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

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

Theatre derived from: theatrontheatron—

“seeing place”

A theatre is a place where something is

seenseen

Audience derived from:

audientiaaudientia –

“those who hear” (audio)

Acoustis derived from:

acoustosacoustos—

“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”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh9-ErV99Ow

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 the 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 open-ended 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 avant-garde 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

the 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 the 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 “4th 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 4th 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 19th

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, the 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 two-way 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 the 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 the 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 non-

verbals (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 the 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)