To begin, with theater is a type of collaborative art, which consists of live performance. This is also a type of art in which performers present before live spectators. Actors dispose before their audiences an experience of genuine or fanciful events. Performers divulge meaningful messages to spectators through language, gestures, music and songs. In order to enhance or intensify their audiences experiences things are also used such as, scenery, lighting, prompts, make up, costumes and the blending of tones and sounds. Also messages are passed to spectators that will evoke a range of catharsis, feelings and empathetic reactions. Theater can be a space, a stage, room, area, range or even a territory. Theater has during times joy, conflict and sadness boosted individual moral, and has served as a point of focus during times of our Nations struggles and opposition.
In looking at the National Theater in Washington D.C., concerned citizens gathered together on September 17, 1834 and decided to that the nation’s capital needed an eloquent and exquisite theater. A site was chosen only a few blocks away from the White House. This was an area was chosen
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because it was where federal governmental officials often gathered for socialization. Stocks were sold in order to raise monies to erect this magnificent theater. The finished building had elegant interior that consisted of cerulean shimmering blue walls, boxed tiers, a domed ceiling, allegorical scenes and pictures of historical events like the showing of the Declaration of Independence, and the Wings of Time located on the arch of the proscenium. The theater’s curtain had a picture of President George Washington and Mt. Vernon that reached across the stage. The theater’s first time production was “Man of the World.’’ The National Theater has been the location for presidential balls, and world premiere musicals and performances. President Lincoln found out that he was reelected for a second term while he was at the theater. There he saw his killer John W. Booth, who was a young, attractive and promising actor perform. Booth gained his rise in performance due to his famous father Brutus Booth. John W. Booth was performing in the play “Shakespeare’s Richard the Third.” In fact, President Lincoln son who is Tad Lincoln, was at the theater watching the performance of “The Wonderful Lamp and Aladdin” when his father President Lincoln was killed. Also, every president has attended productions with in the National Theater since President Andrew Jackson and it continues to be in operation even on today. The National Theater in Washington, D.C.
has contributed a significant role to history and all forms of acting because of its role in the civil rights movement. Specifically, many theaters in the U.S. were racially segregated. Although, African Americans were allowed to perform on stages, African American spectators were forced to sit in a specification section in theaters built especially for them. This holds true for the National Theater located in Washington D.C. When Porgy and Bess ran in 1936, Todd Duncan who led the cast, protested against African American segregation in theaters. Duncan refused to act in theaters that refused him seating because of his ethnicity. Duncan’s demands honored by theater management, who then allowed the first performance of African American individuals to be in the National
Theater. The National Theater in Washington has been rebuilt several times within the 19th century, due to its destruction by multiple fires. Although, the 1855 foundation of brick and stone are still standing, the theater’s structures have undergone under gone major renovation in the years 1982-1983. Steal beams have been added to prevent erosion which has created by the Tiber Creek. Also, the original dressings rooms were modernized. U.S. President Ronald Ragan approached the National Theater’s stage with high solutes for the building’s new reconstructions. Yes, many famous artists have appeared on the stage at the National Theater. Artists such as: Jenny Lind and the “Swedish Nightingale.” President Fillmore, his wife, the Supreme Court, and the Presidents Cabinet attended this performance to glimpse Lynn as well. During the 20th Century stars two have perfumed at the theater also include: W.C. Fields, Vincent Price, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Buster Keaton, Julie Holiday, Debbie Reynolds, Dudley Moore, Pearl Bailey, Sir Lawrence Oliver. The national Theatre that is located at 1321 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. has been the platform for many roles played in our counties national events. The theater has during the times of war, conflict and sadness boosted socialites’ morals, and has served as a point of focus during times of civil rights struggles and opposition during the 20th Century.
Concluding the Federal Theatre Project, it has accomplished the goal of introducing theatre to millions who had never seen theatre before. It employed thousands of people, initiated European epic theatre and Living Newspaper theatre techniques to the United States, and for this reason could be seen as a vast achievement.
