrik Ibsen,
George Bernard Shaw

Middle and Lower classes

Sociological
How does society/the
environment impact
individuals?
Slice of life
August Strindberg, Anton
Chekhov, John Synge, Sean
OCasey

20th Century Theatre:

a hundred years of isms
Symbolism

Expressionism
Futurism
Surrealism
Social Realism
Epic Theatre
Existentialism
Absurdism
Magic Realism
Hyper-Realism
Not to mention musicals,
films, street theatre, etc., etc.

And so into the 21st Century

Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz

Winner of 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama