Early stage lighting, are provided first with candles and later by oil lamps was dim and ineffective; Most of the time, roughness in make-up would pass unnoticed. With the innovation of electric lights came to theater makeup material needed to be new and more skilled techniques of application. A solution was found by using stick greasepaint, created in the 1860’s in Germany by Ludwig Leichner, Wagnerian opera singer. In 1890 the demand for stage makeup has justified its manufacture on a commercial scale. Half a century later, in the form of a stick greasepaint has given way to more manageable cream, although superior quality greasepaint in mixing the colors is still valuable. Another big innovation in stage makeup emerged in 1914 when the icon
Max Factor developed pancake makeup, which is a water-based makeup that provides thick, matte coverage. This innovation has been run through today, although formulas continue to grow.
Eighteenth century British theatre was perhaps the starting point that would evolve into modern theatre. Women started to be allowed on stage and acting techniques were beginning to change. Leading performers were like celebrities with a number of fans. Theatre was an intricate part of the social ladder. In the overall scheme of things the actors and actresses played an important part in making the theatre what it was. Without the performers there wouldn’t really be theatre, so in order to understand the eighteenth century British theatre the performers of that era need to be understood.
The minstrel show is considered by many as the first American form of musical theatre (Bordman, 2010). However, the tradition of minstrelsy, in various forms, dates back to well before Thomas Dartmouth Rice first jumped Jim Crow. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, it was common for actors to darken their faces for dramatic effect, as illustrated by Shakespeare’s Othello (Strausbaugh, 2010). It could be said that minstrelsy continues to be alive and well today, in the form of reality television and hip-hop culture. While opinions on what may be considered minstrelsy today may differ, there is no denying that Rice revolutionized how the centuries old tradition of blackface was used to create a new art form, the minstrel show.
The Dressmaker is a film based on the novel by Rosalie Ham and directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse that portrays the morals of the people living in the community of Dungatar in the rural Australia. The film mainly engages with the themes of bullying, isolation and grief and loss. The director’s unique and distinctive visual style that has focused on the strongest aspects of the conservative society of the countryside in the 1950’s explores the lives of people settled there. Moorhouse has used cinematic techniques of symbolism, cinematography and sound effects in the film to enhance the audience’s engagement.
Rigaud was most popular for its perfumes, which it has produced since 1892. This collage not only highlights the popular makeup looks of the 1920’s, but also the popular products. The first version of mascara, mostly Maybelline, was a block of pigment which, when combined with water, could be brushed onto the lashes. Rouge also became popular and was packaged as pigment in metal tins.
“You know some guys just can’t hold their arsenic” (Chicago). Theater in the 1920’s was greatly influenced by prohibition, mobsters and large murder cases as shown in the musical Chicago. Prohibition fueled many of the social issues of the day and also influenced theater. 1920’s theater was in turmoil as American society struggled to establish a new moral code. The musical Chicago gives examples of corruption in the legal system and the changing roles of women in society.
Since theatre was established as an art form, it has constantly been changing and developing as new methods of theatre styles came to light. This is also true with how musical theatre developed into how we know it today. Vaudeville and burlesque were forms of theatre in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that forged the way for the American musical to emerge. The elements that writers used from vaudeville allowed for not just musical acts to be performed during the course of the story, but eventually became a way for the story to further be told. The American musical was not always as big as it is today, and vaudeville and burlesque acts made it possible for such a type of performance style to develop. Musical writers used multiple elements, not just the song element, in their stories. This change did not just happen overnight. The evolution from vaudeville and burlesque was a gradual one, taking years to further develop the performance styles into the Broadway musical we can see today.
We have all seen it done before, either in real life or in the movies. A situation is funny because of the misinterpretation of someone's actions or the complete conflict of what a situation seems to be and what it really is. People come into contact with sight gags all the time. One might be trying to be sneaky and hide something and then when someone looks, one pretends to be doing something else not to get caught. One could also pantomime using an umbrella as a baseball bat. These are both basic forms of sight gags.
Their home is a cosy place for them to live in. There is a picture on
The importance of costume in the theatre cannot be rated too highly, for it is not only an outward and immediately visible medium of expression for the actor himself but it is significant of the dramatic values which he is suppose to portray (Brooke, 1). The colors, texture and shape of a costume can create a feeling of the character that the actor may not be able to portray. There is not any definite information on what exactly the Greeks used for costumes because so much time has elapsed since the original records were taken. Most information is based on the different artifacts that were found, such as paintings and pottery. Sometimes hints of what was worn could be found in the plays themselves.
