Theater

Chapter 7:

The Renaissance

Italian Theatre

divided into 2 types:

Professional Theatre

Theatre for the court

Commedia dell’arte

Physical, highly improvisational style of theatre that originated in Italy in the 1500s. Most commedia troupes had10-12 members, both male and female performers, which used colorful costumes & masks. There were a few tragedies, but most are comedies that didn’t rely on scenery, and could be performed anywhere.

Scenarri

(scenarios): plot outlines that served as the scripts for commedia plays. The

scenario gives a summary of the story lines, certain complications faced by

protagonist(s) and how the story should end. The rest, including all of the dialogue, was improvised by the

actors.

Comedy Tonight!

Improvisation: unscripted form of theatre where the actors “make it up as they go,”

feeding off of the crowd.

Lazzi: standardized comic bits used in a commedia performance.

(pronounced Lot-cee)(example: The Three Stooges)

Renaissance Theatre

Stock Characters: The same familiar characters who appear in the various

commedia scenarios. There were three categories: lovers, masters, and servants.

The Lovers:

didn’t wear masks, wore the latest fashions, usually the children of the masters who didn’t want them (the children) to fall in

love. Usually asked their servants to help them meet or elope.

(think Romeo and Juliet)

The Masters:

There are 3 common types of masters

DOTTORE PANTALONE CAPITANO

Dottore:

• a lawyer or doctor who liked to show off how smart he was by speaking in Latin (his pronunciation and grammar were usually terrible).

Pantalone

• an old man with mask that had a large, hooked nose and a scraggly grey beard. (This is how Uncle Sam and Santa Claus developed.) They usually wore red.

Capitano

• a braggart who boasted of his prowess in love and war but was really coward. He wore a cape, sword, and a large, feathered headdress.

The Servants:

• usually called the zanni, from which we get the word “zany”. There were usually 2 servants in each company (one clever and one stupid). One of the most popular servants was Arlecchino (Harlequin) who was a mixture of cunning and stupidity. Wore a clown-like suit with a black mask and carried a slapstick.

Slapstick:

• a device made out of 2 pieces of wood hinged together. When the two pieces came together with force it would make a loud slapping sound. Commedia characters often beat one another with these sticks. It is from this simple prop that we get the modern term slapstick comedy.

Comeddia Literature

• L’Arte Rappresentativa: A book published in 1699, this is Andrea Perrucci’s first hand account of how a commedia dell’arte troupe operated.

• Architettura: Sebastiano Serlio’s 1545 account of how to create a performance space within an existing room.

Humanism:

• by the early 16th century, the surviving plays of the great Greek and Roman playwrights had been rediscovered, translated, and published in Italian. This movement strove desperately to recreate the style, staging, and structure of classic Greek and Roman Theatre.

Invented by Italians

- Perspective Scenery: a form of three dimensional scenic painting that is still extremely common today.

- Raked Stage: on a raked stage, the stage floor gets higher as it moves away from the audience so that the back of the stage is actually taller than the front.

- Proscenium Arch: the most common form of stage. The audience faces the stage from only one direction and the performance area is framed by a large arch (much like a picture frame). Much of our modern stage terminology comes from the proscenium.

Back to Basics

• Autos Sacramentales: Spanish liturgical dramas performed on the pageant wagons and platform stages popular in medieval times.

• Iambic Pentameter: (blank verse): style of verse which Shakespeare wrote in. Blank verse lines contain ten syllables, with light and strong stresses alternating, five light and five strong.

University Wits:

• A student theatre group that wrote plays in the style of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe were both members of this group.

Playing in the Yard

• Yard: in the theatres of Elizabethan England, this was a standing room only section on the ground in the center of the theatre, where approximately 800 people could stand and watch the play. (used in the thrust stages)

• Groundlings: notoriously rowdy patrons who watch Elizabethan plays from the yard.

Thrust stage:

• in a thrust stage, the audience is seated on three sides and tends to be nearer the action than in a proscenium staging, but since one wall is available for scenic elements, there can be more use of spectacle than in the arena. The runways used at fashion shows are a type of thrust stage.

Elizabethan Theatre

• The Globe Theatre: perhaps the best known Elizabethan theatre. It was the original staging ground for some of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

• Spoken décor: convention of the Elizabethan stage where the actors described a play’s different locations to the audience.

Theatrical Terms

• Role: modern term for the part an actor plays. It comes from the Elizabethan Practice of handling the actor his lines on a roll of paper.

• Part: a modern term for the character an actor plays in a production. It comes from the Elizabethan practice of only giving the actor the part of the play he was in, rather than an entire script.

Mardi Gras’ Predecessor

• Masques: Lavish productions, usually staged in banquet halls for the monarch and an invited audience.

Time for Some French

• French Theatre: Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s prime minister wants France as cultural center of Europe. They adopt perspective theatre and proscenium arch theatre from Italy. Richelieu wrote rigid interpretation of Aristotle’s writing on theatre as the “neoclassical ideal”.

Neoclassical Ideal:

• A series of rigid rules for theatrical writing and performance based on the humanist interpretation of Aristotle’s writings on theater. The neoclassical ideal came to dominate most of European theatres for centuries

Neoclassical rules:

• Only 2 legitimate forms of drama: tragedy and comedy, never to be mixed together in one play.

• Tragedy had to be stories about royalty and nobility.

• Comedy should feature the middle and lower classes.

• All plays must contain five acts. • Play must uphold the concept of “poetic justice”.

Bad character punished and good rewarded. • Misinterpreted Aristotle’s 3 unities.

Three Unities

• The neoclassicist believed that all plays should adhere to the unities of time (all of the play’s action should occur within 24 hours), play (all of the play should occur in the same place), and the action (the play should have only one plot).

France’s Big 3 Playwrights

• Pierre Corneille (1606-1684): a tragedian, best known for his 1637 play, Le Cid. Was later attacked by critics for not following the “rules” of French theatre.

• Jean Racine (1639-1699): wrote many adaptations of Sophocles and Euripides. Most popular is Phaedra, a tragedy. Strict follower of neoclassical rules and unities.

And the BIGGEST…

• Moliere (1622-1673): considered the greatest French playwright of all time. Joined a traveling theatre troupe at 21. Studied and mastered the techniques of Italy’s commedia dell’arte; huge influence on his writing. Most famous for his comedies; many of his plays were satire on French court & society, causing controversy.

French Staging Innovations:

• Both audience and stage sit for the entire performance.

• Seating of audience on the stage.• Women as well as men in acting companies with

equal rights. • Totally indoor theatre – experimenting with

variety of candles & oil lamps for lighting the stage. Used reflectors for increased illumination.