Minstrel shows were developed in the 1840's and reached its peak after the Civil War. They managed to remain popular into the early 1900s. The Minstrel shows were shows in which white performers would paint their faces black and act the role of an African American. This was called black facing. The minstrel show evolved from two types of entertainment popular in America before 1830: the impersonation of blacks given by white actors between acts of plays or during circuses, and the performances of black musicians who sang, with banjo accompaniment, in city streets. The 'father of American minstrelsy' was Thomas Dartmouth 'Daddy' Rice, who between 1828 and 1831 developed a song-and-dance routine in which he impersonated an old, crippled black slave, dubbed Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a fool who just spent his whole day slacking off, dancing the day away with an occasional mischievous prank such as stealing a watermelon from a farm. Most of the skits performed on the Minstrel shows symbolized the life of the African American plantations slaves. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and Rice performed it with great success in the United States and Britain, where he introduced it in 1836. Throughout the 1830s, up to the founding of the minstrel show proper, Rice had many imitators.
Out of the theatre district there are five different theatres. The Bank of America Theatre, originally titled the Majestic Theatre, first opened in 1906. It was Chicago’s first million-dollar-plus venue and the tallest building in the city at this time. It was doing well and was very successful, but then tragedy hit, and, due to the Great Depression, it was shut down for a total of fifteen years. It wasn’t reopened until 1945, after going through remodeling. In of April 2010, the Broadway Playhouse at the Water Tower ...
Pause for a second and think about a play or musical that you have seen. Consider the plot, whether you liked it or not and if the experience was positive or negative. Think about the characters, the costumes, and the emotions that were emitted. The discourse community of theatre is unique in the way that it is so complex and there are many different parts that ultimately come together to create a dynamic whole. The term discourse community is rather broad, but John Swales in his article “The Concept of Discourse Community” gives six characteristics that define it. Swales lists them saying,
Over the course of approximately one-hundred years there has been a discernible metamorphosis within the realm of African-American cinema. African-Americans have overcome the heavy weight of oppression in forms such as of politics, citizenship and most importantly equal human rights. One of the most evident forms that were withheld from African-Americans came in the structure of the performing arts; specifically film. The common population did not allow blacks to drink from the same water fountain let alone share the same television waves or stage. But over time the strength of the expectant black actors and actresses overwhelmed the majority force to stop blacks from appearing on film. For the longest time the performing arts were the only way for African-Americans to express the deep pain that the white population placed in front of them. Singing, dancing and acting took many African-Americans to a place that no oppressor could reach; considering the exploitation of their character during the 1930's-1960's acting' was an essential technique to African American survival.
The United States has long been a country that has accepted that change is a necessity for prosperity and growth. However, each change within the nation's history was hard fought against those who resisted such change either through racism, bigotry, and blatant discrimination. African American cinema is enshrouded in history that depicts these themes of racism, struggle, and deprivation. Yet, this same cinema also shows scenes of hope, artistic spirit, intellectual greatness, and joy. Black actresses, actors, directors, producers, and writers have been fighting for recognition and respect since the great Paul Robeson. The civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's was fueled by black cinema through films like A Raisin in the Sun. Progressions in the industry were hindered by blaxploitation films such as Shaft, but these too were overcome with the 1970's movies like Song. The true creativity and experiences of African Americans started to be shown in the 1980's with directors like Robert Townsend and Spike Lee. These directors helped enable black cinema to expand in the 90's with the creation of works ranging in brutal but honest portrayal of urban life to that of comedy. By analyzing Spike Lee's film Bamboozled, director John Singleton's Boyz in The Hood, and movies like Coming to America and House Party indicate that the experiences of African Americans and the way that they are depicted in cinema directly impacts the way mainstream society perceives them to be, while showing that African Americans are a major driving force behind creativity and ingenious inspiration behind many aspects of American life.
