theatre essay introduction

Theatre Essay Example

• December 22, 2022

The Importance of Theatre

Theatre Essay Introduction

Theatre is one of the oldest traditional activities in the world, and it is as old as human civilization. It is a form of expressing emotions on stage. Also, it is the best way to understand empathy better. It has been considered as the best way to teach themes like morality and religion. Over the centuries, it had spread to various different counties and cultures. Some of them brought their interpretation into it, and others embraced the ancient characteristics. Today, it became a wealthy marketplace despite cinema's popularity because it is an indispensable tradition for us. In this sense, cinema is a developed version of the theatre, and they both help us empathize with other people emotions and thoughts on common themes or problems which we have been facing for centuries. Therefore, modern societies are still showing so much attention to it. After all, this paper focuses on the significance of theatre and its evolution in different cultures over the centuries. Many cultures embraced and valued theatre in the past because it carried a critical role in society in terms of moral education, historical and religious narratives.

Body Paragraphs

Ancient Greece was the first culture that showed so much value to the theatre. For example, they valued arts, architecture, literature, and philosophy along with theatre. They were one of the most developed cultures of their times. Originally, the theatre was a type of structure that was considered a place for religious rituals and social gatherings. One can highlight that ancient Greece played a critical role in the development of theatre. Thus, they invented tragedy when the poet and the first actor Thespis came to Athens in 534 BCE with his troupe on wagons, and performances were given in the Agora (Bay para. 4). Also, they used chorus in the plays, and it became the most important characteristic of Hellenistic era tragedies. Tragedies were essential to them because they honoured their Gods, Goddesses and mortal heroes like kings and warriors. Tragedies included death, war, religion and moral lectures, and historical themes. Therefore, Ancient Greece was the first society which developed theatre and created a tradition in history.

In its later development, they built theatres in several cities, which were inspired by the Theatre of Dionysus. Also, in the beginning times, admission was free, then they have put an entrance price for theatre, and poor citizens were given entrance money (Bay para. 6). Thus, their community sought the poor citizens, and they provided the money because theatres were essential places to teach religious lectures and historical narratives to their citizens. In other words, they sought the development of poor citizens with it.

Ancient Greece was the heart of civilization and arts. Many cultures which came after them copied their arts and architecture. In this sense, the Roman empire followed Greek theatre, and they only changed few aspects of it. For instance, in their culture, theatre mostly was a center of entertainment, and it did not express any deep religious convictions (Bay para. 12). Also, they built much bigger theatres in every city.

The ancient Roman empire was not the only society that copied Greeks. In later centuries, theatres in Europe were influenced by Greeks in terms of tragedy plays and stage design. For instance, in Ancient Greece, the first theatre plays were performed in the streets of Agora, which were the marketplace, and in the middle ages, Pageant Plays were performed on special movable stages or carts in European countries (“History of Theatre” n.p). Until the 17th century, European theatres mostly was in control of the church, and they used theatre's influence to teach religious narratives and moral lessons and during the II. Charles reign, theatres became more independent so that they could focus on different topics. Also, in that era, Shakespeare was one of the most important playwriters who led theatre to innovation. For example, he invented tragicomedy plays that combined tragedy, and comedy. His plays included various themes such as history, folklore, morality conflict, passion, love, and death.

Theatre Essay Conclusion

Consequently, theatre is the oldest entertainment tradition in the world, and it is old as civilization. Over the centuries, ruler classes used it for teaching religious and historical narratives and morality lessons while entertaining their society. In the modern world, theatre is still valued by the masses because there is a magical environment in live performances. The reason for theatre popularity is that many cultures embraced and valued theatre in the past because it carried a critical role in society in terms of moral education, historical and religious narratives. Eventually, it became a significant tradition for us.

Works Cited

Bay, Howard. “Theatre.” Encyclopædia Britannica , Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/art/theater-building

Gianni, Dottore. Theatre in Asia I: Background, India and China , 1 Jan. 1970

“History of Theatre | Ancient Greece to Modern Day.” YouTube , YouTube, 24 Sept. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NmD2TGKnY8 t=800s.

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1 (page 1) p. 1 What is theatre?

• Published: October 2014
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‘What is theatre?’ discusses the origins of theatre and how it has developed in numerous ways in different communities and cultures, from classical Greece to medieval Japan and Italian Renaissance theatre to 19th‐century Europe, resulting in a vast array of modern‐day forms. Theatre is built upon what appear to be universal human activities—imitation, storytelling, and performance. Taking the artist-oriented point of view, the question ‘what is theatre?’ can be answered by considering the different artistic and social assumptions within which theatre artists have created their work. If the focus is upon reception, the answer changes and becomes whatever an audience can be convinced to see as theatre.

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1.7: An Introduction to the Theater and its Elements

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Introduction

“All the world’s a stage” by William Shakespeare

( from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques )

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

See how this passage is translated into performance by Sophie Stone for the Shakespearean Globe Theatre:

And now, watch actor Benedict Cumberbatch (et al.) perform Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” for film in this BBC montage:

Do you perceive the words differently when they are performed vs. when read on paper? Today, we often read dramas as fiction or poetry, but the original intent of a play (or screenplay) is for performance.

In watching a play, or virtually any other type of dramatic or theatrical event, we are taking part in an activity that has been occurring without much significant change for nearly 2600 years. Sitting in a seat in a theater today, an audience member goes through the same experience that humans have been having for hundreds of generations. Walking into the theater, finding a seat, sitting down, waiting for the performance to begin, watching the actors, listening to the lines they speak, and reacting to them with laughter, emotions, and applause are all things that those great-great-great-great-great-ancestors of ours did too. The Western tradition of viewing plays goes back to the ancient Greek world. However, it also ties us into a very human urge – the desire to communicate. We are social creatures by nature. That is, we instinctively gather together and try to share our individual experiences with those around us – to fit in, to share information or ideas, to participate in the larger life and experience of the group, or just to be entertained as we live our lives in this world. The people of Ancient Greece were just like us in that regard. They didn’t have all of the technology that we do today, but they did some very impressive things with what they had, and many of the techniques they developed for their theaters are still used today. The tools may have modernized, but the purpose is the same – to make the experience of live theater as engaging as possible for the audience.

The very natural human urge to perform is a part of our nature, as noted above. When we stop to examine just how much of our lives is affected by the urge to perform and that uses traditional theatrical elements, we will notice that this is all around us. Ranging from the very simple use of our hands, faces, and bodies to add to or emphasize elements as we are telling a story to our friends or families all the way to the much more formal influences of performance, such as our celebrations, rituals, and other such events. Consider the performance-like nature of a church ceremony, or a wedding, or a court case. Except for the specifics of an individual event, the overall shape, form, and substance of many of these is the same throughout our culture – and even across some other cultures as well. We can even go as far as mentioning our games as young children through to adulthood. We very often learn through role-playing and make believe. We often find ourselves pretending to be something we aren’t to experience life through different eyes and perspectives.

Another part of the historical tradition of theater that has lasted from the Ancient Greek world is the play itself. Again, the context of the plays, the cultures they reflect, and the specifics of the language, etc. have changed, but plays still address the people for whom they are written. They reflect those people’s ideas, goals, values, and cultures. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any communication. Imagine if you were to go see a play all about life in the Himalayan mountains, spoken in Tibetan and dealing with Yaks and Yetis. There might be very little that you would understand about that play. A similar phenomenon occurs when a new movie comes out that is not about something that you enjoy. You don’t see it because you don’t want to, you don’t expect to “get anything out of it.” We want to see stories that interest us, that are about people like us, that have a relevance to our own lives. That’s why the stories and plays that we watch today have changed in content, but not in structure or techniques. Telling stories, whether in person, in writing, or as a performed play, is part of our human nature. It’s who we are.

Theater’s unique quality

Theater is often referred to as “the lively art.” Just what does that mean? Well, theater is a performance art, which means that it is performed live in front of an audience instead of being created and then viewed separately by an audience. Unlike the other performing arts (Music, Dance, and the Visual Arts) theater is unique. It stands apart from the others in a couple of specific ways.

These elements that make Theater unique almost all concern the role of, and interaction with, the audience. The performers on stage have a real time connection with the audience. They can hear them and their reactions to the performance. Sometimes, they can even see them. Occasionally, the play or the production will include direct audience interaction which makes the connection between the performers and the audience an even more intimate experience. Generally speaking, since the performance takes place live, directly in the presence of the performers, an energy connection is developed. The performers “feel” the energy from the audience as they react to the play. In turn, the audience “feels” the human connection of the live performance, which then impacts the energy they share with the performer.

If you have never experienced this for yourself, consider this parallel. Even though we can hear our favorite musician’s music on the radio or via the internet, we still go to the musician’s concerts when feasible. Why? We want to experience personally the presence of the artist while sharing in the creation of the music in real time. It feels like it is more important because we are part of the live process of creating the work of art, the music. It is this same bond that audience members share with the performers on stage during a play.

Another way in which theater is special, is in its collaborative aspects. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, defined the 6 elements of drama as: Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song and Spectacle, making clear the multi-faceted nature of theater. While we may look at these through a 21st-century lens, the elements remain integral to theatrical performance. Although at its most basic, theater requires one performer and one audience member, it is most typically a shared activity, involving both the seen and unseen collaborators, the actors and the technical departments; it takes a lot of people to put a play performance together. A general rule of thumb is that there are two to three people involved in a play for every performer who appears on the stage during a performance. All these people work together with the director and the performers to create the experience for the audience. Their purpose is to collaborate toward achieving the goals established by the director to bring the director’s interpretation of the message of the script to life, to be shared with the audience. If they do not collaborate effectively, the play won’t be successful. While theater shares the energy and audience proximity with other arts that are performed live in front of an audience, it stands apart because over the last 2500+ years, plays have tried to show us, “us.” That is, we see ourselves in a play. Our humanity is reflected back to us by the performers on the stage. The actors are humans, playing roles with human traits, with relevance to our culture, values, and sensibility. That’s something that the other arts cannot do with the same immediacy.

Source: Theatre Today, Supplement to Unit 1 of Dr. Brian Ray’s THEA 1100 – Theatre Appreciation CC BY-NC-SA, https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/the...0-8e0856df7de6 )

The Elements

Aristotle’s poetics.

Aristotle, largely considered the first literary critic, set out to define the elements of drama in Poetics (341 BCE). These elements are, in order of importance:

• Plot – the events or order of the events in the play AKA the story itself
• Character – the development of a character. A character must change and go through struggles to elicit “fear and pity” or catharsis
• Thought – the deeper themes, philosophies, or ideas reflected in the play
• Diction – the use of “poetic speech” or literary devices
• Song – the music which accompanies the drama
• Spectacle – the visual impact, such as props and costumes, or what we might today call special effects

While scholars today have a somewhat different idea about the important features of drama, they do mostly agree with Aristotle that the most important characteristic of drama is its plot.

Plot is the most important element in a narrative. It is the events in the play and the order in which the events are told. There is no one correct way to structure a drama! However, the structure of a drama is only as effective as it is intentionally formed to elicit the desired response from its audience. A play usually has a beginning, middle, and end. It almost always has a character grow and develop over the course of the play. Let’s look closely at one type of plot structure in order to see what plot might look like…..

To provide the story’s setting, a play frequently incorporates sets. If you’ve ever been involved with a play, you know that the set can be made up of detailed backdrops, specifically designed props, strategic lighting, and sometimes even background noise. A set, along with the characters’ subtle indications of the scene, can generate a full setting in the audience’s imagination. For example, the play Hamlet starts its setting on a creepy, dark, foggy, cold night in the fictional Castle Elsinore on Denmark. The setting is often established on a stage , or the physical space upon which actors move. In order for a play to take place, there must be actors (people performing the play), an audience (people viewing the play), and action and/or dialogue as performed by the actors.

While in short stories or novels a reader must wait until a character appears to know who the important characters are, in a play they are often the first aspect of the text encountered by readers. The character list usually appears in the first pages of the play. This is because, as a play emphasizes action over narration, the actors must know their parts!

Usually, the most important characters are listed first. Think most spoken lines, protagonists, antagonists, etc. However, the order in which the characters appear on the character list does not necessarily dictate the order of appearance. Like in Creative Nonfiction or Fiction, playwirghts develop characters over the course of the play. Different characters serve different roles such as protagonist, antagonist, or foil. There are a few types of character archetypes unique to drama which are described below. Note that not all of them will be in every play!

• Protagonist: Usually the character or the character with the most spoken lines, or the character around whom all the other characters seem to orbit. This is the main character, focused on trying to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle (often, but not always, the hero/ine of the play.) Hamlet would be an example of a protagonist. It should be noted that the protagonist is not always likable.
• Antagonist: This is the character, that is preventing or standing in the way of the protagonist achieving their goal (often, but not always, the villain of the play, usually opposite the protagonist. Claudius would be an example of an antagonist. Note that this character is not always a villain and may even be a sympathetic figure.
• Foil: This is a character meant to define another character through juxtaposition or comparison. For example, in Hamlet , Old Hamlet and Old Fortinbras and Hamlet and Fortinbras are often considered foils of each other. Fortinbras and Hamlet are both on paths of vengeance, yet each goes about their vengeance in different ways. While Fortinbras uses military strength, Hamlet chooses to use his intellect. While Fortinbras is decisive, Hamlet seems paralyzed by indecision. By examining the ways in which these two characters are similar and different, we can learn a lot about each of them and their significance in the play.
• Wise Elder: In many plays, there is a wise old man or figure of wisdom who guides the protagonist. In Hamlet, it might be the ghost of his father, or Polonius can be a silly inversion of this archetype.
• Love interest: again, in most plays, there is usually a love interest of the protagonist, though not always. For Hamlet, this is Ophelia (though some scholars have argued Horatio!)
• Messenger: a character who delivers news

Dialogue and Action

One of the main differences between fiction and drama is that usually a play’s plot is primarily forwarded through dialogue and action . Dialogue is comprised of the words directly spoken by characters, while actions are the physical movements of the actors. In a novel, action is described in detail and dialogue is usually put in quotation marks. For example, consider the following example of action and dialogue from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skillfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”

“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”

Distinct from the novel form of dialogue evidenced above, in a play, any words which come after the character’s name will be considered dialogue. Action is usually not described in great depth, and actors are to interpret what actions to take based on the dialogue. Consider this example from Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

MARCELLUS: Holla, Bernardo!

BERNARDO: Say,

What, is Horatio there?

HORATIO: A piece of him.

BERNARDO: Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS: What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?

BERNARDO: I have seen nothing.

In the above excerpt from the beginning of the play, Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio (soldiers) greet each other as they patrol the castle. When Horatio says “a piece of him,” we might imagine the fog is so thick or the night so dark that only pieces of each character can be seen. Horatio might be holding up his hand in the torchlight. We might imagine the characters wandering about in the dark speaking to each other, a bit rattled, worrying if the mysterious “thing” Marcellus references will reappear. We learn later in the dialogue that “thing” is an apparition (ghost). None of the characters’ movements are described, so we must infer what their actions are through their dialogue.

Although a novel’s narrator can describe in detail the thoughts and impressions of its characters, a play’s effects depend much more heavily on what the characters say and do. A play is a performance, a spectacle, rather than words on paper. That is, drama is a story performed by actors. Some plays do include a narrator or a chorus, to introduce the scene or set the tone of the play, but the bulk of the production’s effect is generated through the dialogue and its visual devices, and since the play’s script dictates what the characters will say and often, through stage direction, its production strategies as well, the script is crucial to a successful performance.

Source: 8.2: Elements of Drama , Adapted from material originally published in “Drama as Genre” from Writing and Literature – Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, & Communication by Dr. Tanya Long Bennett of the University of North Georgia CC BY-SA 4.0 , authored, remixed, and/or curated by Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap.shared under a CC BY-SA license , https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshe...ments_of_Drama )

The Theater Space

Theater can occur almost anywhere! There are a variety of building configurations, however, that are designed specifically for performance. Here are four very common stage types that you may encounter:

Proscenium Stage

This type of stage can be traditional or contemporary in appearance. It is characterized by a “proscenium arch,” which separates the audience space from that of the play. The effect is that of the audience members looking through a frame, in on the action. The stage might be straight, in line with the arch or project slightly outward, in an area called the apron.

Take a 360-degree virtual tour of a theater featuring a proscenium stage: The Stifel Theater, St. Louis, U.S.A.

Thrust Stage

A thrust stage projects into the audience space and is surrounded on 3 sides by seating. This can create a more immediate, personal connection between the actors and audience because they are sharing the same space. This configuration can also make staging more challenging, as now, actors are projecting to multiple areas instead of one audience direction. (After all, who wants the actor with his back to you for an entire performance!)

Take a 360-degree virtual tour of a theater featuring a thrust stage: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. (Note that this impermanent thrust stage has been put in front of a proscenium arch and the arch effectively blocked with a temporary “wall.”)

Arena Stage

An arena stage is an old idea (think of The Colosseum in Rome!) This type of stage is surrounded on all sides by the audience and carries with it many of the same challenges as that of a thrust stage, in terms of staging and acting a scene. There are also additional technical considerations…What can audience members see? How will you change the set? Where can the lighting be angled to highlight the action without shining in the audience’s eyes? This stage configuration can be used in both large and small spaces.

Take a 360-degree virtual tour of a theater featuring a thrust stage: The Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin, Germany

Black Box Theater

A black-box theater is typically a small, plain, open room with capacity for about 100 people. As it’s name suggests, the space is usually black. It is well-suited to experimental theater and provides an intimate theatrical experience; audience members might only be a few feet from the actors. Because the seating is not fixed, the space can be reconfigured as needed for a production.

Take a 360-degree virtual tour of a black-box theater: Margo Jones Theater, Dallas TX, U.S.A.

Check your understanding:

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#TheatreAppreciation

(2 reviews)

Kiara Pipino, Oneonta, NY

Copyright Year: 2022

Publisher: SUNY Oneonta

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Gerald Casper, Instructor, Rochester Community & Technical College on 6/26/23

Most areas are very comprehensive considering what the authors of this textbook are trying to accomplish. They state in the forward that this book is aimed at students with little to no background in theatre. Keeping that in mind, while some of... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

Most areas are very comprehensive considering what the authors of this textbook are trying to accomplish. They state in the forward that this book is aimed at students with little to no background in theatre. Keeping that in mind, while some of the chapters are simplistic, I think it would hold students’ interest better than some textbooks for a theatre appreciation class. There isn’t an index or a glossary. Ea h chapter has a list of key words from the chapter with no definitions or links to the information in the chapter.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content seems very accurate. Some sections I like better than other texts I have read.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The information is relevant. Since textbooks are updated every few years, I think it would be very easy to update this textbook.

Clarity rating: 5

I found the text to be very clear. It would be an easy and enjoyable read for the students for which they are writing.

Consistency rating: 4

The text and framework seems mostly consistent. I don’t understand having playwriting, which is the starting point of theatre unless you are improvising, to be after the actor and director. It is a minor issue, but if I were to use this textbook I would have the students read the chapter on the playwright first.

Modularity rating: 5

I see no issues with modularity in this textbook.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

With exception to the chapter on the playwright, the order seems fine. I feel that the chapter on musical theatre was a bit light on detail and a little opinionated on what is or was important. In my experience as a teacher at a community college, this is the subject that most students get excited about. I would feel the need to bring in a lot more information.

I was also surprised that absurdist theatre was covered so minimally. Although Samual Beckett is mentioned, “Waiting for Godot” was not mentioned. This seems to be a major omission, historically speaking.

Interface rating: 3

Many of the images and charts are blurry. I read the textbook on an iPad and then checked on a very high quality laptop. Some of the images with specific terminology references can’t be read at all. This is the biggest problem I had with this book.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There are a couple of minor grammatical errors. Mostly minor typos. Nothing that would keep me from using this textbook.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I think the text does a nice job of inclusion. Perhaps the term “Latinx” should be questioned. The rest of the book seemed fine to me.

I think I would use this book for a low level Introduction to Theatre or Theatre Appreciation class if they can fix the images issue and put in a glossary at the end of the book. I found the student’s perception chapter, written by a student, very interesting.

Reviewed by Erich Yetter, Assistant Professor, Anderson University on 2/6/23

The text covers a lot of areas and ideas concerning the subject of theatre and appropriately and provides an effective index and/or glossary. Chapters on Lighting (too technical), Costuming (too short), and Musical Theater (too biased) could be... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The text covers a lot of areas and ideas concerning the subject of theatre and appropriately and provides an effective index and/or glossary. Chapters on Lighting (too technical), Costuming (too short), and Musical Theater (too biased) could be possibly re-examined and adjusted?. Noticeably missing was a chapter on stage makeup.(see Modularity below)

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The authors (especially Kiara Pipino and Andrew Kahl) are extremely knowledgeable and eloquent about their subject, their passion for the theatre is palpable. Other contributors were definitely biased in the inclusion of certain productions, genres, or persons related to their topic. Two examples:

Chapter 8: The Playwright by Ingrid de Sanctis used one of the “blue boxes” to interview T.J. Young, a playwright and Asscoiate Professor at Carnegie Mellon. To be honest, it felt like a political nod to diversity and inclusion (a topic which should very well have an additional chapter, perhaps, but instead seemed forced into the conversation here and there). While Mr. Young is certainly accomplished, why not use the space discussing famous playwrights of the American Theatre like Authur Miller (1915-2005), Edward Albee (1928-2016), Tom Stoppard (b. 1937), Caryl Churchill (b. 1938), or Tony Kuchner (b. 1956), just to name a current few? If this is a survey/appreciation course then universally recognized people of influence/importance relating to theater should be included, no? The interview with Hal Luftig in Chapter 7: The Producer seems appropriate, given his proven stature and permanent mark on the national theater scene.

Chapter 14: Musical Theatre by Emily Jones was curious in the choices of important or transforming musical theatre productions. Showboat (the first true American musical) gets a nod with the same amount of text as Guys and Dolls and Hair. And a paragraph entitled The Commercialization of Broadway implies that box office, entertainment, and making money was not The Great White Way’s original intent. She also uses terms such as Latinx, which may be offensive or short-lived (see “Cultural” heading below).

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The book mentions specific actors, Broadway shows, and events, which can date the material quickly (an effective remedy could be to include more dates so that everything can be viewed relative to the specific era or time frame). Numerical figures (for example the average Broadway salary, or referencing the current year [2022!]) will change over a relatively short time frame (due to inflation, other economic factors, or the immediate passage of time). Other references to 9/11 or the COVID pandemic may date the material (in the mind of the reader) and in so doing, its relevance. Living costs/environment in New York City were not discussed, perhaps due to the rapidly changing conditions.

Yes I felt that this book for the most part would be an excellent reference for any theater major or student interested in learning about the theatre.

I felt that this book needed a more cohesive purpose, a clear identity (a problem for all collaborative manuscripts). Is it a book, as the title implies, for general students to build an appreciation of the theater or is it, as some of the technical chapters suggest, a manual for theater majors? Kiara Pipino was in sync with the former and several of her colleagues (like Dr. Kahl) were presenting the latter. Also, some of the chapters were beautifully researched (Chapter 5: The Actor by Andrew Kahl was especially well written, authoritative, informative and comprehensive, or Chapter 13: Applied Theatre by Krysta Dennis, fascinating!) while others were less appealing or detailed (Chapter 10: The Costume Team by Bethany Marx was only twelve pages long.).

Well organized and thought out although, due to the various authors, some chapters were longer, more comprehensive, better written than others. For example, Chapter 10: The Costume Team was thin and felt cursory. There could have been more discussion of historical styles, types of fabric, footwear, and auxiliary accoutrements (such as wigs, prosthetics, hats, props etc…). Noticeably missing was a chapter on stage makeup.

The book is well organized though more thorough editing may be needed. For instance, the material in Chapter 12: Theatre History, in Brief! was repetitive since the exact material was already covered in Chapter 1: A Bit of History section.

Interface rating: 2

This book in PDF format is a bit unwieldy due to its length, although the table of contents is well laid out at a glance. I wish there were more clear photos and examples of theater productions throughout. As it is, almost all of the photos and drawings that are included (and are essential in presenting a visual representation of what is being discussed) are so badly pixelated that the details and name plates are totally obfuscated (there are many examples of this, but the map of Lincoln Center on page 26 is especially egregious). The page breaks were arbitrary with often only one sentence on a vast sheet of white wasteland (for example: pages 55, 61, 74, 77, 81, 85, 93, 155 etc…).

There were not glaring grammatical errors except for a few places. In the conversation with TJ Young on page 120 he refers to the ballet The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) but its title is not capitalized. Also on pages 204 and 207 the photo credit is reproduced twice.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The text perspective changes with the different authors of some of the chapters. This is understandable but sometimes the voice of the writer is more casual or technical than another’s. Often the author’s opinions or favorite subjects are (predictably) prominent but their preferences (choice of famous actors, shows, directors, ethnic terms, etc…) may conflict with the reader’s artistic or cultural worldview. (Personally, as a man of Mexican descent, I was put-off by the recurring term “Latinx” which is a trendy, somewhat ridiculous, and slightly offensive, word. In 2021, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) dropped the word from all official communications because “it’s very unliked by almost all Latinos.”).

The foreword by Kiara Pipino set the tone of the aim of the book (casual), but I am not sure it was followed through (her chapters were light and breezy, others' not so much). The intention of the text (at times light and entertaining, at times serious and technical) was sometimes unclear; whether it’s a book for non-theater majors or actual theater majors. The essay by Gillian Canavan, though not an expert, was interesting and might appeal to students because it was written by one.

Table of Contents

• 1. Why Theater?
• 2. Theatrical Spaces
• 3. How to Read a Play and Watch a Production
• 4. Genres and Styles
• 5. The Actor
• 6. The Director
• 7. The Producer
• 8. The Playwright
• 9. The Set Team
• 10. The Costume Team
• 11. The Lighting and Sound Teams
• 12. Theater History, in Brief!
• 13. Applied Theater
• 14. Musical Theatre
• 15. Global Theatre
• Theatre Appreciation: A Student's Perspective
• Essential Bibliography

Ancillary Material

About the book.

#TheatreAppreciation is a textbook for introductory level lecture classes such as Theatre Appreciation and Introduction to Theatre. It provides insight about the art and craft of theatre, a brief exploration of theatre history, and discussion about the styles and forms of theatre along with an overview of professions in the field.

About the Contributors

Kiara Pipino  is an Associate Professor of Theatre at SUNY Oneonta and a freelance director and translator. She has worked nationally and internationally, including Off Broadway, in Italy for the Italian National Theatre, in the Czech Republic for the Prague Shakespeare Company, in the Philippines for Ateneo de Manila University, and in Greece, for Theatre of Changes. Her research fields include the role of women and gender in theatre, classic Greek theatre, and Movement for Actors. She is a graduate of the Universita’ degli Studi di Genova (Italy) and of the University of Arkansas and she holds a certification in the Michael Chekhov Technique from GLMCC.  She is the author of  Women Writing and Directing in the USA: A Stage of Our Own , published by Rutledge in 2020, she co-authored  Conquering the Stage , for Kendall Hunt, in 2017 and she wrote  Theatre and Pietas  for the University of Trento Press also in 2017.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section The Philosophy of Theater

Introduction, general overviews.

• Ancient through Modern
• Contemporary
• Theater Semiotics
• Phenomenology
• Theater as an Art Form
• Dramatic Text and Theatrical Performance
• Ontology of Theater
• Interpretation and Philosophy

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The Philosophy of Theater by Michael Y. Bennett LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0095

Theater—i.e., traditional text-based theater—is often considered the art form that most closely resembles lived life: real bodies in space play out a story through the passage of time. Because of this, theater (or theatre) has long been a laboratory of, and for, philosophical thought and reflection. The study of philosophy and theater has a history that dates back to, and flourished in, ancient Greece and Rome. While philosophers over the centuries have revisited the study of theater, the past four decades in particular have seen a noted and substantial increase of scholarship investigating this intersection between philosophy and theater. “Philosophy of theater” is, on one hand, a “field” that is just starting to take shape and is barely over a decade old; on another hand, it is a recognized subfield both of aesthetics and of theater and performance studies. And finally, it is also an amorphous concept, either not yet fleshed out, or intentionally amorphous and proudly organic. Philosophy of theater is also sometimes referred to—or is argued to be subsumed, more broadly, in—“performance philosophy,” which also refers to a network of academics and practitioners that publishes a book series and a journal of the same name. Regardless of what it is called or how it is classified, scholarship has coalesced around some fundamental preoccupations, which are not too dissimilar to questions that arise in other philosophies of. . . (e.g., art, film, dance, etc.). The debates in philosophy of theater mostly fall into three of the main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. The major metaphysical debates center on an ontological question: What is theater? Epistemological studies tend to focus on audience reception and/or how meaning is made and/or transmitted. Finally, studies in aesthetics focus on two main questions: (1) What is theater as an art form? (2) What is the relationship between dramatic text and theatrical performance? This article is intentionally narrow in its scope, focusing on philosophy and theater traditions that came out of Greek theater and philosophy, in order to ensure a sufficient amount of depth, not (merely) breadth.

While the epic work of the history of theater criticism, Carlson 1993 , traces many of the lines of thought explored in the philosophy of theater, any self-aware semblance of a field did not really happen until the publication of the edited collection Krasner and Saltz 2006 , which seems to have almost singlehandedly put its finger on the pulse of this emergent field. Hamilton 2007 is the first book on theater by a contemporary philosopher, which is based on an earlier work ( Hamilton 2001 , cited under Dramatic Text and Theatrical Performance ). It is in the mid-2010s that reflections on, theorizations of, and major contributions to the field begin to come to prominence: Puchner 2013 , Stern 2014 , Saltz 2015 , Stern 2017 ). Carlson 2018 , the third edition of a classic text on performance theory, which intersects in some key ways with the philosophy of theater, is also released around this time. Hamilton 2019 provides the decade with a retrospective and a future path to inquiry.

Carlson, Marvin. Theories of the Theater: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present . Expanded ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

This is a monumental work of theater history, in a sense that it tracks the critical and theoretical response to theater over the millennia, from Plato and Aristotle, through Nietzsche, to the semiotics of theater.

Carlson, Marvin. Performance: A Critical Introduction . 3d ed. London: Routledge, 2018.

While not quite about the philosophy of theater or performance, this is an already-classic text, now in its third edition, that provides a lot of the theoretical backbone to theater and performance studies (intersecting, at times, with philosophy of theater).

Hamilton, James R. The Art of Theater . Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

DOI: 10.1002/9780470690871

Coming from the field of philosophical aesthetics and epistemology, this is the first major contemporary book-length study on theater by a philosopher, and as such it is a central text to the study of the philosophy of theater.

Hamilton, James R. “ The Philosophy of Theater .” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2019.

An important compliment and/or supplement to this present article, Hamilton’s article on the philosophy of theater is, primarily, for philosophers. While not overly technical, there are some sections where some familiarity of philosophical discourse is helpful. As Hamilton comes from the field of aesthetics, added emphasis is placed on aesthetics in this article.

Krasner, David, and David Saltz, eds. Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance, and Philosophy . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

A foundational book in the field, as this edited collection almost singlehandedly brought the study of theater and philosophy to the forefront of the field of theater and performance studies.

Puchner, Martin. “Afterword: Please Mind the Gap between Theatre and Philosophy.” Modern Drama 56.4 (2013): 540–553.

DOI: 10.3138/md.S85

Giving an overview of the historical distrust between the two disciplines, theater and philosophy, this article attempts to bridge the gap in order to find common ground, understanding how the two fields use each other. This article, both directly and indirectly, provides a thorough history of the intersection between theater and philosophy.

Saltz, David. “From Semiotics to Philosophy: Daring to Ask the Obvious.” Performance Philosophy 1 (2015): 95–105.

DOI: 10.21476/PP.2015.1124

A great and readable article that offers a (retrospective) history of the field of the philosophy of theater.

Stern, Tom. Philosophy and Theatre: An Introduction . London: Routledge, 2014.

This is an introductory book to the field. Those familiar with the field of the philosophy of theater may not need to consult it, other than for a brush-up of the overall sweep of the field. However, this book should prove an indispensable guide into, and a starting point for, the study of the philosophy of theater for the newcomer.

Stern, Tom, ed. The Philosophy of Theatre, Drama, and Acting . London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017.

A collection of essays on philosophy and theater/theatrical performance, the dramatic text, and acting, this book has essays on a wide range of topics from many leading philosophers of theater.

Zamir, Tzachi. Acts: Theater, Philosophy, and the Performing Self . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.

DOI: 10.3998/mpub.6610419

The first book-length study of acting from a philosophical perspective, this is an excellent and approachable book, key to all future study about the philosophy of acting.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Theater in ancient greece.

Terracotta amphoriskos (flask) in the form of a bird-man

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Painter of the Yale Lekythos

Terracotta calyx-krater (mixing bowl)

Attributed to the Konnakis Group

Two terracotta roundels with theatrical masks

Attributed to the Dolon Painter

Colette Hemingway Independent Scholar

October 2004

Our interest in the theater connects us intimately with the ancient Greeks and Romans. Nearly every Greek and Roman city of note had an open-air theater, the seats arranged in tiers with a lovely view of the surrounding landscape. Here the Greeks sat and watched the plays first of Aeschylus, Sophokles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, and of Menander and the later playwrights.

The Greek theater consisted essentially of the orchestra, the flat dancing floor of the chorus, and the theatron, the actual structure of the theater building. Since theaters in antiquity were frequently modified and rebuilt, the surviving remains offer little clear evidence of the nature of the theatrical space available to the Classical dramatists in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. There is no physical evidence for a circular orchestra earlier than that of the great theater at Epidauros dated to around 330 B.C. Most likely, the audience in fifth-century B.C. Athens was seated close to the stage in a rectilinear arrangement, such as appears at the well-preserved theater at Thorikos in Attica. During this early period in Greek drama, the stage and most probably the skene (stage building) were made of wood. Vase paintings depicting Greek comedy from the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. suggest that the stage stood about a meter high with a flight of steps in the center. The actors entered from either side and from a central door in the skene, which also housed the ekkyklema, a wheeled platform with sets of scenes. A mechane, or crane, located at the right end of the stage, was used to hoist gods and heroes through the air onto the stage. Greek dramatists surely made the most of the extreme contrasts between the gods up high and the actors on stage, and between the dark interior of the stage building and the bright daylight.

Little is known about the origins of Greek tragedy before Aeschylus (ca. 525-ca. 455 B.C.), the most innovative of the Greek dramatists. His earliest surviving work is Persians , which was produced in 472 B.C. The roots of Greek tragedy, however, most likely are embedded in the Athenian spring festival of Dionysos Eleuthereios, which included processions, sacrifices in the theater, parades, and competitions between tragedians. Of the few surviving Greek tragedies, all but Aeschylus’ Persians draw from heroic myths. The protagonist and the chorus portrayed the heroes who were the object of cult in Attica in the fifth century B.C. Often, the dialogue between the actor and chorus served a didactic function, linking it as a form of public discourse with debates in the assembly. To this day, drama in all its forms still functions as a powerful medium of communication of ideas.

Unlike the Greek tragedy, the comic performances produced in Athens during the fifth century B.C., the so-called Old Comedy, ridiculed mythology and prominent members of Athenian society. There seems to have been no limit to speech or action in the comic exploitation of sex and other bodily functions. Terracotta figurines and vase paintings dated around and after the time of Aristophanes (450–ca. 387 B.C.) show comic actors wearing grotesque masks and tights with padding on the rump and belly, as well as a leather phallus.

In the second half of the fourth century B.C., the so-called New Comedy of Menander (343–291 B.C.) and his contemporaries gave fresh interpretations to familiar material. In many ways comedy became simpler and tamer, with very little obscenity. The grotesque padding and phallus of Old Comedy were abandoned in favor of more naturalistic costumes that reflected the playwrights’ new style. Subtle differentiation of masks worn by the actors paralleled the finer delineation of character in the texts of New Comedy, which dealt with private and family life, social tensions, and the triumph of love in a variety of contexts.

Hemingway, Colette. “Theater in Ancient Greece.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/thtr/hd_thtr.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Greece and Rome . Introduction by Joan Mertens. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. See on MetPublications

Bieber, Margarete. The History of the Greek and Roman Theater . 2d ed., rev. and enl. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Bothmer, Dietrich von. Greek Vase Painting: An Introduction . MMA Bulletin 31. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972. See on MetPublications

Green, J. R. Theatre in Ancient Greek Society . London: Routledge, 1994.

Green, J. R., and Eric Handley. Images of the Greek Theatre . London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1995.

Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 3d ed., rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Trendall, A. D. Phlyax Vases . 2d ed., rev. and enl. London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1967.

Trendall, A. D., and T. B. L. Webster. Illustrations of Greek Drama . London: Phaidon, 1971.

Additional Essays by Colette Hemingway

• Hemingway, Colette. “ Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition .” (April 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Greek Hydriai (Water Jars) and Their Artistic Decoration .” (July 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Hellenistic Jewelry .” (April 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Intellectual Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age .” (April 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Mycenaean Civilization .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Retrospective Styles in Greek and Roman Sculpture .” (July 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Africans in Ancient Greek Art .” (January 2008)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Ancient Greek Colonization and Trade and their Influence on Greek Art .” (July 2007)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Architecture in Ancient Greece .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Greek Gods and Religious Practices .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.) .” (January 2008)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Labors of Herakles .” (January 2008)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Athletics in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Rise of Macedon and the Conquests of Alexander the Great .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Technique of Bronze Statuary in Ancient Greece .” (October 2003)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Women in Classical Greece .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Cyprus—Island of Copper .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Music in Ancient Greece .” (October 2001)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and Art .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Etruscan Art .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Prehistoric Cypriot Art and Culture .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Sardis .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Medicine in Classical Antiquity .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Southern Italian Vase Painting .” (October 2004)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ The Kithara in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
• Hemingway, Colette. “ Minoan Crete .” (October 2002)

Related Essays

• The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.)
• Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques
• Greek Gods and Religious Practices
• Ancient Greek Colonization and Trade and their Influence on Greek Art
• Ancient Greek Dress
• Architecture in Ancient Greece
• Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition
• Classical Antiquity in the Middle Ages
• Commedia dell’arte
• Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece
• Funerary Vases in Southern Italy and Sicily
• Greek Terracotta Figurines with Articulated Limbs
• Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus
• Mystery Cults in the Greek and Roman World
• Neoclassicism
• The Papacy during the Renaissance
• Roman Copies of Greek Statues
• Southern Italian Vase Painting
• The Symposium in Ancient Greece
• Theater and Amphitheater in the Roman World

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• Deity / Religious Figure
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• Hellenistic Period
• Literature / Poetry
• Painted Object

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• Konnakis Group
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• Tarporley Painter

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I recently watched a play Big love at the University theatre. The play is quite informative as it retells the ancient Greek culture in a comical way. From the setting, it is evident those women were inferior to men and that the society, in general, was chauvinistic. This is the basis of the runaway sisters from their cousins turned husbands. Besides the culture, I have acquired some skills pertaining staging and designing of the play. It is necessary to set the stage according to the scene for the flow of the themes. Even though there were fifty brides fleeing from fifty not-of-their-choosing grooms, only seven of them appear on stage at any one time. This was especially so after setting the theme of the play in addition to defining the behavior of every character. As a student in theatre design, I have learned different aspects of lighting and scenic design. The customs worn must be compatible with the behavior of characters in the play. Compatibility is additionally necessary for the development of personalities and attitudes for every character. I deeply enjoyed every aspect of the film and lessons I was taught in class prior to watching the film. From the lessons, I have come to appreciate the fact that every movie offers an opportunity to create personal perspective and interests. Consequently, even though the theme focused on love, I came to realize the role of gender in the ancient Greek culture.

