Read an Excerpt
In Europe, people have been acting since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. They played in round amphitheaters. The players wore masks with mouths like megaphones, so the spectators in the upper rows could hear them. The best plays of antiquity are still performed today. Those are tragedies (sad plays) and comedies (cheerful plays).
During the Middle Ages artists made people laugh or dream on squares and in castles. They were musicians, dancers or acrobats. They told tales about battles, recited love poems of knights or played funny farces.
Did you know they performed plays about Jesus during the Middle Ages in front of the church called ‘mystery plays’?
Actors traveled together and performed in different villages on their way. The leader of the gang wrote the plays and played along. Everyone helped making settings and costumes. The famous playwright Molière started as a traveling actor in a trailer, too.
Later on many playhouses were built, so the actors wouldn’t have to move around so much. The king and the rich spectators were allowed to sit on stage. All the other people in the audience had to stand. The stage was lit by candles.
The theatre now
Now we use the houses in which plays are performed for other shows as well. Sometimes the stage and the stand can even be moved!
Most theatre texts are made up from dialogue (conversations between two or more people). A play is divided into acts. In between acts the settings (or the background) sometimes changes. Every act is divided into scenes.
The manager is in charge. He picks the actors and decides how they are going to play and move on stage. The day before the premiere or opening night (that is the first performance of a play) there is a dress rehearsal with the right costumes, settings, make-up and lighting.
The theatre director decides which plays are being performed in his theatre and he organizes tours. The theatre season runs from September till October. In summer the actors play on festivals, like Avignon in France.
The illustration shows a rehearsal for Ubu Roi (or King Ubu), a play that the audience thought was scandalous when it was performed for the first time one hundred years ago.
Did you know a ticket for the theatre isn’t cheap because everyone who worked for the play has to be paid.
Sorts of theatre
If you like emotional plays, you should go and watch a tragedy. The characters are unlucky and at the end of the play someone usually dies …
If you love laughing, you should go see a comedy. A lot happens in such a play. The characters do stupid things and people laugh with them. Some comedies aren’t silly but show things that happen in real life in a funny way.
There are shows that aren’t just plays. In a musical actors sing and dance too. And in an opera female and male singers sing to classical music.
Mime artists and clowns make shows with a lot of circus elements in them.
Did you know there are plays for all ages? There is theatre for adults, young adults, children and even for babies!
