TH 2423 Introduction to Theater
David Lipscomb University
Dr. Larry A. Brown
1
THE THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE
Theater is one of the oldest forms of artistic
expression in the world. The earliest example of theater as a distinct art form
developed in ancient Greece during the sixth century BC, reaching its zenith a
century later with the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Since
that time, theater has made a major contribution to all great cultures as an
expression of the social, political, and religious values of the age. Some of the
most creative minds of Western civilization - Shakespeare, Moliere, Voltaire,
Goethe, Shaw - chose the stage as the medium to communicate their ideas about
human existence.
Theater can be described as a synthesis of all the
other fine arts. Plays consist of dialogue written in prose or poetry and are
often studied and appreciated solely as literature. Scenic design incorporates
the visual arts of painting and sculpture to create the setting for the play.
Elements of movement and dance such as mime, choreography, and fencing appear
in plays, and music frequently accompanies the action, even becoming the chief
means of expression in opera and musical theater. However, theater does more
than make use of the other arts; it integrates them into a unified form of
storytelling in which the living actor becomes the central medium of
expression.
The inclusion of all these diverse elements implies
that theater requires the collaboration of several artists, each with different
skills and interpretive visions. Unlike a painting, a novel, or a song, theater
is not the creation of a single artist, but a unique blending of several
perspectives. Each artist, whether playwright, director, designer, or actor,
contributes his or her own imaginative viewpoint to the final work. No one
individual determines its meaning. A dramatic production offers a kaleidoscope
of meanings and interpretations, working on several different levels at the
same time. Thus, there may be an indefinite number of potential productions of Hamlet, none of which is necessarily the
"correct" one, but each contributing something new to our
appreciation of Shakespeare's tragedy.
The final collaborator in the creative act is, of
course, the audience. As a form of communication, theater presupposes someone
as the receiver, but the spectator does more than observe. A performance cannot
truly exist without spectators as imaginative participants in the process. They
identify with the plight of the characters, routing for the heroes and hissing the
villains. They piece together narrative information to fill in gaps about the
past and anticipate the outcome of the plot. They interpret the stage symbols
to complete a coherent picture of the fictional world. A good play always
leaves something to the audience's imagination.
Since the time of Aristotle's Poetics (the first major treatise on dramatic art written around
330 BC), theater has often been described as the imitation of human action.
Theater holds a mirror up to nature, Hamlet says, giving us a reflection of
ourselves and the world in which we live. Watching a play, we pretend to
believe in the reality of events on stage and respond to the perils of the
characters as if they were truly experiencing them. In past times spectators
have been so caught up in the action that they actually rushed on stage to
rescue the heroine from disaster. Here lies the paradox of theater. We
acknowledge the artificiality of theater while simultaneously convincing
ourselves of its reality.
Frequently, at the conclusion of a play, we
overhear someone say, "How true to life that story is! I know people just
like that." Perhaps they may comment on some aspect of staging:
"Wasn't that death scene believable?" or "I actually felt I was
in a magical forest, the set was so convincing." The ability of theater
artists to create the illusion of reality on stage never ceases to amaze us. A
young actress may persuade us to believe that she is eighty years old; a set
designer may cause it to rain on stage or create a snow-covered glacier for the
actors to climb. Similar to our admiration of a painting which looks almost
photographic, we delight in seeing our world reproduced in miniature on the
stage.
At the same time, we know that what we see in a play
is, after all, an illusion, a creative fiction carefully designed to look like
real life. The actress wears makeup to appear older; blood in a death scene
consists of chocolate and red food coloring; the icy mountaintop was
constructed from styrofoam. Some types of plays do not even attempt to create
such a complete illusion. A chair in a pool of light may indicate an
interrogation room; an archway may suggest a Gothic cathedral; a mime may
through gestures and body language imitate a small child or a dog without
attempting to look like one.
What allows the audience to accept these devices as
convincing symbols of reality are theatrical
conventions, rules of the game accepted by both spectators and performers. Each age
follows its own generally agreed-upon rules which the audience accepts as
natural. In ancient Greece actors wore masks and men played all the roles
including female characters. The latter was true in Shakespeare's day as well:
the role of Juliet, for instance, was played by a young boy apprenticed to the
company. No one at the time thought this practice to be unusual. Other
Elizabethan conventions include the aside,
in which a character speaks to the audience but is not overheard by the
character standing two feet away from him, and the soliloquy, an extended aside revealing the character's inner
thoughts to the audience. Lest we laugh at the naiveté of earlier audiences, we
should remember that today's theatrical conventions are no less artificial: at
a musical we accept the idea of people bursting into song and dancing down the
middle of a busy street in New York. In real life these things would never
happen, but in the world of musical theater such events are perfectly normal.
Accepting the use of theatrical conventions does
not make a play any less believable. As eager participants in the illusion, we
choose to believe in the world of the play, or in Samuel Coleridge's words, we
willingly suspend our disbelief and go along with the pretense. When Japanese
audiences of Kabuki theater observe black-robed stagehands changing the set
before their eyes, they regard them as invisible and continue to focus their
attention on the performers of the drama. When Macbeth speaks of murdering a
king in beautiful poetic verses, we understand that heightened language is
appropriate for the serious nature of tragedy. Participating in the theatrical
event as a spectator entails our imaginative acceptance of conventions as rules
by which the game is played.
Not all plays attempt to create a photographic
illusion of life on the stage. Some playwrights deliberately choose a more
openly theatrical style of drama, leaving exact reproduction of a dramatic
location to the ultra-realism of the movies. At the risk of oversimplification,
however, we can categorize most modern theater into two broad streams of
development.
Representationalism describes one approach
to theater which attempts to represent
everyday life on the stage. The director and designers work to create a
convincing illusion of reality, filling the stage with period furnishings,
working appliances, light fixtures, doors, windows, properties, down to the
smallest details. Using makeup and appropriate costuming, actors attempt to
portray credible characters with psychological depth and subtlety. In order not
to break the illusion that the audience is observing them through an invisible fourth wall along the curtain line,
actors follow the convention of never acknowledging the audience's
presence; thus, asides and soliloquies would be inappropriate for a
representational style of theater.
Presentationalism describes another style of theater which
does not concern itself with creating a slice of life on stage. As the name
implies, this type of theater presents
its story directly to the audience without apology. Presentational theater
openly acknowledges its artificial nature, reveling in its theatricality.
Actors may break through the fourth wall and speak directly to the spectators.
They may portray abstract, nonrealistic characters such as Everyman or Good
Deeds in a medieval morality play, or clouds or frogs in an ancient Greek
comedy. The set designer may take a more symbolic approach, suggesting a
location with a scenic metaphor: for instance, a waving blue cloth might stand
for the sea, a leaf projection from a spotlight may substitute for a forest, a
broken column may indicate the ruins of an ancient temple. Sometimes the stage
remains bare, filled only by the actors' presence and the spectators'
imagination.
Neither of these
approaches can claim superiority over the other, as both styles of theater have
been used successfully by major playwrights and producers to create thrilling
drama. To explore these two trends in greater detail, we can compare the work
of two giants of the modern theater, Henrik Ibsen and Bertolt Brecht. For
convenience, we will use the traditional six elements of drama given by
Aristotle in the Poetics: plot,
character, thought, language, music, and spectacle.
Often called the father
of modern drama, Henrik Ibsen
(1828-1906) brought a new level of
seriousness to the stage. Rather than the hackneyed melodramas and farces of
the day whose sole purpose was to entertain, he envisioned a theater which
would challenge society and become a persuasive voice for change. In his plays, he addressed contemporary
problems such as women's rights (A Doll's
House), political corruption (Enemy
of the People), and venereal disease (Ghosts),
subjects which were previously taboo on the public stage. His characters were
not the larger-than-life heroes and villains of 19th century Romantic drama
(such as the Count of Monte Cristo), but ordinary, middle-class citizens
struggling with everyday difficulties. Under the influence of recent scientific
advances, Ibsen and other advocates of the new realism in theater thought that
the dramatist could examine life with the objectivity of a biologist looking
through a microscope. His goal was to represent life as it truly is, both its
beauty and its ugliness, without the falseness of theatrical gimmicks.
Plot. Although he sought to
depict life on the stage without artifice, Ibsen did not imitate the haphazard
way in which the events of daily life usually unfold. He carefully selected and
arranged the incidents of his stories, giving each action significance and
purpose. Much like Greek tragedy, his plays begin late in the story, with past
events revealed through dialogue (exposition). They depict a few crucial
incidents covering a short expanse of time, from several hours to several days,
and take place in one location. The plot does not cut away to other characters
in other places. The playwright provides plausible explanations for each major
development, which are often found to lie in the character's past. The plot
remains focused on one central action, building in intensity until it reaches
the climax.
