“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”- Shakespeare from his play “As You Like It”.
Today is World Theatre day. Every year on 27th March the whole world celebrates World Theatre Day. The International Theatre Institute has been celebrating this day since 1962. The first message was written by the French playwright Jean Cocteau on World Theatre Day.
The Origin of World Theatre
Greek Theatre
The first plays were performed with just one protagonist and a chorus of people who help to elaborate the story. However in the 5th Century BC playwrights continued to innovate. In ancient Greece, plays were performed only a few times a year at religious festivals honoring Dionysius, the Greek God of wine and fertility. At the time masques (masks) were an important element as many of the Greek actors wore lightweight masks. Athens was the centre of Greek Theatre.
Roman Theatre
By 146 BC Rome had conquered Greece. Theatres during this era is generally separated into genres of tragedy and comedy, which are represented by a particular style of architecture and stage play, and conveyed to an audience purely as a form of entertainment and control. Some works by Platus, Terence and Seneca the Younger.
Theatre of Middle Age
Most plays performed in the Middle Age or Medieval Period told stories from the Bible. Whereas the Greek theatre had grown out of Dionysian worship, the medieval theatre originated as an expression of the Christian religion. The two cycles would eventually merge during the Renaissance.
Morality play
Another development was the morality plays, also called morality, an allegorical drama popular in Europe especially during the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the characters personify moral or abstractions and in which moral lessons are taught.
Together with the mystery play and the miracle play, mystery play and the miracle play is one of the three main types of vernacular drama produced during the Middle Ages.
Another important development was Interlude. The term interlude is derived from from Latin interludium and were performed in Europe by small companies of professional actors during the 15th and 16th centuries. The term covers a wide range of entertainment, from simple farces performed on small stages in public places to dramatic sketches performed at banquets in the halls of the nobility. In both cases the plays were purely secular and more concerned with ideas than with morals.
The renaissance Theatre
By the end of the 15th century attempts were made to stage the works of The Latin texts of Terence, Plautus, and Seneca. Renaissance theatre derived from several medieval theatre traditions, such as, the mystery plays that formed a part of religious festivals in England and other parts of Europe during the Middle Ages.
Elizabethan theatre (Theatre for the Upper-Class)
Under Elizabeth, the drama was a unified expression as far as social class was concerned: the Court watched the same plays the commoners saw in the public playhouses. With the development of the private theatres, drama became more oriented toward the tastes and values of an upper-class audience. The most important playwright during this period was William Shakespeare. At the time plays by Shakespeare brought a huge change in the history of theatre.
Modern Theatre (Theatre for every class)
During the period the industrial development had started. The reform bill has introduced. which enfranchised the propertied middle class and established its political power, led to the Theatres Act of 1843, which gave London a “free theatre.” The rise of the middle-class theatres caused the decline of both the patent houses in London and the Comédie-Française—the national theatre of France. The first of the independent theatres was the Théâtre-Libre has developed. The arrival of George Bernard Shaw , the most prominent plywright in 1892, took place with his first play, Widowers’ Houses. During the Twentieth Century British theatre is commonly believed to have started in Dublin, Ireland with the foundation of the Irish Literary Theater by William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and J.M. Synge.
Arrival of Avant Garde Theatre
Later evolved the Avant Garde Theatre or the Experimental began in Western theatre with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays emerged as a reaction against a perceived general cultural crisis and it rejected both the age and the dominant ways of writing and producing plays.
Arrival of Absurdist Drama
Absurdist Drama was existentialist theatre which put a direct perception of a mode of being above all abstract considerations. It was also essentially a poetic, lyrical theatre for the expression of intuitions of being through movement, situations and concrete imagery.
Arrival of Dadaism
Dadaism, or Dada, was a reaction against World War I. Like many of the movements, Dada included writing, painting and poetry as well as theatre. Many Dadaists wrote manifestos detailing their beliefs, which normally outlined their disgust in colonialism and nationalism and tried to be the opposite of the current aesthetics and values.
Arrival of Symbolism
In England, Symbolism was also known as Aestheticism. A very stylized format of drama, wherein dreams and fantasies were common plot devices, Aestheticism was used by numerous playwrights from Yeats to Pinter.
Arrival of Surrealism
Like Aestheticism, Surrealism has its base in the mystical. It developed the physicality of theatre and downplayed words, hoping to influence its audiences through action. Other common characteristics of surreal plays are unexpected comparisons and surprise.
Arrival of Expressionism
The term ‘Expressionism’ was first coined in Germany in 1911. This type of theatre usually did not name the characters and spend much time lamenting the present and warning against the future. Spiritual awakenings and episodic structures were also fairly common.