Theatre in the Middle Ages

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Theatre in the Middle Ages
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Early Christianitys Role

• 6th Century Catholic Church banned all theatre
  productions
• Decayed Morally
• Against man pretending to be what he is not

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Churches Role Continued

• Tenth Century
• Religious drama was allowed
• Due to illiteracy drama was a way to teach
  Christian doctrine, stories and history
• Plays evolved from simple dramatized stories to
  Miracle Pageants

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The Renaissance

• 1455 Gutenberg and the printing press
• Rebirth of learning and the arts
• Gradually all of Europe reading and writing
• Neoclassical age

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Renaissance Playwrights

• Playwriting epdemic
• Hans Sachs
• Spain
• France
• England

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A little Clip about Renaissance Theatre
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Spanish Theatre

• Golden Age
• 30,000 plays written
• Lope de Vega
• Cervantes
• Calderon

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French Theatre

• Racine
• Cornielle
• Moliere

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English Theatre

• Neoclassical Playwrights left more plays than any
  other country or period in history
• Marlowe
• Thomas Kyd
• Shakespeare

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Shakespeare

• Greatest tragic playwright ever
• Finest Comic playwright
• Borrowed most of is plots from other plays and
  stories
• Developed these plots more deeply
• Language most lyrical and profound ever written
  by a playwright
• Themes are universal

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A Clip from Twelfth Night
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Renaissance Italys contribution

• Italy seat of the Renaissance
• Produced no lasting playwrights
• Created two new drama forms
• Develped setting through which toays theatre of
  realism would be viewed

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Opera

• Group of writers and musicians in Florence
• Recreate music used by Greek tragedians
• Failed at that, but created a merging of music
  and drama opera
• Montverde

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Commedia dellarte

• Drama by professional actors
• Touring professional troupes
• Used stock characters
• Improvised stories
• Popular from 16th cent. To the beginning of the
  18th cent.
• Slapstick originated with this genre

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Italy continued

• Proscenium Arch
• Perspective

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Europe from Renaissance to Realism

• 1650-1870
• Goldoni
• Goldsmith
• Sheridan
• Wilde
• Romantics
• Rights of the common man

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Age of Realism

• Nineteenth Century
• Darwin
• Americas emergence as a credible country

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Founding Playwrights of the Age of Realism

• Henrik Ibsen Norway
• Social justice
• Womens equality
• Harsh and controversial
• Arthur Miller
• Anton Chekhov
• George Bernard Shaw
• Plays during this age were about the common man
  with common problems

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Emergence of Directors

• Until the end of the 19th century managers and
  producers handled coordinated it all
• Duke of Sace-Meiningen
• Constantine Stanislavski
• Reinhardt Copeau

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The Duke

• Abolished star system
• Actors worked as an ensemble
• Insistence on exact technical details

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Stanislavski

• Russian
• Established Moscow Art Theatre
• Most insightful and innovate director
• The Method
• Listen and react
• Ensemble

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Reinhardt and Copeau

• Mold and fashion plays how they wanted them
• Made an impact in native countries as well as US

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Nonrealistic Theatre

• Theatre of symbolism
• Influenced by symbolistic art and music of the
  late 19th century
• Tried to show meaning and emotion
• August Strindberg
• Maurice Maeterlink
• Gerog Kaiser
• Thornton Wilder

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Theatre of the Absurd

• Tried to find meaning in a world that has no
  meaning
• Believed there was no god and no life after death
• Outraged b the destruction of war
• Tried to show uselessness and absurdity of life
• Used humorous dialogue and actions
• Usually disjointed and senseless
• Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco