"The Folies-Bergères [sic] , rue Richter 32, near the Boulevard Montmartre, a very popular resort... visitors take seats where thy please, or promenade in the galleries, while musical, dramatic and conjuring performances are given on the stage. Admission 2Fr"
Quoted by T. J. Clark
The Folies-Bergère was the first music-hall to be opened in Paris. It was conceived in conscious imitation of the Alhambra in London, a music hall known and much-loved for broad comedy, opera, ballet and circus.
The Folies-Bergère was supposed to be the Folies Trevise, because it was on the corner of the rue Richter and the rue Trevise. The Duc de Trevise would not allow his name to be brought into such potential ill-repute. The rue Bergère, a road named after a master dyer, was a block or so away. Folies came from the Latin, foliae, meaning leaves but transmogrified into field and thence to a place for open-air entertainment.
The Folies-Bergère opened in May 1869, not far from the heart of the post-Haussmann cultural centre of Paris, south of Montmartre, a little east of the boulevard des Italiens (known simply as The Boulevard). Entry cost 2 francs for an unreserved seat.
In November 1871, following the considerable interruptions of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, the theatre was taken over by Leon Sari, who remodelled the auditorium, put in the famous promenade, and installed a garden with a large central fountain.
A Folies-Bergère show typically included ballet, acrobatics, pantomime, operetta, animal acts, many including spectacular special effects. However, the Folies-Bergère was perhaps more well-known for its sensual allures, as described by Huysmans and Maupassant.
The women of the promenoir were required to demonstrate discretion; none were allowed in without fortnightly-renewable cards issued by the management. This arrangement lasted until 1918.
Artists and writers were drawn to the Folies-Bergère and establishments like it not least because they were fascinating venues for the practice of social anthropology, where different classes met in an environment in which strict bourgeois morality held no sway whatsoever. Manets picture features his friends - artists and models; it is the kind of fashionable place in which he spent his evenings.
Folies-Bergère, Parisian music hall and variety-entertainment theatre that is one of the major tourist attractions of France. Following its opening in a new theatre on May 1, 1869, the Folies became one of the first major music halls in Paris. During its early years it presented a mixed program of operetta and pantomime, with the renowned mime Pierre Legrand performing the latter.
In 1887 the Folies' highly popular revue entitled “Place aux Jeunes” established it as the premiere nightspot in Paris. By the last decade of the 19th century, the theatre's repertory encompassed musical comedies and revues, operettas, vaudeville sketches, playlets, ballets, eccentric dancers, acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers, and magicians. When the vogue of nudity seized the music halls of Paris in 1894, the Folies elaborated it to such an extent that the theatre's reputation for sensational displays of female nudity came to overshadow its other performances.
The Folies achieved international repute under the management of Paul Derval (from 1918 to 1966). He staged a series of sumptuous and grandiose spectacles featuring beautiful young women parading in a state of near nudity (despite their gaudy costumes) against exotic backdrops. Parisians and tourists alike were also attracted to the singers, acrobats, and dramatic sketches that made up the rest of the program. The Folies has showcased the talents of many of the great entertainers and music-hall artists of France from the late 19th century on. Among these have been Yvette Guilbert, Mistinguett, Fernandel, Josephine Baker, and Maurice Chevalier.
The Folies-Bergère was managed by Hélène Martini from 1974. Each of its shows requires about 10 months of planning and preparation, 40 different sets, and 1,000 to 1,200 individually designed costumes. The titles of all the Folies' shows since the late 1880s have each consisted of a total of 13 letters.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Richard Pallardy.
Josephine Baker
Introduction & Top Questions
Fast Facts
Facts & Related Content
Quizzes
Media
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Additional Reading
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
American musician and actress
Florence Mills
Florence Mills
American dancer
Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald
American actress and singer
Judy Garland, 1945.
Judy Garland
American singer and actress
See All
Home
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Dance
Josephine Baker
French entertainer
Alternate titles: Freda Josephine McDonald
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
See all media
Born: June 3, 1906 Saint Louis Missouri
Died: April 12, 1975 (aged 68) Paris France
Top Questions
Who was Josephine Baker?
What was Josephine Baker's early life like?
How did Josephine Baker get famous?
What awards did Josephine Baker win?
Josephine Baker, original name Freda Josephine McDonald, (born June 3, 1906, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died April 12, 1975, Paris, France), American-born French dancer and singer who symbolized the beauty and vitality of Black American culture, which took Paris by storm in the 1920s.
Baker grew up fatherless and in poverty. Between the ages of 8 and 10 she was out of school, helping to support her family. As a child Baker developed a taste for the flamboyant that was later to make her famous. As an adolescent she became a dancer, touring at 16 with a dance troupe from Philadelphia. In 1923 she joined the chorus in a road company performing the musical comedy Shuffle Along and then moved to New York City, where she advanced steadily through the show Chocolate Dandies on Broadway and the floor show of the Plantation Club.
Rafael Nadal of Spain celebrates with the championship trophy during the trophy presentation ceremony after winning his Mens Singles final match against Daniil Medvedev of Russia at the 2019 US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center...
BRITANNICA QUIZ
This Day in History Quiz: June 3
Celebrities, politics, and more: How well will you fare on this quiz about June 3?
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
In 1925 she went to Paris to dance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in La Revue Nègre and introduced her danse sauvage to France. She went on to become one of the most popular music-hall entertainers in France and achieved star billing at the Folies-Bergère, where she created a sensation by dancing seminude in a G-string ornamented with bananas. She became a French citizen in 1937. She sang professionally for the first time in 1930, made her screen debut as a singer four years later in Zouzou, and made several more films before World War II curtailed her career.
During the German occupation of France, Baker worked with the Red Cross and the Résistance, and as a member of the Free French forces she entertained troops in Africa and the Middle East. She was later awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour with the rosette of the Résistance. After the war much of her energy was devoted to Les Milandes, her estate in southwestern France, from which she began in 1950 to adopt babies of all nationalities in the cause of what she defined as “an experiment in brotherhood” and her “rainbow tribe.” She adopted a total of 12 children. She retired from the stage in 1956, but to maintain Les Milandes she was later obliged to return, starring in Paris in 1959. She traveled several times to the United States to participate in civil rights demonstrations. In 1968 her estate was sold to satisfy accumulated debt. She continued to perform occasionally until her death in 1975, during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of her Paris debut.
small thistle New from Britannica
ONE GOOD FACT
Centuries ago, people in Southeast Asia developed a fermented fish sauce called ke-tchup. British traders brought the sauce to England, where variations were made using ingredients like mushrooms and walnuts, until tomato prevailed in the 19th century.
See All Good Facts
Her life was dramatized in the television movie The Josephine Baker Story (1991) and was showcased in the documentary Joséphine Baker. Première icône noire (2018; Josephine Baker: The Story of an Awakening).
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Patricia Bauer.
Erté
Introduction
Fast Facts
Facts & Related Content
Media
Images
More
Additional Reading
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Belorussian-born French artist
Pierre Cardin
Pierre Cardin
French designer
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
American artist
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
French entertainer
See All
Home
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Movie, TV & Stage Development & Production
Erté
Russian designer
Alternate titles: Romain de Tirtoff
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
Erté: evening gown
Erté: evening gown
See all media
Born: November 23, 1892 St. Petersburg Russia
Died: April 21, 1990 (aged 97) Paris France
Movement / Style: Art Deco
Erté, byname of Romain de Tirtoff, (born November 23, 1892, St. Petersburg, Russia—died April 21, 1990, Paris, France), fashion illustrator of the 1920s and creator of visual spectacle for French music-hall revues. His designs included dresses and accessories for women; costumes and sets for opera, ballet, and dramatic productions; and posters and prints. (His byname was derived from the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T.)
Erté: dress
Erté: dress
© Sevenarts Limited
Erté was brought up in St. Petersburg. In 1912 he went to Paris, where he briefly collaborated with Parisian couturier Paul Poiret. He then became a costume designer and began selling his pen-and-ink and gouache fashion illustrations to American fashion houses. From 1916 to 1937 he was under contract to the American fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. (A collection of Harper's Bazaar illustrations was published in Designs by Erté [1976] with text by Stella Blum.) His highly stylized illustrations depicted models in mannered poses draped in luxurious jewels, feathers, and soft, flowing materials against a background of interiors in the Art Deco style.
The same lavish style marked Erté's theatrical designs. For 35 years he designed elaborately structured opening tableaus, finale scenes, and costumes for the French theatre. He worked for the Folies-Bergère in Paris from 1919 to 1930. During the 1920s he costumed the performers appearing in such American musical revues as the Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals. In the 1960s Erté produced lithographs, serigraphs, and sheet-metal sculptures. His autobiography, Things I Remember, was published in 1975.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
music hall and variety
Introduction
Fast Facts
Related Content
More
More Articles On This Topic
Contributors
Article History
Home
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Theater
music hall and variety
entertainment
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
Key People: Charlie Chaplin Edith Piaf Josephine Baker Kate Smith May Irwin
Related Topics: minstrel show vaudeville burlesque show saloon gang show
music hall and variety, popular entertainment that features successive acts starring singers, comedians, dancers, and actors and sometimes jugglers, acrobats, and magicians. Derived from the taproom concerts given in city taverns in England during the 18th and 19th centuries, music hall entertainment was eventually confined to a stage, with the audience seated at tables; liquor sales paid the expenses. To discourage these entertainments, a licensing act was passed in 1751. The measure, however, had the contrary effect; the smaller taverns avoided obtaining licenses by forming music clubs, and the larger taverns, reacting to the added dignity of being licensed, expanded by employing musicians and installing scenery. These eventually moved from their tavern premises into large plush and gilt palaces where elaborate scenic effects were possible. “Saloon” became the name for any place of popular entertainment; “variety” was an evening of mixed plays; and “music hall” meant a concert hall that featured a mixture of musical and comic entertainment.