From class work, apart from entertainment, every play is set for a given audience. This lesson was so much profound in the play since it was useful in educating the audience on cultural modifications in various cultures while underscoring the Greek culture. I have acquired additional lessons on theatre and film production from the play Big Love . I have realized that play production is a rigorous exercise and quite exhilarating. This is especially so after attending classes and comparing the skills, I am presently equipped with and the concrete skills exhibited on the play. It is necessary to choose characters for a particular position and with precise behavior. For instance, Lydia comes out as the first born among the sisters and so the most thoughtful. This realization has challenged me to broaden my experiences as I strive to acquire specific skills in theatre design. The most significant lesson I have acquired is the necessity of introducing culture to every play.

The film, Big Love , is among the few conventional romantic films I have enjoyed watching in the recent past. This is because it is beautiful, animated, fun, and emotional. Stop Kiss is another romantic film that was rewritten to suit the present period and audience. The film, similar to Big Love is so touching as it retells the relationship between two young lovers that negatively live to detest romantic relations, especially after their first kiss. Other than entertaining the audience, these films honor different cultures. For instance, the film on Big Love honors the Greek culture in a comical way. The playwright, Charles Mee, has in addition done some wonderful work by incorporating aspects of religion, culture, and background into the present contemporary romance. This work is written cleverly to introduce some aspects of Greek culture in the modern theatre. Music as a component had been chosen skillfully to suit the theme in each setting. From personal experience, music is a powerful tool in theatre production, since it profoundly contributes to the theme of the play. Music in most of the romantic films is usually controlled and orchestrated by the players.

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Shakespeare’s Theater: From the Folger Shakespeare Editions

By Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine Editors of the Folger Shakespeare Library Editions

Listen to this essay:

The actors of Shakespeare’s time are known to have performed plays in a great variety of locations. They played at court (that is, in the great halls of such royal residences as Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Greenwich); they played in halls at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and at the Inns of Court (the residences in London of the legal societies); and they also played in the private houses of great lords and civic officials. Sometimes acting companies went on tour from London into the provinces, often (but not only) when outbreaks of bubonic plague in the capital forced the closing of theaters to reduce the possibility of contagion in crowded audiences. In the provinces the actors usually staged their plays in churches (until around 1600), in guildhalls, or in the great houses of individual patrons. While surviving records show only a handful of occasions when actors played at inns while on tour, London inns were important playing places up until the 1590s.

The building of theaters in London had begun only shortly before Shakespeare wrote his first plays in the 1590s. These theaters were of two kinds: outdoor or public playhouses that could accommodate large numbers of playgoers, and indoor or private theaters for much smaller audiences. What is usually regarded as the first London outdoor public playhouse was called simply the Theatre. James Burbage—the father of Richard Burbage, who was perhaps the most famous actor in Shakespeare’s company—built it in 1576 in an area north of the city of London called Shoreditch. Among the more famous of the other public playhouses that capitalized on the new fashion were the Curtain and the Fortune (both also built north of the city), the Rose, the Swan, the Globe, and the Hope (all located on the Bankside, a region just across the Thames south of the city of London). All these playhouses had to be built outside the jurisdiction of the city of London because many civic officials were hostile to the performance of drama and repeatedly petitioned the royal council to abolish it.

A stylized representation of the Globe theater. From Claes Jansz Visscher, Londinum florentissima Britanniae urbs . . . [c. 1625].

The theaters erected on the Bankside (a region under the authority of the Church of England, whose head was the monarch) shared the neighborhood with houses of prostitution and with the Paris Garden, where the blood sports of bearbaiting and bullbaiting were carried on. There may have been no clear distinction between playhouses and buildings for such sports, for we know that the Hope was used for both plays and baiting and that Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose and, later, partner in the ownership of the Fortune, was also a partner in a monopoly on baiting. All these forms of entertainment were easily accessible to Londoners by boat across the Thames or over London Bridge.

Evidently Shakespeare’s company prospered on the Bankside. They moved there in 1599. Threatened by difficulties in renewing the lease on the land where their first theater (the Theatre) had been built, Shakespeare’s company took advantage of the Christmas holiday in 1598 to dismantle the Theatre and transport its timbers across the Thames to the Bankside, where, in 1599, these timbers were used in the building of the Globe. The weather in late December 1598 is recorded as having been especially harsh. It was so cold that the Thames was “nigh [nearly] frozen,” and there was heavy snow. Perhaps the weather aided Shakespeare’s company in eluding their landlord, the snow hiding their activity and the freezing of the Thames allowing them to slide the timbers across to the Bankside without paying tolls for repeated trips over London Bridge. Attractive as this narrative is, it remains just as likely that the heavy snow hampered transport of the timbers in wagons through the London streets to the river. It also must be remembered that the Thames was, according to report, only “nigh frozen,” and therefore did not necessarily provide solid footing. Whatever the precise circumstances of this fascinating event in English theater history, Shakespeare’s company was able to begin playing at their new Globe theater on the Bankside in 1599. After this theater burned down in 1613 during the staging of Shakespeare’s  Henry VIII  (its thatch roof was set alight by cannon fire called for in performance), Shakespeare’s company immediately rebuilt on the same location. The second Globe seems to have been a grander structure than its predecessor. It remained in use until the beginning of the English Civil War in 1642, when Parliament officially closed the theaters. Soon thereafter it was pulled down.

The public theaters of Shakespeare’s time were very different buildings from our theaters today. First of all, they were open-air playhouses. As recent excavations of the Rose and the Globe confirm, some were polygonal or roughly circular in shape; the Fortune, however, was square. The most recent estimates of their size put the diameter of these buildings at 72 feet (the Rose) to 100 feet (the Globe), but we know that they held vast audiences of two or three thousand, who must have been squeezed together quite tightly. Some of these spectators paid extra to sit or stand in the two or three levels of roofed galleries that extended, on the upper levels, all the way around the theater and surrounded an open space. In this space were the stage and, perhaps, the tiring house (what we would call dressing rooms), as well as the so-called yard. In the yard stood the spectators who chose to pay less, the ones whom Hamlet contemptuously called “groundlings.” For a roof they had only the sky, and so they were exposed to all kinds of weather. They stood on a floor that was sometimes made of mortar and sometimes of ash mixed with the shells of hazelnuts, which, it has recently been discovered, were standard flooring material in the period.

Unlike the yard, the stage itself was covered by a roof. Its ceiling, called “the heavens,” is thought to have been elaborately painted to depict the sun, moon, stars, and planets. The exact size of the stage remains hard to determine. We have a single sketch of part of the interior of the Swan. A Dutchman named Johannes de Witt visited this theater around 1596 and sent a sketch of it back to his friend, Arend van Buchel. Because van Buchel found de Witt’s letter and sketch of interest, he copied both into a book. It is van Buchel’s copy, adapted, it seems, to the shape and size of the page in his book, that survives. In this sketch, the stage appears to be a large rectangular platform that thrusts far out into the yard, perhaps even as far as the center of the circle formed by the surrounding galleries. This drawing, combined with the specifications for the size of the stage in the building contract for the Fortune, has led scholars to conjecture that the stage on which Shakespeare’s plays were performed must have measured approximately 43 feet in width and 27 feet in depth, a vast acting area. But the digging up of a large part of the Rose by late-twentieth-century archaeologists has provided evidence of a quite different stage design. The Rose stage was a platform tapered at the corners and much shallower than what seems to be depicted in the van Buchel sketch. Indeed, its measurements seem to be about 37.5 feet across at its widest point and only 15.5 feet deep. Because the surviving indications of stage size and design differ from each other so much, it is possible that the stages in other theaters, like the Theatre, the Curtain, and the Globe (the outdoor playhouses where we know that Shakespeare’s plays were performed), were different from those at both the Swan and the Rose.

After about 1608 Shakespeare’s plays were staged not only at the Globe but also at an indoor or private playhouse in Blackfriars. This theater had been constructed in 1596 by James Burbage in an upper hall of a former Dominican priory or monastic house. Although Henry VIII had dissolved all English monasteries in the 1530s (shortly after he had founded the Church of England), the area remained under church, rather than hostile civic, control. The hall that Burbage had purchased and renovated was a large one in which Parliament had once met. In the private theater that he constructed, the stage, lit by candles, was built across the narrow end of the hall, with boxes flanking it. The rest of the hall offered seating room only. Because there was no provision for standing room, the largest audience it could hold was less than a thousand, or about a quarter of what the Globe could accommodate. Admission to Blackfriars was correspondingly more expensive. Instead of a penny to stand in the yard at the Globe, it cost a minimum of sixpence to get into Blackfriars. The best seats at the Globe (in the Lords’ Room in the gallery above and behind the stage) cost sixpence; but the boxes flanking the stage at Blackfriars were half a crown, or five times sixpence. Some spectators who were particularly interested in displaying themselves paid even more to sit on stools on the Blackfriars stage.

Whether in the outdoor or indoor playhouses, the stages of Shakespeare’s time were different from ours. They were not separated from the audience by the dropping of a curtain between acts and scenes. Therefore the playwrights of the time had to find other ways of signaling to the audience that one scene (to be imagined as occurring in one location at a given time) had ended and the next (to be imagined at perhaps a different location at a later time) had begun. The customary way used by Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries was to have everyone on stage exit at the end of one scene and have one or more different characters enter to begin the next. In a few cases, where characters remain onstage from one scene to another, the dialogue or stage action makes the change of location clear, and the characters are generally to be imagined as having moved from one place to another. For example, in  Romeo and Juliet ,  Romeo and his friends remain onstage in Act 1 from scene 4 to scene 5 , but they are represented as having moved between scenes from the street that leads to Capulet’s house into Capulet’s house itself. The new location is signaled in part by the appearance onstage of Capulet’s servingmen carrying table napkins, something they would not take into the streets. Playwrights had to be quite resourceful in the use of hand properties, like the napkin, or in the use of dialogue to specify where the action was taking place in their plays because, in contrast to most of today’s theaters, the playhouses of Shakespeare’s time did not fill the stage with scenery to make the setting precise. A consequence of this difference was that the playwrights of Shakespeare’s time did not have to specify exactly where the action of their plays was set when they did not choose to do so, and much of the action of their plays is tied to no specific place.

