THE2000:Final Notes Compilation
From BluWiki
Kalidasa
- Most well known Sanskrit playwright
Theatre in China
- Tang dynasty � developed the Pear Garden, one of the first actor training schools
- Musical, protagonist is lead singer
Peking Opera
- Developed in 19th century
- Combines music, theatre, dance, and acrobatics.
- Akin to modern dinner theater
- Ornate costume and make-up, much symbolism
Japanese Drama
Noh
- God Plays
- Praising the gods, quiet and dignified
- Warrior Plays
- The protagonist is usually a slain warrior, comes back in spirit.
- Woman Plays
- Protagonist is a woman, elegant and style
- Demon Plays
- Battle between demon and hero, demon is usually defeated
- Miscellaneous
Same stage every time, with specific stations. 4-5 musicians who accompany the actors
Bunraku
- Musicians and chanters tell the story with puppets and create the voices
- Puppets are 2/3 size of humans
- Much training and dedication required to become a puppetmaster
Kabuki
- 17th Century
- Drew its material from plays written for Noh and Bunraku
- Melodramatic, good vs. evil
- Popular among middle class
Medieval Theater
- The period from 500 to 1500 CE in western history is known as the Middle Ages or medieval area
- Liturgical dramas � produced by the Church, to teach the Bible
- Vernacular dramas
- Mystery or cycle plays
- The Second Shepherd's Play
- Several plays strung together to form series, hence "cycle"
- Morality Plays
- Very short, equivalent to a one-act
Medieval Theatrical Scenery
- Mansions � single scenic unit behind the stage
- Wagons � portable stages, moved through streets
Commedia dell' Arte
- "comedy of professional artists"
- Improvisational theater with no set text
- Based on 'scenarios'
- Companies:
- Traveling troupes (7men, 3 women)
- Most successful were families
Commedia Stock Characters
- Pantalone: miserable Venetian man, lecherous, drunkard
- Dottore: foolish scholar
- Capitano: cowardly, braggart soldier
- Zanni: foolish servants; Arlecchino & Harlequino
- Lazzi: repeated bits of comic business; usually physical and often obscene
Italian Dramatic Rules: Neoclassical Ideas
Highly Prescriptive Criticism
- Verisimilitude: drama should be true to life
- 3 unities: time, place, & action
- Function of drama: tragedy=royalty, comedy=common people; no mixing; to teach moral lessons.
- Other rules: no violence, no chorus, no soliloquies
Theater Production in Italy
- Pit, box, & gallery
- Use of perspective drawings
- Pole and Chariot System � innovative scene shifting system created by Torelli
The English Renaissance
- Often called the Elizabethan Period
- Christopher Marlowe (1564 � 1593), iambic pentameter
- William Shakespeare (1564 � 1616)
- Married Anne Hathaway
- 3 kids
- The Lord Chamber group
- Use of metaphors
- Public Theatres � outdoors
- Private Theatres � indoors
Spain
- Spanish Golden Age: 1550-1650
- World power (exploration & conquest of the new world)
Spanish Drama
- Secular dramas flourished between 1550 & 1700
- Usually dealt with love and honor
- Main characters were royalty
Major Spanish Playwrights
- Lope de Vega: wrote 1500 plays; 470 survived; The Sheep Well
- Calderon de la Barca: Life is a Dream
- A number of female playwrights
Theater Production
- Corrales � open air public theatres
- Corral de la Cruz and Corral de Principe: most famous corrales located in Madrid
- Patio � used for standing
- Cazuela � gallery seating for unaccompanied women, carefully guarded
- 2000 seats
French Drama: The Neoclassical Era
Comedic French Playwrights
- Moliere: most important 17th cent. Dramatist; noted for his comedies.
- Actor and leader of a theatrical troupe
- Influenced by Italian commedia dell'arte
- Tartuffe, The Miser, The Misanthrope, and The Imaginary Invalid
Tragic French Playwrights
- Pierre Corneille: began writing comedies and later wrote tragedies
- The Cid
- Jean Racine: plays adhered to neoclassical ideas
- Phaedra
American Selective Realism
- Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) Streetcar Named Desire
- Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
- Edward Albee (1928-)
- "The Angry Young Men" - Dealt with the dissolving British Empire, class conflict, and political disillusionment
- Documentary drama � based on historical documents
Experimentation and Departures from Realism: 1945 � 1980
- Existentialism � articulated by Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
- No God, responsibility for own actions
- Theatre of the Absurd writers � Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter
- Much of what happens in life is ridiculous or absurd
- Absurdist plays � move in a circle, nothing really happens on stage
Experimental Theatre
- Happenings Multimedia and New Tech
- Environmental � treated whole theatre space as room to perform in - any division between performers and viewers is deemed artificial
- Growtowski and his Poor Theater � Stripped down to the bare essentials
Musical
The Black Crook
- The FIRST musical
- French ballet dancers meet American melodrama
- 100 bare-limbed dancers
- Plays for 16 months and tours for 40 years
Show Boat
- Musical, song used to tell about character and relationships
- Interracial relationships
- Chorus line was eliminated
- Old Man River best known piece in the musical
Porgy and Bess � 1935
- George and Ira Gershwin
- Music establishes mood and atmosphere
Oklahoma � 1943
- Richard Rodgers &Oscar Hammerstein II
- Inegrated music, book, and dance
- Choreography by Agnes de Mille
- Folk dance/famous ballet
West Side Story � 1957
- Leonard Bernstein (music) & Stephen Sondheim (lyrics)
- Full integration of elements
- Dance advances the dramatic action
- Jerome Robbins � Conceived and directed and choreographed
Stephen Sondheim
- Redefines the musical with each show
- Current genius of the American stage
- Sunday in the Park with George'
- Into the Woods
- Sweeney Todd
- Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Assassins
Cameron Mackintosh
- Most Successful producer on Broadway
- Les Miserables
- Cats
- Miss Saigon
- Phantom of the Opera
Jonathan Larson
- Authored Musicals including...