During the 19th century the demand for entertainment was intensified by the rapid growth of urban population. By the Theatre Regulations Act of 1843, drinking and smoking, although prohibited in legitimate theatres, were permitted in the music halls. Tavern owners, therefore, often annexed buildings adjoining their premises as music halls. The low comedy of the halls, designed to appeal to the working class and to men of the middle class, caricatured events familiar to the patrons—e.g., weddings, funerals, seaside holidays, large families, and wash day.
The originator of the English music hall as such was Charles Morton, who built Morton's Canterbury Hall (1852) in London. He developed a strong musical program, presenting classics as well as popular music. Some outstanding performers were Albert Chevalier, Gracie Fields, Lillie Langtry, Harry Lauder, Dan Leno and Vesta Tilley.
The usual show consisted of six to eight acts, possibly including a comedy skit, a juggling act, a magic act, a mime, acrobats, a dancing act, a singing act, and perhaps a one-act play.
In the early 20th century music halls were dwarfed by large-scale variety palaces. London theatres, such as the Hippodrome, displayed aquatic dramas, and the Coliseum presented reenactments of the Derby and chariot races of ancient Rome. These were short-lived, but other ambitious plans kept variety prosperous after the real music hall had been killed by the competition of the cinema.
Celebrities such as Sarah Bernhardt, Sir George Alexander, and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree put on one-act plays or the last acts of plays; musicians such as Pietro Mascagni and Sir Henry Wood gave performances with their orchestras; popular singers of the 1920s, such as Nora Bayes and Sophie Tucker, elicited great enthusiasm; Diaghilev's ballet, at the height of its fame, appeared in 1918 at the Coliseum on a program that included comedians and jugglers.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
small thistle New from Britannica
ONE GOOD FACT
Centuries ago, people in Southeast Asia developed a fermented fish sauce called ke-tchup. British traders brought the sauce to England, where variations were made using ingredients like mushrooms and walnuts, until tomato prevailed in the 19th century.
See All Good Facts
The advent of the talking motion picture in the late 1920s caused variety theatres throughout Great Britain to be converted into cinemas. To keep comedians employed, a mixture of films and songs called cine-variety was introduced, and there were attempts to keep theatres open from noon to midnight with nonstop variety. The Windmill Theatre near Piccadilly Circus, London, was notable among the few survivors that remained after World War II from what had been hundreds of music halls. The American equivalent of the British music hall is vaudeville. See also vaudeville.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
theatre
Introduction
Origins of theatre space
Developments in ancient Greece
Developments in ancient Rome
Developments in Asia
The Middle Ages in Europe
Developments of the Renaissance
Baroque theatres and staging
Developments in the 19th century
The evolution of modern theatrical production
Fast Facts
2-Min Summary
Facts & Related Content
Media
Videos
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Additional Reading
Contributors
Article History
Home
Visual Arts
Architecture
theatre
building
Alternate titles: theatron
By Clive Barker See All • Edit History
Teatro Farnese
Teatro Farnese
See all media
Key People: Sir John Vanbrugh Aldo Rossi Claude-Nicolas Ledoux Ange-Jacques Gabriel Marcel Breuer
Related Topics: theatre design planetarium amphitheatre showboat proscenium
Summary
Read a brief summary of this topic
theatre, also spelled theater, in architecture, a building or space in which a performance may be given before an audience. The word is from the Greek theatron, “a place of seeing.” A theatre usually has a stage area where the performance itself takes place. Since ancient times the evolving design of theatres has been determined largely by the spectators' physical requirements for seeing and hearing the performers and by the changing nature of the activity presented.
Origins of theatre space
Taormina, Sicily: theatre
Taormina, Sicily: theatre
Dennis Jarvis (CC-BY-2.0) (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
The civilizations of the Mediterranean basin in general, the Far East, northern Europe, and the Western Hemisphere before the voyages of Christopher Columbus in the second half of the 15th century have all left evidence of constructions whose association with religious ritual activity relates them to the theatre. Studies in anthropology suggest that their forerunners were the campfire circles around which members of a primitive community would gather to participate in tribal rites. Karnak in ancient Egypt, Persepolis in Persia, and Knossos in Crete all offer examples of architectural structures, purposely ceremonial in design, of a size and configuration suitable for large audiences. They were used as places of assembly at which a priestly caste would attempt to communicate with supernatural forces.
The transition from ritual involving mass participation to something approaching drama, in which a clear distinction is made between active participants and passive onlookers, is incompletely understood. Eventually, however, the priestly caste and the performer became physically set apart from the spectators. Thus, theatre as place emerged.
Developments in ancient Greece
Visual and spatial aspects
During the earliest period of theatre in ancient Greece, when the poet Thespis—who is credited both with inventing tragedy and with being the first actor—came to Athens in 534 BCE with his troupe on wagons, the performances were given in the agora (i.e., the marketplace), with wooden stands for audience seating; in 498, the stands collapsed and killed several spectators. Detailed literary accounts of theatre and scenery in ancient Greece can be found in De architectura libri decem, by the 1st-century-BCE Roman writer Vitruvius, and in the Onomasticon, of the 2nd century CE, by the Greek scholar Julius Pollux. As these treatises appeared several hundred years after classical theatre, however, the accuracy of their descriptions is questionable.
Little survives of the theatres in which the earliest plays were performed, but essential details have been reconstructed from the architectural evidence of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, which has been remodeled several times since its construction in stone by the politician Lycurgus on the south slope of the Acropolis about 330 BCE. The centre of the theatre was the original dancing place, a flat circular space containing the altar of Dionysus, called the orchestra. In the centre stood a platform with steps (bemata) leading to the altar (thymele). Nearby was the temple out of which the holy image would be carried on festival days so that the god could be present at the plays.
Theatrical representations, not yet wholly free of a religious element, directed their appeal toward the whole community, and attendance was virtually compulsory. Thus the first concern of theatre builders of the day was to provide sufficient space for large audiences. In the beginning, admission was free; later, when a charge was levied, poor citizens were given entrance money. It seems reasonable to assume, from the size of the theatres, that the actors performed on a raised platform (probably called the logeion, or “speaking place”) in order to be more visible and audible, while the chorus remained in the orchestra. In later times there was a high stage, with a marble frieze below and a short flight of steps up from the orchestra. The great Hellenistic theatre at Epidaurus had what is believed to have been a high, two-level stagehouse.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
The earliest productions did not have a background building. The actors dressed in the skēnē (from which the word “scene” is derived), which was then a small tent, and the chorus and actors entered together from the main approach, the parodos. The earliest properties, such as altars and rocks, could be set up at the edge of the terrace. The first extant drama for which a large building was necessary was Aeschylus' trilogy the Oresteia, first produced in 458 BCE. There has been controversy among historians as to whether the skēnē was set up inside a segment of the orchestra or outside the edge of the orchestra. The skēnē in its later development was probably a long, simple building at the left of the orchestra terrace.
In the first period of Greek drama, the principal element of the production was the chorus, the size of which appears to have varied considerably. In Aeschylus' Suppliants, there were 50 members of the chorus, but in his other plays there were only 12, and Sophocles called for 15. The size of the chorus became smaller in the 5th century, as the ritual element of drama diminished. Since the number of actors increased as the chorus shrank, and the plots of the dramas became more complex, doubling of roles became necessary. On a completely open stage such substitutions were delayed, and the suspense of the drama was dissipated. Dramatic plausibility was also vitiated by the fact that gods and mortals, enemies and friends, always entered from the same direction. The addition of a scenic facade, with three doors, more than doubled the number of entrances and gave the playwright more freedom to develop dramatic tension. About 425 BCE a firm stone basis was laid for an elaborate building, called a stoa, consisting of a long front wall interrupted at the sides by projecting wings, or paraskēnia. The spectators sat on wooden benches arranged in a fan shape divided by radiating aisles. The upper rows were benches of movable planks supported by separate stones planted in the ground. The seats of honour were stone slabs with inscriptions assigning them to the priests.