Elizabethan times in the 1600s was a progression for the world of the theater. A period named after Queen Elizabeth I of England, it is from this period that modern day society has its foundation for the entertainment industry. From the violence that was prevalent because of the Black Death, people turned to the theater for its poetry and romance. During this time period, there were two types of theatrical performances that were available for the people’s viewing, comedies or tragedies. These two genres were never really intertwined until the time of William Shakespeare. His play, Romeo and Juliet, is an example of both a comedy and a tragedy. It starts off as a comedy with Romeo weeping like a baby because of his love Rosaline, who did not love him back and ends as a tragedy when Romeo and Juliet, a pair of star crossed lovers, commit suicide because the lost of each other. It was also during Shakespeare’s time that writer were finally acknowledged by the people. Before this time, writers were not considered upper classman. Another group of people that began to rise into a higher social class were the actors. Actresses were not present back then because women were not allowed on stage. It was considered unladylike to have a female actor. Men played all the parts. Theater owners were dependent on actors to make them a profit. Rehearsals for the plays were fairly short, only lasting for about a week. The performances themselves would only show for three to four days.
Without light, the theatre cannot exist, that much is certain. As actors, as audience members, as technical visionaries, we are only as powerful as the light we are given. The extent to which we depend upon light in performance has changed dramatically throughout history, however, as light technology developed and expanded. In the history of performance, the artistic community is constantly victim to the limits of lighting technology, and exponentially altered by breakthroughs. From the utilization of candles and natural light to isolated light and electricity, the histories of illumination and theatre are virtually inseparable, and continue to push the boundaries of live performance.
15). Reasoning from this statement, it is very possible, that to be able to create the believable gender image, actors had to wear some type of makeup ( in more recent performance, ‘the thick, white face-paint was applied on grown men as a clear sign of femininity’)( Carson, Cooper,2008: p. 69). Furthermore, as Cooper remarks in Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance drama, in Shakespearean times, the use of make-up was a sign of power and authority, and this is because of the reason that the Queen Elizabeth was applying the face paint on herself (2006: p. 34). Additionally, the puritan minister Thomas Tuke, in his A Discourse of Painting and Tincturing, by openly engaging against the painting camouflage controversy , provided also an evidence, that pearl was used in Elizabethan era as a make-up ingredient to add the shimmering effect, and to increase actors visibility in the theatre. ( Tuke,
Geddes' most notable contribution to stage design was in lighting. Back then, the sole purpose of lighting was visibility.
Fashion and film are art forms that have coexisted for decades, and although they are different, they also possess similar qualities. Pamela Church Gibson wrote in her book Film and Celebrity Culture that “film had a greater influence on fashion than any other form of visual culture” (Gibson 55). Fashion is an important part of film as it aids directors and writers in bringing characters and their personalities to life. Simultaneously, fashion has also benefited from films, as films are a popular source of inspiration for designers, who can be inspired by anything from storylines to characters. In an article, titled Film and Fashion: Just Friends, for the New York Times, Ruth La Ferla wrote that “wittingly or not, those viewers take in colors, subtle tactile impressions or an overall atmosphere that can linger in the mind for years, part of a vast store of images that may surface at any time” (La Ferla).
An unexpected stimulus came from touring English troupes that had firmly established themselves in Germany by the end of the 16th century. Although there was a good deal of cross-fertilization between England and the Continent, many English actors chose exile as an escape from monopolies, suppression, and the withdrawal of playing licenses at home. They gave public performances in towns or at rural fairs and private ones in the halls of nobles. Robert Browne's company was the first, arriving in Frankfurt in 1592. In a country where local theatre was weighed down by excessive moralizing, these actors made an immediate impact through their robustness and vivid professionalism. Their repertoire consisted mainly of pirated versions of Elizabethan tragedies and comedies, performed in English, though heavily cut and padded with enough music, dancing, acrobatics, and dumb show to overcome the language barrier. In between the acts a clown figure, combining the English fool and the German Narr (from the Fastnachtsspiel), took over with improvised antics in pidgin English sprinkled with Dutch and German phrases. Thomas Sackville created one of the first of such clown figures in the character Jan Bouschet. Similar English creations were Hans Stockfisch and Pickelherring--prototypes of the totally German character Hanswurst, who found his way into all the improvised comedies of the day. As the proportion of German actors in the English companies increased, a more indigenous drama developed known as Haupt-und-Staatsaktionen. As this term implies, such plays dealt with the intrigues of high characters in high places and abounded with blustering rhetoric and gory sensationalism. The last English troupes left Germany in 1659, by which time the Italian style of staging, with its perspective scenery, had become the fashion in spectacular court operas and the elaborate productions of Jesuit school plays (see above).