- Rent
- Multiple Tony Awards
- Opened off Broadway, moved on Broadway
- Tick Tick Boom
- Rent
- Mr. Larson wrote about homophobia and HIV, though he was straight and didn't have AIDS himself
Sam Shepard
- Buried Child
- True West
- Fool for Love
- A Lie of the Mind
- Simpatico
David Mamet
- American Buffalo
- The Cryptogram
Both have common elements of the flight of the American family David Henry Hwang � In 1988 Madame Butterfly opened successfully on Broadway Asians breaking the stereotype
Latino Theatre � mostly written in English
- Hispanic Theatre
- Chicano Theater
- Cuban American theater
- Nuyorican theatre � refers to Puerto Rican culture, mostly in New York
Native American Theatre
- The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1972
- Native American Theatre Ensemble and Spiderwoman
- Spiderwoman theatre � oldest women's theatre troupe in US
Feminist Drama
Questioning traditional gender roles and the place of women in American Society
- The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler
- Night Mother, by Maria Irene Fornes
Gay and Lesbian Theatre
Represents gay/lesbian identity onstage
- Only around significantly since the late 60s / early 70s
- Now includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual themes (GLBT)
- 'The Boys in the Band (1968) by Mart Crowley
- First major play with G/L themes
- Shows a world where homosexuality is both a sin and a newly emerging gay identity
- Utilizes camp � a form of highly satirical, sometimes mean, humor that shows extreme stereotypes
- The Normal Heart (1985) by Larry Kramer
- One of the first AIDS plays
- Critique of government's inaction in the face of the epidemic
- Also criticizes the gay culture for its promiscuity
- Angels in America by Tony Kushner
- Tonys for Best Play, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor (1991)
- HBO movie with all-star cast (2003)
Performance Art
- What is performance? Theater? The subject of theatrical representation?
- Story and characters were reduced or eliminated
- Today refers to individual artists who... use humor and parody?
Postmodernism
- Reflects issues of power in art
- Question Shakespeare
- Productions have several authors
- Try to branch from traditional readings
- Each audience member creates own reading
- Abstract mixed with realism; works aren't easily classified
- Directors often deconstruct the classics (take the original play apart)
Diversity and Performance Timeline
1960s
- Civil Rights
- Black arts
- Aggressive political identity
1970's
- Feminist theater (early)
- Gay and Lesbian (early)
- Latino (late)
1990's
Asian American
2000's
Native american
The Restoration
Restoration Drama: Comedies of Manners
- Comedies of manners � poked fun at the social conventions of the upper class
- Emphasized witty dialogue and filled with sexual innuendo
Playwrights
- Aphra Behn � female, wrote complicated plots
- wrote The Rover
- William Congreve � a bridge between restoration comedy and traditional comedy
Performers and Acting Companies
- Women appear on stage for the first time
- The emergence of theatre entrepreneurs.
- Two men had a monopoly on producing theatre in London
18th Century Drama
- Many plays strayed from traditional "comedy and tragedy" definitions we have grown to know and love.
England's Contributions
- Ballad Opera
- Ex. The Beggars Opera
- Sentimental Comedy
- Ex. The Rivals
Acting in the 18th Century
- David Garrick � actors during this time started to have followers
- English actor
- Rejected bombastic style of performing
- Favored individual characterization
- Also a director
19th Century Dramatic Forms
- Romanticism � rejected neo-classical rules (in fact, rejected all artistic rules believing that genius creates its own rules)
- Hero seeks justice knowledge and truth
- Melodrama � literally means "song drama"
- Suspenseful plots, emphasis on surface effects.