The background decoration consisted originally of a temporary wooden framework leaning against the front wall of the stoa and covered with movable screens. These screens were made of dried animal skins tinted red; it was not until Aeschylus that canvases in wooden frames were decorated according to the needs of a particular play. Aristotle credits Sophocles with the invention of scene painting, an innovation ascribed by others to Aeschylus. It is notable that Aeschylus took an interest in staging and is credited with the classic costume design. Simple Greek scenery was comparable with that of the 20th century; the impulse to visualize and particularize the background of the action became strong. Painted scenery was probably first used in production of the Oresteia; some 50 years afterward a second story was added to the wooden scene structure. A wooden colonnade, or portico, the proskēnion, was placed in front of the lower story of the building. This colonnade, which was long and low, suggested the exterior of either a house, a palace, or a temple. Painted screens set between the columns of the proskēnion suggested the locale.
In the beginning, scenery was probably altered slightly during the intermissions that separated the plays of a trilogy or a tetralogy or during the night between two festival days. By the latter part of the 5th century, scene changes were accomplished by means of movable painted screens. Several of these screens could be put up behind one another so that, when the first one was removed, the one immediately behind appeared.
Soon after the introduction of the facade, plays were uniformly set before a temple or a palace. To indicate a change of scene, the periaktoi were introduced. These were upright three-sided prisms—each side painted to represent a different locality—set flush with the palace or temple wall on either side of the stage. Several conventions were observed with regard to scenery; one was that if only the right periaktos was turned, it indicated a different locality in the same town. According to another convention, actors entering from the right were understood to be coming from the city or harbour and those from the left to be coming from the country.
The permanent facade was also used to hide the stage properties and the machinery. Evidence for the use of the so-called flying machine, the mēchanē (Latin machina), in the 5th century is given in the comedies of Aristophanes; a character in his play Peace ascends to heaven on a dung beetle and appeals to the scene shifter not to let him fall. The mēchanē consisted of a derrick and a crane. In the time of Euripides it was used conventionally for the epilogue, at which point a god descended from heaven to sort out the complications in the plot, a convention that became known as deus ex machina (“god from a machine”). The lavish use of flying machines is attested by the poet Antiphanes, who wrote that tragic playwrights lifted up a machine as readily as they lifted a finger when they had nothing else to say.
small thistle New from Britannica
ONE GOOD FACT
Centuries ago, people in Southeast Asia developed a fermented fish sauce called ke-tchup. British traders brought the sauce to England, where variations were made using ingredients like mushrooms and walnuts, until tomato prevailed in the 19th century.
See All Good Facts
A wheeled platform or wagon, called ekkyklēma, was used to display the results of offstage actions, such as the bodies of murder victims. The ekkyklēma, like the periaktoi, was an expedient for open-air theatre, in which the possibilities for creating realistic illusions were severely limited. A realistic picture of an interior scene under a roof could not be shown, because the roof would block the view of those in the higher tiered seats of the auditorium. So the Greeks, to represent the interior of a palace, for example, wheeled out a throne on a round or square podium. New machines were added in the Hellenistic period, by which time the theatre had almost completely lost its religious basis. Among these new machines was the hemikyklion, a semicircle of canvas depicting a distant city, and a stropheion, a revolving machine, used to show heroes in heaven or battles at sea.
Howard Bay
Clive Barker
George C. Izenour
Acoustics
Much recent study has centred on the problem of acoustics in the ancient theatre. The difficulty in achieving audibility to an audience of thousands, disposed around three-fifths to two-thirds of a full circular orchestra in the open air, seems to have been insoluble so long as the performer remained in the orchestra. A more direct path between speaker and audience was therefore essential if the unaided voice was to reach a majority of spectators in the auditorium. Some contend that the acoustical problems were to a degree alleviated when the actor was moved behind and above the orchestra onto the raised platform, with more of the audience thus being placed in direct line of sight and sound with him. By this time, the actors' masks had reached considerable dimensions, and there are grounds for believing that their mouth orifices were of help in concentrating vocal power—much as cupped hands or a rudimentary megaphone would be.
Increased architectural and engineering sophistication in the Hellenistic Age encouraged further innovations. The theatres of mainland Greece, the Aegean islands, and southern Italy had been constructed in hillsides whenever possible, so that excavation and filling were kept to a minimum; or, lacking a suitable slope, earth was dug out and piled up to form an embankment upon which stone seats were placed. By contrast, the cities of Asia Minor, which flourished during the Hellenistic Age, did not rely on a convenient slope on which to locate their theatres. The principles of arch construction were understood by this time, and theatres were built using vaulting as the structural support for banked seating. Archaeological remains and restoration of theatres at Perga, Side, Miletus, and other sites in what is now Turkey exhibit this type of construction. By a third method, auditoriums were hewed out of rock. Of some six such Greek theatres extant, two excellent examples (both extensively remodeled in Roman times) are the great theatre at Syracuse in Sicily and that at Argos in the Peloponnese. The best preserved of all Greek theatres, also in the Peloponnese and now partially restored, is the magnificent theatre at Epidaurus. This theatre provided seats for some 12,000 people, and its circular orchestra is backed by a stagehouse and surrounded on three sides by a stone, hillside-supported bank of seats. Both chorus and actors performed in the orchestra, but only the actors used the two levels of the stagehouse as well. Theatre construction flourished during the Hellenistic Age as never before in classical times, and no city of any size or reputation was without its theatre.
