Q4 ARTS

• Theater


  Place of seeing
• Producing theater


  1. Playwright writes scripts

  2. Director rehearses performers

  3. Designer and technical crew produce props

  4. Actors and actresses perform on stage

  5. Audience witnesses it
• Ancient Greek theater


  • Began around 700 B.C.
  • Fertility festivals honoring the god Dionysus
  • Performed in the city-state of Athens
  • Three well-known Greek tragedy playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
• Types of ancient Greek drama

  • Tragedy
  • Comedy
  • Satyr play
• Tragedy


  • Compound of two Greek words: tragos ("goat") and ode ("song")
  • Dealt with tragic events and had an unhappy ending
• Comedy


  Derived from imitation, no traces of origin
• Satyr play


  • Contained comic elements to lighten the mood of a serious play
  • Featured choruses of satyrs, based on Greek mythology
• Elements of the ancient Greek theater

  • Orchestra
  • Skene
  • Theatron
  • Parodos
• Orchestra


  Large circular or rectangular area at the center where the play, dance, religious rites, and acting took place
• Theatron


  Viewing place on the slope of a hill
• Parodos


  Side entrance
• Roman theater


  • Started in the 3rd century BC
  • Influenced by ancient Greek theater
  • Themes included chariots races, gladiators, and public executions
• Christians opposed the barbaric themes of Roman plays and closed down all theaters
• Medieval theater


  • Minstrels performed in markets, public places, and festivals
  • Churches in Europe started staging their own theater performances during Easter Sundays with biblical stories and events
• Renaissance theater


  • Characterized by a return of Classical Greek and Roman arts and culture
  • Included mystery plays, morality plays, university drama, Commedia dell'arte, and elaborate masques
• Commedia dell'arte


  Italian comedy and a humorous theatrical presentation performed by professional players who traveled in troupes
• Masque


  Dramatic entertainment consisting of pantomime, dancing, dialogue, song, and sometimes players who wore masks
• Elizabethan theater


  • Supported by Queen Elizabeth I
  • Companies of players organized by the aristocrats and performed seasonally
  • Replaced performances of mystery and morality plays by local players
• Gorboduc


  An English play first performed in 1561, one of the earliest English plays in blank verse
• William Shakespeare


  • Regarded as the greatest writer and dramatist in the world
  • Wrote about 38 plays, including famous tragedies like Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth
• Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 and died on April 23, 1616
• Types of Shakespeare's plays


  • History plays
  • Comedies
  • Tragedies
• Sophocles wrote the most famous tragedies, including Oedipus Rex and Antigone, which were known as the Theban plays
• Sophocles added a third actor and developed his characters to a greater importance than the chorus in the presentation of the plot
• Oedipus Rex


  Tragedy written by Sophocles
• Main characters in Oedipus Rex

  • Oedipus
  • Creon
  • Eurydice
  • Apollo
  • King Laius
  • Jocasta
  • Polynices
  • Eteocles
  • Tiresias
  • Polybus
  • Merope
  • Antigone
  • Ismene
  • Haemon
  • Sphinx
• Shakespeare's history plays


  • Richard III
  • Henry V
• Theatrical elements of Greek plays

  • Genre: Tragedy
  • Number of characters per play: 1 to 3
  • Chorus: 12 members wearing identical masks
  • Masks: Advance universality of themes and dramatic impact, keep audience from being distracted by actors' physical attributes
• Shakespeare's comedies


  • The Shoemaker's Holiday
  • A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
• Sophocles used the Chorus at the beginning of the play to help tell the audience the given circumstances of the play, and the Choruses did a lot of lamenting of terrible events
• For the first time, ballet was performed in public during the Renaissance period
• Ballet


  A formalized form of dance that originated from the Italian Renaissance courts
• Costumes: Men wore loose floor length ponchos with pleated shoulders, while females wore draped robes
• The Parthenon's facade has the design of Ionic order columns with cornice and moldings on the top, elevated by 5 step-risers at the center, and a platform in front near the audience
• The history plays depicted English or European history. Shakespeare's plays were about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V, Christopher Marlowe's Edward II and George Peele's famous Chronicle of King Edward the First
• There are 3 actors in Greek tragedy (5 in comedy), with conventionalized, stylized or symbolic gestures like those in mimetic dance, and the musical accompaniment is played on a flute
• Facial expression is not important because of the masks they wear, and the audience could express their opinion noisily, with the high points being the awarding of prizes
• Comedies were common, too. These dealt with life in London after the fashion of Roman New Comedy. Some of comedy plays were The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside by Thomas Middleton
• Ballet


  • Formalized form of dance which originated from the Italian Renaissance courts
  • Developed and flourished from Italy to France with the help of Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France
• Romeo and Juliet


  Tragedy written by William Shakespeare