Usually Shakespeare’s stage is referred to as a “bare stage,” to distinguish it from the stages of the last two or three centuries with their elaborate sets. But the stage in Shakespeare’s time was not completely bare. Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose, lists in his inventory of stage properties a rock, three tombs, and two mossy banks. Stage directions in plays of the time also call for such things as thrones (or “states”), banquets (presumably tables with plaster replicas of food on them), and beds and tombs to be pushed onto the stage. Thus the stage often held more than the actors.

The actors did not limit their performing to the stage alone. Occasionally they went beneath the stage, as the Ghost appears to do in the first act of  Hamlet.  From there they could emerge onto the stage through a trapdoor. They could retire behind the hangings across the back of the stage, as, for example, the actor playing Polonius does when he hides behind the arras. Sometimes the hangings could be drawn back during a performance to “discover” one or more actors behind them. When performance required that an actor appear “above,” as when Juliet is imagined to stand at the window of her chamber in the famous and misnamed “balcony scene,” then the actor probably climbed the stairs to the gallery over the back of the stage and temporarily shared it with some of the spectators. The stage was also provided with ropes and winches so that actors could descend from, and reascend to, the “heavens.”

Perhaps the greatest difference between dramatic performances in Shakespeare’s time and ours was that in Shakespeare’s England the roles of women were played by boys. (Some of these boys grew up to take male roles in their maturity.) There were no women in the acting companies. It was not so in Europe, and had not always been so in the history of the English stage. There are records of women on English stages in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, two hundred years before Shakespeare’s plays were performed. After the accession of James I in 1603, the queen of England and her ladies took part in entertainments at court called masques, and with the reopening of the theaters in 1660 at the restoration of Charles II, women again took their place on the public stage.

The chief competitors of such acting companies as the one to which Shakespeare belonged and for which he wrote were companies of exclusively boy actors. The competition was most intense in the early 1600s. There were then two principal children’s companies: the Children of Paul’s (the choirboys from St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose private playhouse was near the cathedral); and the Children of the Chapel Royal (the choirboys from the monarch’s private chapel, who performed at the Blackfriars theater built by Burbage in 1596). In  Hamlet  Shakespeare writes of “an aerie [nest] of children, little eyases [hawks], that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for ’t. These are now the fashion and . . . berattle the common stages [attack the public theaters].” In the long run, the adult actors prevailed. The Children of Paul’s dissolved around 1606. By about 1608 the Children of the Chapel Royal had been forced to stop playing at the Blackfriars theater, which was then taken over by the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s own troupe.

Acting companies and theaters of Shakespeare’s time seem to have been organized in various ways. For example, with the building of the Globe, Shakespeare’s company apparently managed itself, with the principal actors, Shakespeare among them, having the status of “sharers” and the right to a share in the takings, as well as the responsibility for a part of the expenses. Five of the sharers, including Shakespeare, owned the Globe. As actor, as sharer in an acting company and in ownership of theaters, and as playwright, Shakespeare was about as involved in the theatrical industry as one could imagine. Although Shakespeare and his fellows prospered, their status under the law was conditional upon the protection of powerful patrons. “Common players”—those who did not have patrons or masters—were classed in the language of the law with “vagabonds and sturdy beggars.” So the actors had to secure for themselves the official rank of servants of patrons. Among the patrons under whose protection Shakespeare’s company worked were the lord chamberlain and, after the accession of King James in 1603, the king himself.

In the early 1990s we began to learn a great deal more about the theaters in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries performed—or, at least, began to open up new questions about them. At that time about 70 percent of the Rose had been excavated, as had about 10 percent of the second Globe, the one built in 1614. Excavation was halted at that point, but London has come to value the sites of its early playhouses, and takes what opportunities it can to explore them more deeply, both on the Bankside and in Shoreditch. Information about the playhouses of Shakespeare’s London is therefore a constantly changing resource.

Further Reading

Bentley, G. E. The Profession of Player in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Bentley readably sets forth a wealth of evidence about performance in Shakespeare’s time, with special attention to the relations between player and company, and the business of casting, managing, and touring.

Berry, Herbert. Shakespeare’s Playhouses. New York: AMS Press, 1987.

Berry’s six essays collected here discuss (with illustrations) varying aspects of the four playhouses in which Shakespeare had a financial stake: the Theatre in Shoreditch, the Blackfriars, and the first and second Globe.

Berry, Herbert, William Ingram, and Glynne Wickham, eds. English Professional Theatre, 1530–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Wickham presents the government documents designed to control professional players, their plays, and playing places. Ingram handles the professional actors, giving as representative a life of the actor Augustine Phillips, and discussing, among other topics, patrons, acting companies, costumes, props, play-books, provincial playing, and child actors. Berry treats the twenty-three different London playhouses from 1560 to 1660 for which there are records, including four inns.

Cook, Ann Jennalie. The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare’s London. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Cook’s work argues, on the basis of sociological, economic, and documentary evidence, that Shakespeare’s audience—and the audience for English Renaissance drama generally—consisted mainly of the “privileged.”

Dutton, Richard, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Dutton divides his study of the theatrical industry of Shakespeare’s time into the following sections: “Theatre Companies,” “London Playhouses,” “Other Playing Spaces,” “Social Practices,” and “Evidence of Theatrical Practices.” Each of these sections is further subdivided, with subdivisions assigned to individual experts. W. R. Streitberger treats the “Adult Playing Companies to 1583”; Sally-Beth MacLean those from 1583 to 1593; Roslyn L. Knutson, 1593–1603; Tom Rutter, 1603–1613; James J. Marino, 1613–1625; and Martin Butler, the “Adult and Boy Playing Companies 1625–1642.” Michael Shapiro is responsible for the “Early (Pre-1590) Boy Companies and Their Acting Venues,” while Mary Bly writes of “The Boy Companies 1599–1613.” David Kathman handles “Inn-Yard Playhouses”; Gabriel Egan, “The Theatre in Shoreditch 1576–1599”; Andrew Gurr, “Why the Globe Is Famous”; Ralph Alan Cohen, “The Most Convenient Place: The Second Blackfriars Theater and Its Appeal”; Mark Bayer, “The Red Bull Playhouse”; and Frances Teague, “The Phoenix and the Cockpit-in-Court Playhouses.” Turning to “Other Playing Spaces,” Suzanne Westfall describes how “ ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’: Household Entertainments”; Alan H. Nelson, “The Universities and the Inns of Court”; Peter Greenfield, “Touring”; John H. Astington, “Court Theatre”; and Anne Lancashire, “London Street Theater.” For “Social Practices,” Alan Somerset writes of “Not Just Sir Oliver Owlet: From Patrons to ‘Patronage’ of Early Modern Theatre,” Dutton himself of “The Court, the Master of the Revels, and the Players,” S. P. Cerasano of “Theater Entrepreneurs and Theatrical Economics,” Ian W. Archer of “The City of London and the Theatre,” David Kathman of “Players, Livery Companies, and Apprentices,” Kathleen E. McLuskie of “Materiality and the Market: The Lady Elizabeth’s Men and the Challenge of Theatre History,” Heather Hirschfield of “ ‘For the author’s credit’: Issues of Authorship in English Renaissance Drama,” and Natasha Korda of “Women in the Theater.” On “Theatrical Practices,” Jacalyn Royce discusses “Early Modern Naturalistic Acting: The Role of the Globe in the Development of Personation”; Tiffany Stern, “Actors’ Parts”; Alan Dessen, “Stage Directions and the Theater Historian”; R. B. Graves, “Lighting”; Lucy Munro, “Music and Sound”; Dutton himself, “Properties”; Thomas Postlewait, “Eyewitnesses to History: Visual Evidence for Theater in Early Modern England”; and Eva Griffith, “Christopher Beeston: His Property and Properties.”

Greg, W. W. Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931.

Greg itemizes and briefly describes almost all the play manuscripts that survive from the period 1590 to around 1660, including, among other things, players’ parts. His second volume offers facsimiles of selected manuscripts.

Harbage, Alfred. Shakespeare’s Audience. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.

Harbage investigates the fragmentary surviving evidence to interpret the size, composition, and behavior of Shakespeare’s audience.

Keenan, Siobhan. Acting Companies and Their Plays in Shakespeare’s London. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2014.

Keenan “explores how the needs, practices, resources and pressures on acting companies and playwrights informed not only the performance and publication of contemporary dramas but playwrights’ writing practices.” Each chapter focuses on one important factor that influenced Renaissance playwrights and players. The initial focus is on how “the nature and composition of the acting companies” influenced the playwrights who wrote for them. Then, using “the Diary of theatre manager Philip Henslowe and manuscript playbooks showing signs of theatrical use,” Keenan examines the relations between acting companies and playwrights. Other influences include “the physical design and facilities of London’s outdoor and indoor theatrical spaces” and the diverse audiences for plays, including royal and noble patrons.

Shapiro, Michael. Children of the Revels: The Boy Companies of Shakespeare’s Time and Their Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

Shapiro chronicles the history of the amateur and quasi-professional child companies that flourished in London at the end of Elizabeth’s reign and the beginning of James’s.

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Essay Introduction to Theatre

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• How to write an essay introduction | 4 steps & examples

How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on February 4, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A good introduction paragraph is an essential part of any academic essay . It sets up your argument and tells the reader what to expect.

The main goals of an introduction are to:

• Catch your reader’s attention.
• Give background on your topic.
• Present your thesis statement —the central point of your essay.

This introduction example is taken from our interactive essay example on the history of Braille.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

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Table of contents

Step 1: hook your reader, step 2: give background information, step 3: present your thesis statement, step 4: map your essay’s structure, step 5: check and revise, more examples of essay introductions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.

Your first sentence sets the tone for the whole essay, so spend some time on writing an effective hook.