George C. Izenour
Developments in ancient Rome
The development of the theatre, following that of dramatic literature, was slower in Rome than in Athens. The essential distinction between Roman and Greek stage performances was that the Roman theatre expressed no deep religious convictions. Despite the fact that the spectacles were technically connected with the festivals in honour of the gods, the Roman audience went to the theatre for entertainment. The circus was the first permanent public building for spectacles, which included chariot races and gladiatorial fights. When Etruscan dancers and musicians were introduced in 364 BCE, they performed in either the circus, the forum, or the sanctuaries in front of the temples. The players brought temporary wooden stands for the spectators. These stands developed into the Roman auditorium, built up entirely from the level ground.
Stage design
The most important feature of the Roman theatre as distinct from the Greek theatre was the raised stage. As every seat had to have a view of the stage, the area occupied by the seating (cavea) was limited to a semicircle. As in Greek theatre, the scene building behind the stage, the scaenae frons, was used both as the back scene and as the actors' dressing room. It was no longer painted in the Greek manner but tended to have architectural decorations combined with luxurious ornamentation. The audience sat on tiers of wooden benches, spectacula, supported by scaffolding. There was no curtain; the back scene, with its three doors, faced the audience.
When the popular comedies or farces of southern Italy were introduced to Rome, they came with their own distinctive type of stage—the phlyakes stage. Comedies in Italy were mimes, usually parodies of well-known tragedies, and the actors were called phlyakes, or jesters. They used temporary stage buildings of three main forms. One was the primitive low stage, a rough platform with a wooden floor on three or four rectangular posts. The second was a stage supported by low posts, covered with drapery or tablets; sometimes steps led up to a platform and a door was indicated. The third type was a higher stage supported by columns, without steps but usually with a back wall. The stages often had a short flight of five to seven steps in the centre, leading to the podium. The forewall, covered with drapery, was often decorated, and the background wall usually had objects hanging from it. The rear wall sometimes had other columns, besides the ones set at the corners, as well as doors and, in several cases, windows to indicate an upper floor. The door was usually behind a heavily decorated porch, with a sloping or gabled roof supported by beams and cross struts. Among the furnishings there were usually trees, altars, chairs, thrones, a dining table, a money chest, and a tripod of Apollo (i.e., an oracular seat). The stage was set up in the marketplace in the smaller towns and in the orchestras of Greek theatres in the larger cities.
Coincident with the development of the phlyakes stages, and under the inspiration of Hellenistic colonists, the Romans began to build stone theatre buildings. Beginning by remodeling Greek and Hellenistic theatres, they eventually succeeded in uniting architecturally their own concept of the auditorium with a single-level, raised stage. This they did by limiting the orchestra to a half circle and joining it to the auditorium, thereby improving on the acoustics of Greek and Hellenistic theatres. They also brought to perfection the principles of barrel and cross vaulting, penetrating the seat bank at regular intervals with vomitoria (exit corridors). The raised stage was at a single, much lower level than in the Hellenistic theatre. It was roofed, and the number of entrances to it was increased to five: three, as before, in the wall at the rear of the stage and one at each side. The Romans' love of ostentatious architecture led them to adorn the permanent background with profuse sculptures. In some theatres, a drop curtain was used to signal the beginning and end of performance. In some cases, a canvas roof was hoisted onto rope rigging in order to shade the audience from the sunlight.
Howard Bay
Clive Barker
In Roman theatres the stage alone was used by the actors, who entered the playing space from one of the house doors or the side entrances in the wings. The side entrance on the audience's right signified the near distance and the one on the audience's left the farther distance. If a scene took place in a town, for instance, an actor exiting audience right was understood to be going to the forum; if he exited audience left, he might be going to the country or the harbour. Periaktoi at the side entrances indicated the scenery in the immediate neighbourhood. If the play required a character to move from one house to another without bringing him on the stage, vendu which represented the street, the actor was supposed to use the back door and the angiportum (i.e., an imaginary street running behind the houses). Since interior scenes could not be represented easily, all action took place in front of the houses shown in the background. If a banquet was to be depicted, the table and chairs would be brought on stage and removed at the end of the scene. Costumes were formalized, but real spears, torches, chariots, and horses were used.
