Chapter 1 What is Theatre Theatre 1 a

Chapter 1: What is Theatre?

Theatre • 1: a building where plays are put on (the hardware). -architecture, structure, the “place” Also use it to describe where films are scene or to refer to arenas where other actvities occur like war or surgeries.

Theatre • 2: players who perform in a space and the plays (dran) that company produces; combination of people, ideas and works of art created in collaboration in a particular “space” • Guthrie Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Second City

Theatre occupation, professional activity, passionate vocations; directors, designers and technicians, actors, producers, public relations, etc. • 3:

Theatre Building— place to act and space to watch (and hear when there is a text)

Theatre derived from: theatron— theatron “seeing place” A theatre is a place where something is seen

Audience derived from: audientia – “those who hear” (audio)

Acoustis derived from: acoustos— acoustos “heard”

Theatre practitioners of various specialties have teamed up in long standing companies or troupes. Troupes can have dozens or even hundreds of people working together.

Lord Chamberlain’s Men (modern version) Illustrious Theatre of Paris (founded by Moliere)

Theatre is work. Work, Art, Impersonation, Performance

Theatre is work. The planning phase of a production is often equal or longer than the rehearsal phase and may involve hundreds of people.

Physical Toil AND Oeuvre—sum of an artist’s creative endeavor

Producing: securing personnel, space, financing, promotion, and legal arrangements, etc.

Directing: developing & controlling artistic product and unified vision

Acting: perform roles of character in the play

Designing: map out the visual and aural elements

Building: translate design into reality, the “hardware”

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Crewing: execute sequence and timing of cues and scene shifts

Stage Managing: running a play production in all its complexity

House Managing: admitting, seating and providing for the general comfort of the audience

Playwriting: usually executed away from theatre building (more specific definition to follow in later chapters)

Theatre is also work in the sense that it is not GAMES. (although we often play games to build skills)

Theatre vs. Play (games)

Foreign words with same dual meaning: jeu, spiel, jatek, xi, ludi

Play= children’s games and /or dramatic plays & role-playing

Commonalities with Sport: • Greece—Dionysian and Olympic Festivals (focus on competition and excellence) • Romans—Public circuses with sport (physical prowess) and dramatic entertainment side by side • Shakespeare—theatres were designed to hold plays and bear baiting on alternate days • Modern TV—reality competition shows sports and game shows alongside fictional, scripted dramas and comedies

What are the commonalities between theatre and sports/games? What are the commonalities between theatre and child’s play/role-playing?

SPORTS & THEATRE Shared history (Greek, Roman, Elizabethan, Modern) Prestigious and well-paid Sports figures turn to acting! Attracts amateurs and audiences Intense physical involvement Friendly competition Personal self-expression Emotional engagement

CHILD’S PLAY & THEATRE Dressing up and acting out—suspension of disbelief, the ability to “make-believe” Improvisation & role-playing Prepares children for adult roles like theatre prepares society for adult issues

Difference: theatre is a calculated act from beginning to end; preordained conclusion

Theatre is the art of making play into work—A WORK OF ART!

“Art is a supreme pursuit of humanity integrating our emotions, intellects and aesthetics with our revelations. . ” (What does this mean? )

Art is empowering both to those who make it and those who appreciate it.

Art is accessible without subscribing to any particular set of beliefs; an openended response to life’s unending puzzles

Impersonation—actors impersonating characters is the single-most important aspect of theatre; the very foundation

Enduring Question: How is the audience to distinguish between the “real person” (the actor) from the “character” portrayed?

Ancient world’s solution: The Mask

The mask provides both a physical and symbolic separation between the impersonator (the actor) and the impersonated (the character) and helps onlookers to suspend their awareness of the “real” world and accept the world of the stage or play.

The “paradox of the actor” according to Denis Diderot—when the actor has perfected his art, it is the simulated character, the mask, that seems to live before our eyes, while the real person has no apparent life at all.

The latin word “persona” means mask!

But the actor does live behind the mask, which is an even greater paradox: We BELIEVE in the character, but at the end of the play we APPLAUD the actor!

Masks were also staples of the masquerade dramas of Nigeria, the NO and KYOGEN drama of Japan, and the COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE of Italy.

