What do we know about Theater?

A powerpoint journey with:

Bryan Leonard Lumaya

Theatre is a branch of the performing arts. While any performance may be considered theatre, as a performing art, it focuses almost exclusively on live performers creating a self contained drama. A performance qualifies as dramatic by creating a representational illusion.

By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of the human tendency for storytelling. Since its inception, theatre has come to take on many forms, utilizing speech, gesture, music, dance, and spectacle, combining the other performing arts, often as well as the visual arts, into a single artistic form.

The word derives from the Ancient Greek theatron (θέατρον) meaning "the seeing place."

Theater is more often than nor, used synonymously with play or drama. In its broadest sense, theatre includes dance, opera, mime, and other spectacles. As has been said, plays are not meant to be merely read, but to be performed on stage, with costumes, make-up, stage props, and lighting providing added dimensions to the theater-goers experience. For these reason. The reading of plays, at best, is only an approximation of such an experience. Added depth and understanding of plays may be gained from dramatic readings or acting out of important or climatic scenes in class, or even to oneself, to get the idea of the other elements of the dramatic experience.

The ancient Greeks began formalising theatre as an art, developing strict definitions of tragedy and comedy as well as other forms, including satyr plays. Like the religious plays of ancient Egypt, Greek plays made use of mythological characters. The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism, acting as a career, and theatre architecture. In the modern world these works have been adapted and interpreted in thousands of different ways in order to serve the needs of the time. Examples are offered by Antigone, used in 1944 by Anouilh to make a statement about the Nazi occupation of France, and by Brecht in 1948, likening Creon to Hitler and Thebes to defeated Germany.

Western theatre continued to develop under the Roman Empire, in medieval England, and continued to thrive, taking on many alternate forms in Spain, Italy, France, and Russia in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The general trend over the centuries was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and the Renaissance and toward a more realistic style, especially following the Industrial Revolution. A uniquely North American theatre developed with the colonization of the new world.

The history of Eastern theatre is traced back to 1000 BC with the Sanskrit drama of ancient Indian theatre. Chinese theatre also dates back to around the same time. Japanese forms of Kabuki, Noh, and Kyogen date back to the 17th century AD. Other Eastern forms were developed throughout China, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

The most popular forms of theatre in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husavn ibn Ali. Live secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theatre.

Drama

Drama (literally translated as action, from a verbal root meaning "To do") is the branch of theatre in which speech, either from written text (plays), or improvised is paramount. And the companion word drama is also Greek, dran meaning to do. Classical forms of drama, including Greek and Roman drama, classic English drama including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and French drama including Molière is still performed today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TchezxzvCw0

Music and theatre have always had a close relationship. Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, dance routines, and spoken dialogue. Modern musical theatre emerged from the variety, vaudeville, and music hall genres of the late 19th and early 20th century. Musical theatre generally includes a combination of dialogue, song and dance, and spectacle. Contemporary Broadway musicals often include lavish costumes and sets supported by million dollar budgets.

Example of Musical Theater.. (HSM 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E_kReLc864

Theatre productions that use humour as a vehicle to tell a story qualify as comedies. This may include a modern farce such as Boeing Boeing or a classical play such as As You Like It. Theatre expressing bleak, controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way is referred to as black comedy.

Example of Comedy Presentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4cmrMJul1g

A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer. Miming is to be distinguished from silent comedy, in which the artist is a seamless character in a film or sketch.

The performance of pantomime originates at its earliest in Ancient Greece; the name is taken from a single masked dancer called Pantomimus, although performances were not necessarily silent. In Medieval Europe, early forms of mime such as mummer plays and later dumbshows evolved. In early nineteenth century Paris, Jean-Gaspard Deburau solidified the many attributes that we have come to know in modern times — the silent figure in whiteface.

Example of Mime Presentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVWzLfgC2ug

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