The orchestra became part of the auditorium in Rome, reserved by law for those of privileged rank, who seated themselves there on a variety of portable chairs and litters. The orchestra was no longer needed as part of the performance area because the chorus had long since ceased to be an integral part of drama. The tragedies of Seneca, in the 1st century CE, included a chorus because they were patterned after Greek models. But they never achieved the popularity of earlier comedies, especially those of Plautus and Terence. These works had at first been performed on temporary wooden stages that had been erected on a convenient hillside and sometimes surrounded by temporary wooden seating.
Until the late republic, a puritanical Senate had banned all permanent theatre building within the city of Rome itself as decadent. Thus, theatres there were temporary structures, set up in the Campus Martius for the duration of public games. In 55 BCE, however, the triumvir Pompey the Great built Rome's first permanent stone theatre. Another public stone theatre was built in Rome in 13 BCE and was named after Marcellus, son-in-law of the emperor Augustus. Both were used for the scaenae ludi (“scenic games”), which were part of religious festivities or celebrations of victory in war and which were paid for by triumphant generals and emperors. During the period of the Roman Empire, civic pride demanded that all important cities have theatres, amphitheatres, and, in many instances, a small, permanently roofed theatre (theatrum tectum, an odeum, or music hall) as well. In fact, it is from outlying cities of the empire such as Arausio (Orange), Thamagadi (Timgad), Leptis Magna, Sabratha, and Aspendus that archaeological evidence provides most of the firsthand knowledge of Roman theatre building. The best preserved Roman theatre, dating from about 170 CE, is at Aspendus in modern Turkey.
Vitruvius' treatise on architecture
Literature is another source for knowledge of Roman theatre. De architectura libri decem (“Ten Books on Architecture”), by the Roman architect Vitruvius (1st century BCE), devotes three books to Greek and Roman theatre design and construction. The author gives general rules for siting an open-air theatre and for designing the stage, orchestra, and auditorium. These rules are based on principles of Euclidian geometry in matters of layout and proportion. His dicta on the provision of good sight lines from auditorium to stage are generally sound. Apart from that, however, his treatise is not very helpful. He mentions changeable scenery but is vague about what was involved. Vitruvius' notion of acoustics, which he claims is based on theory as well as practice, appears to be vaguely associated with Greek ideas of musical theory but has since been proved to have no scientific or mathematical basis. Indeed, his views on this important matter were to cause problems for almost 2,000 years.
The odeum
Vitruvius has nothing to say about the roofed odeum (or odeon, “singing place”), which, according to some authorities, represents the high point of theatre building in the ancient world. Theatre history has, unfortunately, largely overlooked these buildings. Excavation work has revealed more than 30 of them, in a wide range of building materials. Odea were apparently first built in Athens under Pericles (5th century BCE). They continued to be built throughout the Hellenistic Age and also in the Roman Empire up to the time of Emperor Severus Alexander (3rd century CE). They range in size from one with a seating capacity of 300–400 to one of 1,200–1,400. Experts disagree as to their specific purpose and use but claim they exhibited a refinement of detail and architectural sophistication found in no other Greco-Roman buildings devoted to the performing arts. They are most often found in Greek cities dating from Hellenistic times, on the grounds of private villas built by Roman emperors from Augustus to Hadrian, and in major cities of the empire, usually dedicated to the emperors. One of the most imposing, which also boasts the greatest span for a wooden trussed roof in the ancient world, was the Odeon of Agrippa, named after the emperor Augustus' civil administrator. This Roman building in the Athenian agora, dating from about 15 BCE, is beautifully detailed, with an open southern exposure and a truncated curvilinear bank of seating. It achieves an atmosphere of great dignity and repose, despite the vast size of the room. In the last years of the Roman Empire the odeum was, it is claimed, the only remaining home of the performing arts, because by this time open-air theatres had long been given over to sensational and crude popular entertainments.
Greek and Roman theatre building influenced virtually all later theatre design in the Western world, the theatres of the Spanish Golden Age, the English Elizabethan period, and the 20th-century avant-garde, with its experiments in primitive theatre-in-the-round techniques, being exceptions to this pattern. The architectural writings of Vitruvius became the model for the theatre building of the later Renaissance and early Baroque periods.
George C. Izenour
Clive Barker
Developments in Asia
Although the emergence of Asian theatre was not simultaneous with that of ancient Greece and Rome, it merits discussion here rather than as an appendage to the history of Western drama.
India
Indian theatre is often considered the oldest in Asia, having developed its dance and drama by the 8th century BCE. According to Hindu holy books, the gods fought the demons before the world was created, and the god Brahmā asked the gods to reenact the battle among themselves for their own entertainment. Once again the demons were defeated, this time by being beaten with a flagstaff by one of the gods. To protect theatre from demons in the future, a pavilion was built, and in many places in India today a flagstaff next to the stage marks the location of performances.