Character. Ibsen brought a
different cast of characters onto the stage. In previous ages playwrights
depicted the working classes mainly as comic types (Shakespeare’s players in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream), but Ibsen treated the problems of common people
with the seriousness of tragedy. Influenced by the latest theories of psychology,
modern dramatists began to explore the inner world of the character's mind,
seeking to reveal the hidden motivations behind each act. Behavior was seen as
the direct result of heredity and environment. Plays became psychoanalytic
sessions, stripping away the character's outer facade to discover the repressed
frustrations and subconscious desires beneath the surface. Actors accustomed to
the bombastic rhetoric of romantic melodramas had to adapt their style of
playing to these complex new characters. Performers could no longer speak to
the audience directly to reveal their character's thoughts. Subtlety, precise
emotional control, and astute observation of human behavior were needed to
convey the hidden thoughts and feelings of the characters, what became known as
the subtext of the play. The Russian
director Stanislavsky developed a system for training actors to help them
analyze and portray characters in a highly believable fashion, a system still influential
in most acting schools today.
Thought. Ibsen opened the door
of the theater for the discussion of contemporary social issues, some of which
had previously been considered too bold or shocking for the public stage: class
conflicts, sexual problems, domestic difficulties, political scandals. One shocked
reviewer described an Ibsen play as "an open drain, a loathsome sore
unbandaged, a dirty act done publicly, a house [for lepers] with all its doors
and windows open." Writers like
Ibsen were undaunted by such criticism. Seeing themselves as social scientists,
these new playwrights sought to record life as they saw it, and did not shrink
from depictions of sordidness and depravity wherever they were found.
Language. Rather than the poetic
verse of Shakespeare or Greek tragedy, characters in representational plays use
the speech patterns and mannerisms of everyday life. Dialogue reflects the
character's social status: witty and fluent if educated and refined, or broken,
coarse, and ungrammatical if illiterate and poor. People speak in appropriate
dialects, whether Cockney, Southern, or Brooklynese. Playwrights also
discovered the power and eloquence of silence, saying more with a long pause, a
reproachful stare or a sarcastic grin than with the long soliloquies of earlier
plays.
Music. Representational plays
use music and sound to create a realistic atmosphere for the drama. Street
noises may float into a room through an open window, or a radio may announce
the threat of an escaped criminal. In Ibsen's Enemy of the People we hear the sounds of an angry mob surrounding
the house of the main character. A stormy night may create suspense. Occasionally
a character may sing if appropriate to the action, but the possibilities for
music are somewhat limited by the guiding assumption of representing everyday
reality on stage.
Spectacle. During the century
prior to Ibsen, theatrical producers had experimented with realistic scenery
and the box set, a room with three walls and actual furniture, as an
alternative to the painted backdrops of earlier times. With modern drama's
emphasis on representational theater came an increased interest in creating a
setting which would reveal details of the characters' lives and how their
behavior was shaped by environmental factors.
Because action usually is confined to one location, the scene designer
can focus all his attention on creating a credible illusion of reality. Some
producers went to extremes to convince audiences of the reality of the
fictional world. The American director David Belasco (1854-1931) once bought
the contents of a rundown boardinghouse apartment, transferring the tattered
furnishings, broken fixtures and stained wallpaper onto the stage. For another
play he reproduced a famous New York restaurant and hired chefs to prepare
authentic meals during the performance. Representationalism measures its
success by how closely it represents real life on the stage.
The
Presentationalism of Brecht
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a devout Marxist who lived most of his early years in
Nazi Germany. During the war, he escaped persecution by coming to America.
Shaped by his political views, his theory of theater differed radically from
the representationalism of Ibsen.
Brecht wanted people, upon leaving the theater, not to think, "Yes,
life is just like that" but instead "No, life doesn't have to be like
that." Traditional drama seeks to involve the audience in the plight of
the characters, so that we come to identify with them in their sufferings. In
contrast, Brecht encouraged spectators to distance themselves from the
characters, to remain objective witnesses and to evaluate the dramatic events as
if they were a jury deciding on the character's guilt or innocence. Only then
would they recognize the injustices in society and be moved to work for change
in the real world. For this reason Brecht did not want the audience to lose
themselves in the stage illusion. They should never forget that they are
watching a fictional event upon which they must pass judgment. Not all
presentational plays share Brecht’s political agenda but he serves as a
prominent example of this style of theater.
Plot. Brecht created what he called epic theater
in which he explored the political and economic forces of history that have led
to current problems of social injustice. Therefore, his plays cover longer
expanses of time than the compact dramas of Ibsen in order to demonstrate these
patterns of development. The action usually divides into brief scenes which are
separated by months or years, and may not be linked by a cause-and-effect
relationship; that is, one event does not necessarily lead to the next. Epic
theater frequently employs obvious narrative devices such as a storyteller,
prologues and summaries, and signs and projections which give pertinent
information, slogans, or the moral of the scene.
