history of european theater
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| European theater |
Definition of theater:
Theatre, or dramatic art, is a literary composition written in prose or poetry in a conversational manner, and is intended for reading or display. Dramatic theater uses a number of basic elements during the performance, such as: writing, directing, interpretation, decoration and clothing. The word drama is derived from action, conflict and tension. The theater in its ancient history may be the result of dancing and singing.
Greek theatre:
The theater appeared for the first time in Greece in the sixth century BC, and Aristotle's book (The Art of Poetry) is the first theoretical and critical book of poetic poetry and its classical rules. The tragic theater, according to Aristotle, arose from the art of Aldithramb, which glorifies the gods of Dionysus with songs and history. According to legend, Thespis was the first representative of crystallizing dramatic art, assuming a key role in the dithrambi story, in the sixth century BC. This was the actual beginning of others' attempt to develop theater into an independent literary genre.
Greek tragedy did not know its heyday until the fifth century BC, when more than a thousand tragic texts appeared, and only thirty-one texts remain. These dramatic texts were written by Aeschylus, Sof Claus, and Euripides. These tragedies agree in a strict structure represented in poetic formulation, dividing the text into chapters, alternating dialogue between characters (more than three characters), the chorus that echoes poetic chants, and stories taken from myths Ancient or ancient history, from which the dramatic poets freely draw their political and philosophical questions.
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| Greek theater |
The plays are held in Athens during the feasts of Dionysus: the god of fertility and growth. The Greeks used to hold two ceremonies for the gods: a ceremony in the winter after picking the grapes and squeezing the wines; Thus, weddings abound, dance parties are held, and songs are sung, and from here come comedies. In the spring, when the vineyards have dried up and nature frowned and grimaced with its sorrows, which produced the art of tragedy. Theatrical competitions were held to select the best dramatic texts to represent them on this Dionysian occasion with two functions: religious and artistic. Three texts represented and presented in front of viewers must win this competition, and one of its conditions is that it be satire that mocks and criticizes the gods.
Comedy has witnessed a great development since the middle of the fifth century BC. Among the most important comedians, we find Aristophanes with his wonderful play (The Frogs), and the comedy criticized public figures and ridiculed the gods in a satirical caricature way. Comedy has replaced tragedy in the fourth century BC.
Hellenic culture spread throughout the world thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the fame of Greek theater in all its forms, issues and artistic structures.
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| Greek theater |
And if we contemplate the architecture of the Greek theater, we find that theatrical performances are presented in the open air in a circular theater space surrounded by seats graded from the bottom to the top on the foot of the plateau in the form of a semicircle (the amphitheater), and attended by between 15,000 and 20,000 spectators who used to enter the theater for free; Because theater is one of the most important public districts that were supervised by the city-state and a means of awareness, religious discipline and moral purification.
And represented on its flat stage, actors dressed in normal clothes assigned to each appropriate dramatic role, and they also put masks on their faces to characterize special roles, and the actors were respected and had a lofty position in Greek society. It mixes in the displayed text: kinetic drama, singing, dancing and poetry; Which brings the show closer to the opera than to the modern theatre.
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| Greek theater |
Roman Theater
The Roman theater did not develop until the third century BC. This theater was associated with religious ceremonies, which were many, and the theater had the function of entertainment and entertainment with the convening of worldly parties. Comedy is the popular form known in the ancient Romans since the second century BC, and it flourished with Plutus and Terence, influenced by the New Greek Comedy.
Among the well-known tragedies in the Romans, we find the plays of Senec during the first century BC and the tragedies of Salon, which followed the Greek tragedies. However, with the advent of the Christian Church and the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman theater would become extinct, and the classical theater: Greek and Roman, disappeared from Western culture for five centuries.
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| Roman Theater |
Medieval theatre.
Despite this, theater appeared in the Middle Ages in the arms of religious rites within the space of the Christian Catholic Church. Dramatic texts were held on religious, folk and pagan occasions.
During this period, the evangelical stories and their ritual and Qadisiyah events were invested in generating theatrical performances that embody the conflict between the worldly and the otherworldly, and the struggle of Mary and Christ against the passions and demons. The actors used kinetic arts and special dramatic clothes, and this was the embryonic beginning of theatrical directing. And if the Roman theater was linked to the space of the architecture of the Greek Empire, then the theater in the Middle Ages was linked to a ritualistic religious drama that did not depart from the space of the church, the Evangelical cathedral, or religious spaces with well-known evangelical religious decoration that embody the duality of heaven and hell, passions, and the discourse of miracles and religious sanctities.
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middle ages |
It is noted that in this period we can talk about three types of medieval theatre:
(a) the sacred (religious) theater;
b - profane theatre (theatre of mundane Hazel);
C - The moral theater that imbibed from the teachings of the Bible and its disciplinary values.
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middle ages |
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