According to myth, Brahmā ordered that dance and drama be combined; certainly the words for “dance” and “drama” are the same in all Indian dialects. Early in Indian drama, however, dance began to dominate the theatre. By the beginning of the 20th century there were few performances of plays, though there were myriad dance recitals. It was not until political independence in 1947 that India started to redevelop the dramatic theatre.
In the 4th century a codification was written of the śāstra, or the staging conventions of the dance. It lists not only the costumes, makeup, gestures, and body positions but also any plots considered unsuitable, and it is the most complete document of stagecraft ever compiled. There is no scenery in Indian dance, although there are usually a few properties, such as a three-foot-high brass lamp. A curtain is used, however, by troupes that dance kathākali, an ancient danced drama of southwestern India. The curtain itself is a cloth rectangle that is held between the stage and a large lamp by two stagehands.
Egyptian Book of the Dead: Anubis
READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Western theatre: The theatre
The outdoor setting for performances of Greek drama traditionally comprised three areas: a large circular dancing floor (orchēstra...
The dancers perform a group of preliminary dances behind the curtain until they make an important entrance called “peering over the curtain.” In this, a character fans the lamp by pulling the curtain in and out until the flames are spectacularly high. The dancer, still hiding his face, displays his hands and legs at the borders of the curtain. At the climactic moment the dancer pulls the curtain aside, displaying his awesome makeup, and stagehands remove the curtain until the next dramatic entrance.
Classical Indian drama had as its elements poetry, music, and dance, with the sound of the words assuming more importance than the action or the narrative; therefore, staging was basically the enactment of poetry. The reason that the productions, in which scenes apparently follow an arbitrary order, seem formless to Westerners is that playwrights use much simile and metaphor. Because of the importance of the poetic line, a significant character is the storyteller or narrator, who is still found in most Asian drama. In Sanskrit drama the narrator was the sūtra-dhāra, “the string holder,” who set the scene and interpreted the actors' moods. Another function was performed by the narrator in regions in which the aristocratic vocabulary and syntax used by the main characters, the gods and the nobles, was not understood by the majority of the audience. The narrator operated first through the use of pantomime and later through comedy.
A new Indian theatre that began about 1800 was a direct result of British colonization. With the addition of dance interludes and other Indian aesthetic features, modern India has developed a national drama. Two examples of “new” theatre staging are the Prithvi Theatre and the Indian National Theatre. The Prithvi Theatre, a Hindi touring company founded in 1943, utilizes dance sequences, incidental music, frequent set changes, and extravagant movement and colour. The Indian National Theatre, founded in Bombay in the 1950s, performs for audiences throughout India, in factories and on farms. Its themes usually involve a national problem, such as the lack of food, and the troupe's style is a mixture of pantomime and simple dialogue. It uses a truck to haul properties, costumes, and actors; there is no scenery.
China
The most noticeable contrast between China and other Asian countries is that traditionally China has produced virtually no dance. The classic theatre of the Chinese is called “opera” because the dialogue is punctuated with arias and recitatives. Of the amazingly detailed written record of Chinese theatre, the first reference to opera was during the T'ang dynasty (618–907). The development of the opera style popular today took place during the Manchu rule of the 19th century. The Empress Dowager, the last hereditary ruler of China, was so enamoured of opera that she had a triple-deck stage (representing heaven, hell, and earth) constructed in the summer palace at Peking. The most important individual in Chinese theatre of the 20th century, Mei Lan-fang, an actor and producer, was the first to apply scholarship in reviving ancient masterpieces and opera forms.
In general, Chinese theatrical performances start in the early evening and conclude after midnight. The performance itself consists of several plays and scenes from the best known dramas. The audience drinks tea, eats, and talks, and there are no intermissions. The stage itself has a curved apron, covered only by a square rug. On one side is a box for the orchestra, which plays throughout the evening. There is neither a curtain nor any setting to speak of other than a simple, painted backdrop. The virtual absence of scenery accentuates the elaborate and colourful costumes and makeup of the actors.
During a typical performance, the members of a Chinese theatre audience stop talking to each other only at climactic moments. The actors are concerned with their movements only when they are at the centre of the stage; when they stand at the sides they drink tea and adjust their costumes in full view of the audience. An interpretation of this behaviour was the view of the 20th-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht that a Chinese actor, in contrast to a Western a.
PHOTO ANCIENNE MARIA MONTEZ FOLIES BERGERE MORT vendu JEUNE