Character. Ibsen often depicted
characters as helpless victims of their past. In contrast, Brecht wanted
audiences to challenge this conclusion of inevitability. He believed that a
person has the ability to alter his situation and to change the direction of
his life. This optimism for human potential provided the grounds for the
political activism Brecht advocated. Brechtian characters are shown to be
responsible for their actions. When they fail, they suffer for their own folly,
and the audience must recognize that their fate was avoidable. Rather than
crying over a character's misfortune, spectators should put their emotional
response to work in the streets, changing the conditions which contribute to
society's injustices.
Brecht discouraged
identification with his characters. As director of his own plays, he told
actors to distance themselves from their roles, playing them as symbols rather
than real people. He described his technique as the alienation effect. Sometimes actors break out of character to
comment sarcastically on their roles to the audience, as if to say "Can
you believe what I just did?" Frequently actors play more than one part
with little attempt to disguise the fact. Brecht compared acting in the epic
style to someone who has witnessed an accident and is demonstrating to the
police what happened. The person indicates what the various participants in the
accident did, but he does not attempt to impersonate them. In this way the
audience is free to judge the actions of the characters without becoming
emotionally involved with them.
Thought. Like Ibsen, Brecht
wanted theater to encourage people to think about serious issues and compel
them to act in ways to change society’s problems. However, Brecht’s approach
was different. The spectator should not allow himself to forget that a play is
an artificial medium designed to convey a message. The thesis may present
itself in many forms, directly stated by the characters or implied by the
result of their actions, but in whatever form, the message takes precedence
over the medium. Brecht had no patience with theater as mere entertainment or
escape.
Language. Presentational
characters often use ordinary speech to express themselves, but are free as
well to speak verse in a Shakespearean play, or sing in a musical. Their
conversation does not have to sound like everyday language. Animals or
inanimate objects may speak in plays which depict surreal or fantastic
situations. Characters may break the illusion of the fourth wall and speak
directly to the audience, trying to persuade them to accept their argument or
take their side in the dramatic conflict.
Music. In presentational theater,
music and sound are used more freely than in plays which restrict themselves to
creating an illusion of real life. Brecht wrote musicals such as The Three Penny Opera (which includes
the well-known song, "Mack the Knife"). All musicals are in this
respect presentational theater. Musical accompaniment is also a nonrealistic
but effective means of creating appropriate dramatic moods, a technique more
often used in films.
Spectacle. As explained above,
Brecht had reason to remind the audience that they were watching a theatrical
performance. He did not seek to fool their senses into believing that the stage
setting was, in fact, what it pretended to be. Skeletal framework would suggest
a building, a table and two chairs a restaurant. To indicate specific
locations, a character might hold up a sign telling where they were. With the
curtains open, stagehands would perform scene changes while the audience
watched (similar to Japanese theater). Lights were hung in plain view and were
used for nonrealistic purposes such as spotlights or slide projections.
Musicians sat on stage rather than in the orchestra pit. Without resorting to
tricks of illusion, presentational theater relies on the audience's
unquestioning acceptance of theatrical conventions which suggest rather than
represent the settings of the fictional world of the play.
Of
these two approaches, only representationalism can be described as truly a
modern invention. Classical Greek drama, Medieval plays, Shakespeare, the
improvisational comedy of the Italian Renaissance, all fall under the category
of presentationalism in their open acknowledgment of artificial stage
conventions. In fact, representational plays are not completely free of
theatrical conventions. For instance, in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, the main character addresses the audience by means
of asides, a presentational device in an otherwise representational play. The
staging "cheats" to create its illusion of looking through the
invisible fourth wall into a living room, as both actors and furniture are
positioned to face the audience. All plays mix realistic and artificial
elements in various degrees; some merely attempt to resemble everyday life more
than others. There are no rules which apply to all types of theater, only
artistic traditions, both ancient and modern, from which the playwright,
director, designers, and actors may choose to convey their vision of the
possible world of the play.
STUDY GUIDE FOR PART ONE
Review Terms
Aristotle Henrik
Ibsen
Poetics Bertolt Brecht
aside box
set
soliloquy fourth
wall
subtext
Review Questions
Name the six elements of
drama given by Aristotle.
Describe
the differences between representational and presentational styles of theater.
Give
several examples of theatrical conventions in the plays we have seen this
semester.