Avoid long, dense sentences—start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

The hook should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of the topic you’re writing about and why it’s interesting. Avoid overly broad claims or plain statements of fact.

Examples: Writing a good hook

Take a look at these examples of weak hooks and learn how to improve them.

• Braille was an extremely important invention.
• The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

The first sentence is a dry fact; the second sentence is more interesting, making a bold claim about exactly  why the topic is important.

• The internet is defined as “a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities.”
• The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education.

Avoid using a dictionary definition as your hook, especially if it’s an obvious term that everyone knows. The improved example here is still broad, but it gives us a much clearer sense of what the essay will be about.

• Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein is a famous book from the nineteenth century.
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement.

Instead of just stating a fact that the reader already knows, the improved hook here tells us about the mainstream interpretation of the book, implying that this essay will offer a different interpretation.

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Next, give your reader the context they need to understand your topic and argument. Depending on the subject of your essay, this might include:

• Historical, geographical, or social context
• An outline of the debate you’re addressing
• A summary of relevant theories or research about the topic
• Definitions of key terms

The information here should be broad but clearly focused and relevant to your argument. Don’t give too much detail—you can mention points that you will return to later, but save your evidence and interpretation for the main body of the essay.

How much space you need for background depends on your topic and the scope of your essay. In our Braille example, we take a few sentences to introduce the topic and sketch the social context that the essay will address:

Now it’s time to narrow your focus and show exactly what you want to say about the topic. This is your thesis statement —a sentence or two that sums up your overall argument.

This is the most important part of your introduction. A  good thesis isn’t just a statement of fact, but a claim that requires evidence and explanation.

The goal is to clearly convey your own position in a debate or your central point about a topic.

Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.

As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.

For this reason, it’s often a good idea to wait until later in the writing process before you write the introduction paragraph—it can even be the very last thing you write.

When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion , you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.

It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.

To polish your writing, you can use something like a paraphrasing tool .

You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.

Checklist: Essay introduction

My first sentence is engaging and relevant.

I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.

I have defined any important terms.

My thesis statement clearly presents my main point or argument.

Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.

You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.

• Argumentative
• Literary analysis

This introduction to an argumentative essay sets up the debate about the internet and education, and then clearly states the position the essay will argue for.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

This introduction to a short expository essay leads into the topic (the invention of the printing press) and states the main point the essay will explain (the effect of this invention on European society).

In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.

This introduction to a literary analysis essay , about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.

To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

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Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Travel and Tourism Industry — The History of Moscow City

The History of Moscow City

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• Preplanned tours
• Daytrips out of Moscow
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• St. Petersburg

Theatres in Moscow

Cultural life of Moscow city is various and rich! Operas, ballets, symphonic concerts... Russian composers have created some of the most beautiful classical music. Russian classical music is very popular in Moscow. It is performed in many beautiful historical venues. Do not forget to include a visit to a concert hall in your itinerary when you are planning your stay in Moscow! And do it in advance.

There are almost no restrictions on dress code in Russian theatres. Visitors may wear jeans and sports shoes, they may have a backpack with them. Only shorts are not allowed.

A typical feature of Russian theatre – visitors are bringing a lot of flowers which they present to their favorite performers after the show.

Here are some practical advices where to go and how to buy tickets.

The Bolshoi Theatre

The Bolshoi Theatre is the oldest, the most famous and popular opera and ballet theatre in Russia. The word “Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian. You can buy a ticket online in advance, 2-3 months before the date of performance on the official website . Prices for famous ballets are high: 6-8 thousand rubles for a seat in stalls. Tickets to operas are cheaper: you can get a good seat for 4-5 thousand rubles. Tickets are cheaper for daytime performances and performances on the New Stage. The New Stage is situated in the light-green building to the left of the Bolshoi's main building. The quality of operas and ballets shown on the New Stage is excellent too. However, you should pay attention that many seats of the Bolshoi’s Old and New Stages have limited visibility . If you want to see the Bolshoi’s Old Stage but all tickets are sold out, you can order a tour of the theatre. You can book such a tour on the official website.

If you want, following Russian tradition, to give flowers to the performers at the end of the show, in the Bolshoi flowers should be presented via special staff who collects these flowers in advance.

In August the Bolshoi is closed.

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre

This theatre is noteworthy. On one hand, it offers brilliant classical opera and ballet performances. On the other hand, it is an experimental venue for modern artists. You can check the program and buy tickets online here http://stanmus.com/ . If you are opera lover, get a ticket to see superstar Hibla Gerzmava . The theatre has a very beautiful historic building and a stage with a good view from every seat. Tickets are twice cheaper than in the Bolshoi.

The Novaya Opera

“Novaya” means “New” in Russian. This opera house was founded in 1991 by a famous conductor Eugene Kolobov. Its repertoire has several directions: Russian and Western classics, original shows and divertissements, and operas of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is very popular with Muscovites for excellent quality of performances, a comfortable hall, a beautiful Art Nouveau building and a historic park Hermitage, which is situated right next to it. You can buy tickets online here http://www.novayaopera.ru/en .

Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Center

The Opera Center has become one of the best theatrical venues in Moscow. It was founded in 2002 by great diva Galina Vishnevskaya. Nowadays its artistic director is Olga Rostropovich, daughter of Galina Vishnevskaya and her husband Mstislav Rostropovich, great cellist and conductor. Not only best young opera singers perform here, but also world music stars do; chamber and symphonic concerts, theatrical productions and musical festivals take place here. You can see what is on the program here http://opera-centre.ru/theatre . Unfortunately “booking tickets online” is available in Russian only. If you need help, you can contact us at and we can book a ticket for you. 

Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and The Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory

These are two major concert halls for symphonic music in Moscow. Both feature excellent acoustics, impressive interior, various repertoire and best performers. You can check the program here http://meloman.ru/calendar/ . You need just to switch to English. Booking tickets online is available only for owners of Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian phone numbers. If you need help, you can contact us and we can book a ticket for you. 

Moscow International Performing Arts Center (MIPAC)

This modern and elegant concert hall houses performances of national and foreign symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo instrumentalists, opera singers, ballet dancers, theatre companies, jazz bands, variety and traditional ensembles. Actually, it has three concert halls placed on three different levels and having separate entrances. The President of MIPAC is People’s Artist of the USSR Vladimir Spivakov, conductor of “Virtuosy Moskvy” orchestra. You can see pictures of the concert halls here http://www.mmdm.ru/en/content/halls . The program is impressive in its variety but is not translated into English. You can contact us at and we can find a performance for you.

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Coreopsis Autumn 2024 Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre Walking Another Path

Coreopsis Autumn 2024 Coreopsis Journal of Myth and TheatreWalking Another Path

Published September 2024

Dbanline for submissions: July 1, 2024

 Full Call:  https://societyforritualarts.com/coreopsis/spring-2024-issue/call-coreop...

To contact the editors and to submit your work to Coreopsis Journal, please write to: 

“submissions” [email protected] Our submission guidelines are here: http://societyforritualarts.com/coreopsis/submissions    Prepare your paper for bind peer review, using APA style, .12 point times new roman, double spaced. Editorial essays and book reviews should not be submitted blind. Please include a cover leter with yout contact information. 

“I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children’s stories. She was  polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, ‘Can’t you write anything normal?” Octavia E. Butler, Introduction,  Bloodchild and Other Stories

A handful of women writers entered the genres of science fiction and fantasy in the late 1960s and through the ’80s. Their influences can be felt throughout literature today. Among them (not in any order) Anne McCaffrey, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, Diana Paxson, Vonda McIntyre, Octavia Butler, Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia McKillip, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

This issue will explore how these women writers blazed unique trails and shaped modern speculative fiction, from telepathic dragons to robots to space travel to post-apocalyptic landscapes.

The work of Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butler in particular has influenced writers across literary and genre fiction through the many important themes explored in their novels and short fiction. From their early works published in the 1970s to her final works in the 2000s the publishing community saw significant improvement in the inclusion of minority and women’s voices in speculative and genre fiction. The ideas these writers explored, gender, race, Kropotkinist anarchism, non-human intelligence, closed systems, revolution, and entrainment, and the diversity of characters shocked editors and critics while effectively uplifting and encouraging marginalized voices. The unending support of regional ecosystems through novels and short fiction influenced a generation.

One cannot discuss Le Guin’s influence without discussing her criticism regarding the increasing commodification of books and her biting critique of the division between “literary” fiction and “genre” fiction.

This issue will be devoted to the works of speculative fiction, its influences, specifically these trailblazing writers and those they have subsequently influenced in the modern works of speculative and literary fiction. And, beyond, in scholarly research in philosophy, the political, social and human sciences, in activism and the arts in general.

Topics to consider:

• How the early women writers have influenced subsequent writers in speculative fiction and beyond.
• In the Hainish novels, Le Guin discusses “great, immediate affinity” with anarchist thinkers Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman.  She stated, in her essays, that “Odonism is anarchism,” mentioning parallels with Emma Goldman, Taoism and Percy Bysshe Shelley. For Le Guin, anarchism’s “principal target is the authoritarian State. How did LeGuin present her philosophy of anarchism in her body of work?  How have later writers in genre and literary fiction carried those ideas forward? Or not…?
• How Taoist and non-violent activism influenced LeGuin’s fiction and the development of the anarchist philosophy in “The Dispossessed ”.
• “They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

When is the right action to “walk away”?

• Ecological themes within these writers’ corpus and their successor’s works.
• Octavia Butler wrote of dystopian landscapes and the rise of authoritarianism in the same breath as evolution and symbiosis, how is her work being carried forward in speculative fiction today?
• McIntyre, LeGuin, Tepper, and others’ influence on modern ecological and social activism.
• Feminism and gender in science fiction and fantasy within and after the publication of  The Left Hand of Darkness .
• Mythic themes within this body of work.
• Pern has Master Harper Robinton, Westria has Silverhair the Wanderer, opera, singing crystals, spacefaring troubadours, singing wizards and chanting faeries, how does music, particularly the folk & ballad traditions, influence and inform these writers’ works?

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Art & Art History News - April 1, 2024

Upcoming events.

Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol, Visiting Art History Scholar

Tuesday, April 2 at 5:30pm Visual Arts Complex, Auditorium - 1B20

Painting and Planting Counter-Narratives in the Landscape of the Conquest of Mexico

Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol is an associate professor at Arizona State University, where she teaches the history of ancient and early colonial Latin American art. Her current research deals with representations of food and consumption among Indigenous groups in sixteenth-century Mexico. She has published essays in leading art journals, and the University of Texas Press published her book,  The  Relación de Michoacán (1539-1541)  and the Politics of Representation in Colonial Mexico . The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) published her co-authored book  Don Antonio Huitzimengari: An indigenous noble in sixteenth-century Mexico .  She is the recipient of several awards including two fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibitions

CU Art Museum, Visual Arts Complex

April 6–18 [Round 1] Opening reception: Fri. April 5 from 4–6 PM (This Friday!) Artists featured: Brianna Autin, Erin Hyunhee Kang, Dani Wasserman, Elisa Wolcott

April 27–May 11 [Round 2]  Opening reception: Fri. April 26 from 4–6 PM Artists featured: Natalie Thedford, Noa Fodrie, Aunna Moriarty, Cody Norton 

Stephanie Hanes, Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Monday, April 8 at 4:00 PM Visual Arts Complex, Auditorium 1B20

Stephanie is a figurative sculptor whose personal work deals with feminist theory in relation to visual culture and questioning ideas of embodiment, subjectivity, and identity. They explore ideas of the sacred and the profane, dualities of power and its relationships to violence, beauty and grotesqueness. 

Stephanie E. Hanes was born in Alberta, Canada in 1985. In 2009 they received a BFA from The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, Canada. Hanes is an MFA Graduate of Ceramics at the Rhode Island School Of Design in 2017 and received the prestigious Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship for a graduate student with exceptional promise.  Stephanie was one of the artists awarded the 2020 NCECA Emerging Artist Prize. In addition, they have exhibited Internationally with a solo show at C.R.E.T.A Rome Gallery in Italy and several group shows at Secci Gallery in Florence, Italy and at Lefebvre et Fils Gallery in Paris, France. Their ceramic sculptures have been exhibited throughout the USA and Canada in New York City, Providence, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and Toronto. Hanes is an Assistant Professor in Ceramic Art at New York College Of Ceramics at Alfred University, where they teach ceramic sculpture. 

King Awards Ceremony & Exhibition

Awards Ceremony & Reception: Friday, April 12, 2024, 4:00-6:00PM Exhibition in the Visual Arts Complex: Wednesday, April 10 - April 19, 2024 

Undergraduate Finalists: Lisa An, Annabelle Ferris, Sarah Mak, Alice Neild, Brooke Schuh

Graduate Finalists: Dati Alsaedi, Ana Gonzalez Barrigan, Cody Norton, Silvia Alejandra Saldivar Romero, Natalie Thedford

View online exhibition

Image: Lisa An,  Untitled, October 2023, photographic print on matte paper, 20in x 30in with borders

Spring 2024 Art History Graduate Student Symposium

Visual Arts Complex, Rm 303 Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 9:00-10:45 AM

9:00 AM — Welcome, introductions, Albert Alhadeff, Director of Graduate Studies, Art History 9:15-9:30 — Brittany Ashley, Collections as Medium 9:30-9:45 — Kat Bertram, Manga Introduction to Nichiren: Unveiling Nichiren Buddhism through Manga Study Aids 9:45-10:00 — Natalie Ginez, Hybridity and Indigeneity in Colonial Ecuador BREAK 10:15-10:30 — Sam Hensley, Gathering for Tea: Modernity, Material Culture, and Tea Ceremony in Japan and Abroad 10:30-10:45 — Taite Shomo, Theatre of the Horrible: Self-Immolation, Violence, and Representation 10:45-11:00 — Bella Malherbe, Bhekisisa, Sakouli Beach, Mayotte: The Black Queer Figure as an Apoptotic Agent of the Anthropocene

Department Announcements

Art & Environments Field School

Registration is now open!

Art & Environments Field School Summer 2024 — June 10-28 ARTS 4444 6 Credits, 3 weeks in the field & 3 weeks asynchronous online

Field Instructor: Aaron Treher Artist and Exhibitions Developer, CU Museum of Natural History Visiting Artist: Nina Elder, Interdisciplinary Artist and Researcher Field Technician: Delaney Gardner-Sweeney, Installation Artist and Researcher Program Director I Online: Richard Saxton,  lnterdiscipinary Artist and Researcher 

Please email [email protected] or [email protected]

Link to Enroll Today!

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Visual Investigations

Videos and Online Profiles Link Suspects to Moscow Attack

Clothing and other details appear to show a connection between four suspects detained by Russia and the men who carried out the concert hall massacre of more than 130 people.

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By Aric Toler ,  Malachy Browne and Paul Sonne

When four men were detained by the Russian authorities in connection with the massacre at a concert hall outside Moscow last week, they were dressed in the same attire as the assailants seen in videos of the attack, according to a New York Times analysis of footage from the hall, social media profiles and images leaked or released by Russia.

The identical clothing and other corresponding details suggest they carried out the attack. A video of one of the suspects being detained, for instance, shows him wearing a light brown T-shirt with a distinctive logo on the left breast and pants with a Boss label: Those details match the clothes worn by a gunman in propaganda footage of the attack released by the Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS.

In addition, the Times analysis shows, the car that the suspects were driving when they were apprehended is the same color and type as one seen in footage from outside the concert hall during the attack.

The four suspects in the assault that left more than 130 dead were identified in a Moscow court hearing on Sunday night as Saidakrami M. Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni, Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov and Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev. They were charged with committing a terrorist act and remanded to custody until May 22.

Three of the suspects told the court they were from Tajikistan, and in interrogation videos reviewed by The Times, at least two men spoke Tajik. The videos show some of the men being beaten during their detention, and two of the men had clear injuries when they appeared in court. The fourth suspect appeared in court in a wheelchair with apparently limited ability to respond; a leaked copy of his passport suggests he is also a citizen of Tajikistan.

U.S. officials said the attack had been conducted by the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility and released photos of what it said were the attackers and video of the attack itself. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia blamed the assault on “international terrorism” but did not mention the Islamic State. Russian state media laid the groundwork for blaming Ukraine, which denied any involvement.

Despite carrying out one of Russia’s deadliest terrorist attacks in decades, the gunmen seen in the footage did not appear to be highly trained, according to Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, which is based in Philadelphia. He said the men seemed to be grouped together during the attack, instead of spreading out and potentially inflicting more damage.

The suspects also did not change their clothes after the massacre, and appeared to have fled in the same vehicle they used to arrive at the scene, both of which would make it easier for the authorities to track them down and link them to the scene.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, said on Saturday that the suspects had been detained near the city of Bryansk, about 230 miles southwest of Moscow, and that weapons had been recovered from a Renault car. Mr. Putin claimed the men had been trying to escape toward the border with Ukraine.

A video verified by The Times shows at least one suspect, Mr. Rachabalizoda, being marched through the woods to the M3 highway near Bryansk. A photograph also verified by The Times shows a heavily damaged white Renault nearby.

Mr. Rachabalizoda was filmed being detained in the woods, a couple of hundred yards from the car, and identifying himself under questioning. A video of his arrest shared on Telegram shows men cutting off a part of Mr. Rachabalizoda’s right ear and stuffing it into his mouth before leading him out of the woods. State media later published a video interrogation of Mr. Rachabalizoda that shows his ear is heavily bandaged.

In each of the videos, he is wearing clothes identical to those worn by one of the Crocus City Hall attackers.

Mr. Rachabalizoda wears the brown T-shirt with the distinctive logo and pants with a Boss label; they match the clothes worn by a gunman in the Islamic State video and photograph.

The Russian authorities identified a second suspect who was detained and interrogated as Mr. Fariduni.

During his questioning, Mr. Fariduni is seen wearing a gray collared T-shirt matching that worn by one of the four men in the Islamic State photograph.

The shoes worn by Mr. Fariduni during his interrogation also match those worn by one of the assailants seen in the Islamic State video of the attack; they bear the same distinctive white marking and thick soles.

Mr. Fariduni says during his interrogation that he traveled to Russia from Turkey on March 4, the footage showed. Several photographs posted to what appears to be his Instagram and Facebook accounts in February showed Mr. Fariduni at the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul.

A third suspect, Mr. Fayzov, is a 19-year-old barber who appears to have lived in Russia since last year, according to his profile on the Russian social media platform VKontakte. A short video that circulated on the Telegram social media platform shows him being interrogated in a hospital room, where he speaks Tajik and discusses receiving documents at an airport.

A leaked copy of his passport — bearing a face that matches one both in the VKontakte profile and in videos of the detained suspect — suggests he is from Tajikistan. The passport notes that he recently arrived in Russia and lived in Ivanovo, which corresponds with his VKontakte profile.

After his detention, Mr. Fayzov was photographed wearing a green T-shirt with a distinctive, dotted logo on the left breast, the same T-shirt worn by one of the men in the photograph of the assailants released by the Islamic State. Mr. Fayzov also wears the same T-shirt in a photograph posted to his VKontakte account.

A fourth suspect, Mr. Mirzoyev, spoke Tajik through an interpreter during an interrogation that was broadcast on Russian state television. The bearded man also appears to have been beaten during his detention, and his cheek, nose and forehead were bruised and bloodied.

In the video, Mr. Mirzoyev is seen wearing a long-sleeved, crew-neck green shirt, bluejeans and a black belt; they match the attire of one of the attackers in the Islamic State video.

In the ISIS video, the assailant slices the throat of a victim who is lying on the ground, apparently unconscious.

Dmitriy Khavin and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting. David Botti contributed production.

Aric Toler is a reporter on the Visual Investigations team at The Times where he uses emerging techniques of discovery to analyze open source information. More about Aric Toler

Malachy Browne is enterprise director of the Visual Investigations team at The Times. He was a member of teams awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2020 and 2023. More about Malachy Browne

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine. More about Paul Sonne