: Dance gives individuals a way to express details in a different manner than speech. Throughout the years there have been many ways a person can express their self through words, facial expressions, art, music, and dance. Theater is one of the major ways that expression has taken place throughout history. Theater can be traced all the way back to the sixteenth century in Italy. “The first opera still performed today was La favola d’Orfeo (The Legend of Orpheus), composed by Monteverdi in 1607, 400 years ago”. (“History Opera Europa” 1). The very first commercial opera house that opened to the public with larger groups was in Venice back in 1637. In these theatrical plays the music was more the background noise to the actual singing and dancing of the play. The actors and actresses tried to portray the force of words and dance to the audience through movement not sound. The actions of the actors pushed feelings into the heart of the watchers and made the audience be in that moment of what was taking place. …show more content…
The types of theater productions started to include not just dramas but comics and happier plays. The producers wanted the audience to feel the joys of the love story taking place before them. Changes in modernism and technology has pushed a lot of older classic theater out of view and into the new age of dance and expression. There are so many different plays that are in place now it can suite just about any audience. Theater is an organic thing it lives, breathes, and evolves daily. There will always be aspiring producers and dancers to handle the advances that are insured to come into theater. Theater is one of the most important roles of world history showing the changes that have inspired over expression for thousands of
Modern professional theatre is characterized by the widespread challenge to established rules surrounding theatrical representation. This resulted in the development of many new forms of theatre. Such included modernism, expressionism, impressionism, political theatre and other forms of experimental theatre. It is also characterized by the continuing development of already established theatrical forms like naturalism and realism. As years went by, the reputation of modern theatre has been improving, after being belittled through the nineteenth century. However, the growth of other media, more specifically movies, resulted in a smaller role culturally.
In the 1960’s, culture and society saw great upheavals and changes, changes that would affect every aspect of life in America. Naturally, theatre came to be affected in due time, as could be seen in the new subject matter found in the plots of new plays. One of the aspects that came to be affected was scenery of the time. Theater is a diverse and complex art. It requires collaboration among many artists, craftspeople, and managers in order to create a performance for audiences. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, theatrical events have included such production elements as costumes, scenery, properties, music, and choreography. Lighting and sound are more recent additions. Each element in today's theater has its own designer, composer, or choreographer, who collaborates with the director to focus the audience's attention on the actor in the special environment or seeing place. In addition to the actor and the audience in a space, other elements of theater include a written or improvised text, costumes, scenery, lights, sound, and properties (props). Most theatrical performances require the collaborative efforts of many creative people working toward a common goal: the production. Fundamental to the theater experience is the act of seeing and being seen; in fact, the word theater comes from the Greek word theatron, meaning "seeing place." Throughout the history of world cultures, actors have used a variety of locations for theater, including amphitheaters, churches, marketplaces, garages, street corners, warehouses, and formal buildings. It is not the building that makes theater but rather the use of space for actors to imitate human experience before audiences.
In each and every culture theater exists. However, they are not always portrayed in the same way and could take up many different forms. What differ them from others is influenced by the convention of what governs them. What happen on stage depends on the conventions of the theater. Convention is define as “Rules governing a given style of theater, such as fourth-wall verisimilitude or bare stage. These rule should not be violated, but often are, as when actors “break” the fourth wall by delivering a line directly toward the audience” (Altshuler and Janaro 208). The condition governing the staging and performance are known as theatrical conventions, in which what the audiences agree to accept as what is real (Altshuler and Janaro 173). In comparing an Elizabethan and a modern theater to each other there are many differences and similarities between the two. By comparing William Shakespeare “Hamlet” to Lorraine Hansberry “A Raisin in the Sun”, we can see that there is a major difference between the two
years ago the word "theater" possessed a different meaning than it does in today's society. The
How can two authors write stories almost half a century apart where the characters have comparable qualities? William Shakespeare and John Milton wrote a play and a poem, respectively, where two characters share qualities. These characters are Macbeth from Macbeth and Satan from Paradise Lost. Despite the similarities between the characters of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, which include their strong will, pride, and insatiable greed, they have qualities that set them apart. Their differences are Macbeth’s overall righteousness, human characteristics, and being controlled by fate. Satan on the other hand, is evil, superhuman, and acts on his free will.
Firstly, theatre allows the actors to connect with the audience on a whole new level. With movies, only certain people appear on screen, even with others in a scene. Alternatively, theatre provides many other people and objects to look at during long dialogues. Because of how the sounds and actors surround an audience, allowing them to feel included in the scene, the passion emitted by the actor creates a powerful connection with the audience.
Musical theatre is a unique adaptation to the classical western theatre utilizing music, song, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance to convey the humor, pathos, love, anger, and all the other possible feelings of the human experience ad infinitum. This is perfectly described by an E.Y. Harburg quote, a favorite of my own professor and famous producer, Stuart Ostrow, “Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.” This is the very characteristic that has allowed musical theatre to not only survive but to continuously impact humanity over the course of history, from humble ancient antecedents of theatre to the multi-million institution of the modern musical on Broadway. It has consistently proven that although the technological advances of humanity and the mediums from which information is conveyed to the masses are always changing, that the musical theatre shall always remain as a defining cultural trait of humanity.
One could argue that musical theatre definitively changed the state of music, and to some extent, the world, through its effective combination of music and dialogue, diversity, and display of both social commentary and human
It is true that the art of performing stories with music in front of large audiences dates back in time to Ancient Greece. The great Greek playwrights commonly included music and dance in some of their stage comedies and tragedies. These performances contributed in the development of musical theatre as we know it today. Theatre coupled with song and dance became more popular in the 1600 -1700’s. Ballad operas became popular, using some comedy and popularly known songs. Some critics of the theatre do not believe that musical theater descended from opera, and in fact, they feel it does not try to imitate grand opera. Despite being called “comic operas”, shows on Broadway such as Robin Hood were not really operas at all they were more musicals.
The performances included opera-styled singing with intricate hand gestures. I used to think that the Chinese theater performances my grandparents watched on TV were too over-the-top and unnatural, but after reading about the history and meanings behind Chinese theater, I’ve developed a new perspective on the style and have come to admire the beauty of cultural differences in theatrical arts. Chinese theater’s “traditional performance” features a synthesis of poetry, singing, and dancing. In present day, “traditional performance” has undergone an improvement toward what can be termed “characterization performance,” which emphasizes the performer’s internal experience of the character played and the artistically truthful portrayal of feelings and thoughts (cite). Different cultures contribute to the varying theater styles. For example, “chinese playgoers are familiar with the stories, characters, and conventions...the objective of the Chinese performer is to meet the high expectations of the playgoers” (cite). Thus, Chinese performers are more conscious of ensuring that their gestures and body movements appear aesthetically beautiful to satisfy their audiences’ expectations. The knowledge of the diverse approaches of theater in different regions is significant for respecting a theater piece, because theater from different cultures than one’s own should be evaluated and appreciated with the viewpoint of that
Theatre serves to reflect society. From Shakespeare to Sophocles, a playwright’s work illustrates the different mechanics within a culture, time period, or society. Theatre offers viewers the experience of taking a step back and looking in on themselves. In this way, theatre is a mirror of the world and the way it functions. In the time period from 1968 to 1983, the world was transitioning.
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
Theatre first came about from all different cultures acting out part of their bible, or performing rituals to the Gods. It was not until the middle ages when dramatists wrote about all aspects of life. Theatre has therefore changed continuously to suit the demands of each new age for fantasy, spectacle, or serious drama.