Masks are still seen today in modern stagings of these historical styles but also in expressionistic and avantgarde productions.

And the idea of masking—of hiding the performer while displaying the character— remains at the heart of impersonation.

And as the back to back masks of comedy and tragedy, it has become the most fundamental symbol of theatre itself.

In modern theatre we have become accustomed to this separation of the actor and the character, but people still sometimes almost childishly believe in the “truth” of the character.

Soap opera stars who play villains or “bad guys (or women) are often stalked or harassed by fans who cannot separate the reality of the actor from the fantasy of the character!

We are all performers theatre only makes an art out of something we all do every day. The theatre reflects our everyday performances and expands those performances into a formal mode

Two MODES OF PERFORMANCE: Presentational & Representational

Presentational Mode: performers directly and continuously acknowledge the presence of the audience

Presentational productions break the illusion of the “ 4 th wall” and the focus is on the style rather than the substance of the play; “theatrical”

Representational Mode: “more fundamental” The audience watches behavior that seems to be staged as if no audience were present (the illusion of the 4 th wall) and focuses on the events being staged rather than the nature of their presentation

Samuel Coleridge calls this double negative the “willing suspension of disbelief” and attracts audience participation through empathy.

Empathy—our feeling of kinship with certain (or all) of the characters

Extreme examples of “realism” (the late 19 th century representational movement that sought to have actors behave onstage exactly as real people do in life.

Bertolt Brecht rebelled against extreme representationalism and created a presentational style featuring lettered signs, songs, slide projections, chalk talks, political arguments directly addressed to the house, and an “alienated” style of acting intended to reduce empathy.

These extremes exist more in theory than in practice.

The fact is that theatrical performance is always both presentational and representational, though often in different degrees.

Two other aspects of performance distinguish theatre from certain other forms of performance: theatre is LIVE performance and in most cases a SCRIPTED and REHEARSED event.

Unlike video and cinema, theatre is a living, real-time event in which performers and audience mutually interact, each fully aware of the other’s immediate presence.

Every actor’s performance is affected by the way the audience yields or withholds its responses—its laughter, sighs, applause, gasps and silences.

Live theatre is always a twoway communication between the stage and the house.

This broad communal response is never developed by television drama which is played primarily to solitary or clustered viewers who (because of frequent commercials) are only intermittently engaged.

It is also unlikely in movie houses, where audience members essentially assume a one-on-one relationship with the screen and rarely break out in a powerful collective response, much less applause.

The final ovation—unique to live performance—inevitable involves the audience applauding ITSELF as well as the performers for understanding and appreciating theatrical excellence they have all seen together.

Plays with political themes can even generate collective political response.

Live performance has a quality of IMMEDIACY. The action of the play is taking place RIGHT NOW and ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

Although the play is rehearsed and the changes that occur from one night to another are subtle, ach night’s performance is unique and there is always the excitement that mistakes can happen. . . this creates a certain tension, which some people say is the ultimate thrill of theatre.

Live performance creates a “presentness” or “presence” that embodies the fundamental uncertainty of life itself.

Actors call this presentness “living in the moment. ”

SCRIPTED AND REHEARSED PERFORMANCE— Most theatre performances are prepared and performed according to well-rehearsed texts or scripts.

Although improvisation may play a role in the preparation process and even in certain performances, most of the action is permanently set during rehearsals and the performances appear nearly the same night after night.

But the text of a play is not the play itself. The play fully exists only in its performance—in its “playing. ” The script is merely the record the play leaves behind.

And published scripts are an imperfect record.

These scripts also leave out important facets of the live production like nonverbals (tone of voice, pacing, facial expressions, etc).

Ancient scripts rarely included anything but the most basic stage directions and modern plays with extensive stage directions are often simply the recorded stage business of the first production.

But a play (script) does put us in touch with theatre history in the making and can service as a blueprint for vital theatre today.

This then, is theatre: • • • a place—the building or space where theatrical activity takes place a company—a group of artists collaborating to create a work of art an activity—all of the diverse actions undertaken to create a work of art (playwriting, designing, directing, stage managing, acting, etc)