It is human nature to tell stories and to appreciate and participate in theatre traditions in every society. Every culture expresses theatre and may have their own traditions that have helped pave the way for how they are today. The involvement of African-Americans has increased tremendously in theatre since the nineteenth century and continues to increase as time goes on. African-Americans have overcome many obstacles with getting their rights and the participation and involvement of Theatre was something also worth fighting for. American history has played an important role with the participation of African-Americans in theatre. Slavery occurrence in America made it difficult for blacks in America to be taken seriously and to take on the characters of more serious roles. With many obstacles in the way African-Americans fought for their rights and also for the freedom that they deserved in America. As the participation of African-Americans involvement within the theatre increase so do the movements in which help make this possible. It is the determination of these leaders, groups, and Theaters that helped increase the participation and created the success that African-Americans received throughout history in American Theatre.
The purpose of theater is the same as storytelling as well as an entertainment field. As discussed in our lecture, it was a “Carnival” experience where people of different backgrounds or ethnicity come together and enjoy a show (Deaf Theater OLC). Moreover, there are collaboration that are present in the realm of Deaf Theater such as between the Deaf and Hearing. For instance, in the UK, there is a theater called Handprint Theater where Deaf and Hearing people work together (DeafUnity.org). Since 1991, their passion has been to impact the cultural lives of both deaf and hard-of-hearing people via storytelling.
Brockett, Oscar G., and Oscar G. Brockett. The Essential Theatre. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. Print.
Applied Theatre work includes Theatre-in-Education, Community and Team-building, Conflict Resolution, and Political theatre, to name just a few of its uses. However, Christopher Balme states that “Grotowski define acting as a communicative process with spectators and not just as a production problem of the actor” (Balme, 2008: 25). Applied Theatre practices may adopt the following “theatrical transactions that involve participants in different participative relationships” such as Theatre for a community, Theatre with a community and Theatre by a community Prentki & Preston (2009: 10). Whereas, applied theatre one of its most major powers is that it gives voice to the voiceless and it is a theatre for, by, and with the people. However, Applied Theatre practitioners are devising educational and entertaining performances bringing personal stories to life and build
Theatre will always survive in our changing society. It provides us with a mirror of the society within which we live, and where conflicts we experience are acted out on stage before us. It provides us with characters with which we identify with. The audience observes the emotions and actions as they happen and share the experience with the characters in real time.
Theatre as we know it now was born more than two thousand years ago and has gone through many streams until it reached the current modernity. Among these streams is the avant-garde theatre. This theatre achieved a break in the traditional theatre and became the forefront of a new experimental theatre. Therefore it is necessary to ask how this theatre started, what impact it had on society and if this type of theatre is still common in our modern era.
For thousands of years, people have been arguing that theatre is a dying art form. Many people think theatre is all just cheesy singing and dancing or just boring old Shakespeare, but there is much more to theatre than those two extremes. Theatre is important to our society because it teaches us more about real life than recorded media. Theatre has been around for thousands of years and began as a religious ceremony that evolved into an art form that teaches about the true essence of life. Theatre can incorporate profound, and provocative, observations of the human condition that can transcend time; lessons found in Greek plays can still be relevant to the modern world. People argue that the very essence of theatre is being snuffed out by modern
By 1970 the term, performance art was used globally and specifically defined as live art, not theater. Even though theater and performance art often times share the same stage, in practice they are very different. Performance art is not a form of representational art, rather a moment of acquiring multiple characters and creating a fusion between one and the next, but never allowing the true self to ever fully disappear. A performer of performance art is usually oneself either telling a story, a feeling, an opinion, whether it be through video, movement, music, television, poetry, sculpture, spoken dialogue or any mix of these. An actor usually is personifying someone else under very specific conditions. Performance art leaves more leeway for improvisational efforts to factor whether it is text based or strictly movement. The script is a security paper reassuring a certain aspect of structure, but does not hold an absolute strict compromise. No two performances are ever really alike. A script for an actor is a bible; it tells how and when an action will happen. All cues, lines and characterization get memorized and obsessively rehearsed so that every time performed an almost identical performance is released. Rehearsals for performance artists are much more conceptual and often times will include researching, gathering props and costumes and having discussions with collaborators in their rehearsal time. Maybe this is so due to the little or no technical training that a ...