Modern Theater (1875-1945 or today)
- Birth of Realism: everything is realistic, identifiable in real life
Major Playwrights
Henrik Ibsen
- The Doll's House
Strinberg
- The Father (1887)
- Miss Julie (1888)
- watched a clip of this in class, Julie is an aristocrat attracted to her father's servant
Chekov
- The Seagul (1896)
- At first was a failure, people walked out
- Performed at the Moscow Art Theatre, it was a huge success
- Stanislavski, a producer of MAT, said it was a comedy, and the actors needed to act more realistically, they did and it was a success.
- The main character commits suicide at the end, not typical of a comedy.
- Uncle Vanya
- The Three Sisters
- The Cherry Orchard
Producers of Realism
- Realism wasn't seen as marketable or profitable, so independent theater-going "clubs" were formed.
Independent Theatres
- Theatre Libre (Free Theatre) � Paris
- Freie Buhne (Free Stage) � Germany
- Independent Theatre � London
- Moscow Art Theatre � Russia
- MAT was most successful
Moscow Art Theatre
- Dedicated to realism
- Made Chekov famous
- Founded by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Konstantin Stanislavski
- Provided first systematic approach to realistic acting � the Stanislavski system
Realistic Theatre (1915-1945)
- Little Theatre Movement
- The Group Theatre � most important producing group
- noncommercial group in NYC Broadway District
- The Federal Theatre Project � Supported theatrical ventures and assisted African American theatres and artists
Realistic Playwrights between the Wars
- Irish Playwrights:
- John Millington Synge
- Sean O' Casey
- United States:
- Eugene O'Neill
- Lillian Hellman
Russian Theatricalism
- Meyerhold - Russian director who revolted against naturalism and principles of Stanislavski
- Exposed theatrical devices
- Biomechanics
Expressionism
- Floruished in Germany at the time of World War I
- The representation of reality was distorted in order to communicate Inner feelings
- Inner turmoil
Futurism
- Originated in Italy
- Attacked artistic ideas of the past
Dada
- Originated in Switzerland
- After WWI
- Replace reason with madness
- Wanted to confuse and antagonize their audience
Bertolt Brecht & Epic Theatre
- Theatre of Instruction
- Intellectual involvement rather than emotional
- Puppets
- Narrators
- Slides & Film
- Actors distanced themselves from emotion
- Realistic
Antonin Artaud & the Theatre of Cruelty
- Considered surrealist
- Theatre as sensory experience
- Bombard viewer's senses
- Purge the natural inclination toward violence and aggression
Diversity
- Mix of culture, race, gender, sexuality, history, politics, and spirituality in one population
- Multiculturalism: A wide variety of social groups and concerns.
- Stereotype: A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image
- All diversity performance acknowledges and uses stereotypes
Mixing and Matching
- Diverse groups influence one another
- Today's theatre is made up of various nationalities and ethnicities
- Contemporary theatre is complex
Contemporary Theatre: Chicago
- Traditional Broadway style commercial theatres
- Not-for-profit theatre
- Off-loop theatres
- Shakespeare
- Multi-cultural theatre
Multiethnic Theatres
- African American
- Asian American
- Latino
- Native American
- Feminist
- Gay and Lesbian
- Political
African American Theater
- "Black theatre"
- Theater written for and by black Americans and/or performed by black Americans.
19th Century
- Comic black servants were popular characters � played by white characters � rare to see black actors on stage in the 19th century
- EXCEPTION � the African Grove Theater: company founded in NYC during the 1820-1821 season; noted for Shakespearean plays
The African Grove Theatre
- James Hewlett was the first black to play Othello
- King Shotaway believed to be 1st play written/performed by African Americans
Ira Aldridge
- African American artist of the early 19th century who became renowned Shakespearean actor in such countries as England, Poland, and Russia; famously played the title role in Othello.
The Minstrel Show
- Popular 19th century form of entertainment which caricatured blacks
- Usually white performers
African American Theater from 1900-1950
- 'A Trip to Coontown (1898) � first black musical comedy, written produced and directed by Bob Cole and William Johnson
- In 1902- first time black actors on b'way stages without burnt-cork makeup, speaking without dialects, and wearing high fashion.
- Federal Theater Project- possibly most significant development for black theatre during 1930's which employed thousands of black writers, performers, and technicians.
- Raisin in the Sun (1959) � written by Lorraine Hansberry; directed by Lloyd Richards (first black director on b'way)
- August Wilson (1945) � 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), Fences (1985), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1986), The Piano Lesson (1990), Seven Guitars (1995).
- African American plays of the 60's and 70's dealt with political, sociological, and psychological issues confronting African Americans, namely civil rights
- George C. Wolfe � author director of Jelly's Last Jam and Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk ; also directed Angels in America
African American Theater of today
- Topdog/Underdog � by Suzan-Lori Parks: won 2002 Pulitzer Prize
- 2 other black woman playwrights:
- ??? Cleage
- Cheryl West
- 2004 Revival of Raisin in the Sun � one of the most profitable productions of b'way's last season.
