Theatre is a collaborative art form that uses live performers to present an experience to an audience. It can refer to the performance itself, the building, or plays. Key collaborators include producers, directors, actors, designers, builders, crews, and playwrights. Theatre originated in ancient Greece where festivals honored Dionysus and plays were performed in outdoor theatres. Major forms included tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays. Theatre continued to develop under the Romans, influenced by Greek culture. Roman theatres staged a variety of performances and plays by authors like Plautus and Seneca.

2. Definition
• a collaborative form of fine art that uses
live performers to present the experience
of a real or imagined event before a live
audience in a specific place.

3. • the performers may communicate this
experience to the audience through
combinations of gesture, speech, song, music,
and dance.
• The specific place of the performance is also
named by the word "theatre" as derived from
the Ancient Greek théatron, which means "a
place for viewing“.

4. Theatre refers to:
• the acting,
• the building
• Plays themselves
• Administrators
• Scenery
• Costumes
• Make-Up
• Lights

5. The difference between “theatre and
drama”
• Theatre can refer to a whole theatrical
production whereas drama refers to the plays
themselves.
• The study of plays is referred to as
dramaturgy.
• Theatre can mean a building, whereas drama
cannot.

6. Theatre is a
Collaborative Art

7. Theatre is a Collaborative Art
• Producer=finances, hiring, promoting, etc
• Director=Supervises rehearsals; controls and
develops his/her “vision” of the play.
• Actors=Perform the roles/characters.
• Designer=creates the visual aspects of
production: scenery, costumes, props, make-
up, lighting, sound, etc.
• Builders=tech crew; build and paint the set;
make the costumes, etc.

8. More collaborators:
• Crews=Execute changes in scenery, light and
sound cues, placement and return of
properties
• Stage Manager= Runs the “live” production
• House Manager= Admits and seats audience
• The Playwright : His work is generally done
away from the theatre building itself.

9. History of Theatre
Arts

10. Classical and Hellenistic Greece
• The city-state of Athens is where western
theatre originated
• It was part of a broader culture of
theatricality and performance in classical
Greece that included festivals, religious
rituals, politics, law, athletics and
gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals,
and symposia

11. • Participation in the city-state's many
festivals—and attendance at the City Dionysia
as an audience member (or even as a
participant in the theatrical productions) in
particular—was an important part
of citizenship.

12. • The Greeks also developed the concepts of
dramatic criticism, acting as a career, and
theatre architecture
• The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of
three types of drama: tragedy, comedy, and
the satyr play.

13. Origins of Theatre in Ancient Greece
• according to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the first
theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the
festivals that honoured Dionysus.
• The performances were given in semi-circular
auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating
10,000–20,000 people.
• The stage consisted of a dancing floor
(orchestra), dressing room and scene-building
area (skene).

14. • Since the words were the most important
part, good acoustics and clear delivery were
paramount.
• The actors (always men) wore masks
appropriate to the characters they
represented, and each might play several
parts.

15. Athenian Tragedy
• the oldest surviving form of tragedy
• is a type of dance-drama that formed an
important part of the theatrical culture of the
city-state

16. • Most Athenian tragedies dramatise events
from Greek mythology, though The Persians—
which stages the Persian response to news of
their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in
480 BCE—is the notable exception in the
surviving drama

17. Athenian Comedy
• conventionally divided into three periods,
"Old Comedy", "Middle Comedy", and "New
Comedy".
• Old Comedy survives today largely in the form
of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes,
while Middle Comedy is largely lost (preserved
only in relatively short fragments in authors
such as Athenaeus of Naucratis).

18. • New Comedy is known primarily from the
substantial papyrus fragments of Menander.
• Aristotle defined comedy as a representation
of laughable people that involves some kind of
blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain
or disaster.

20. Roman Theatre
• Western theatre developed and expanded
considerably under the Romans.
• The Roman historian Livy wrote that the
Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th
century BCE, with a performance
by Etruscan actors.
• Beacham argues that they had been familiar
with "pre-theatrical practices" for some time
before that recorded contact.

21. • The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving
and diverse art form, ranging
from festival performances of street theatre,
nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging
of Plautus's broadly appealing
situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally
elaborate tragedies of Seneca.

22. • Although Rome had a native tradition of
performance, the Hellenization of Roman
culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profound
and energizing effect on Roman theatre and
encouraged the development of Latin
literature of the highest quality for the stage.

23. • The only surviving Roman tragedies, indeed
the only plays of any kind from the Roman
Empire, are ten dramas- nine of them
pallilara- attributed to Lucuis Annaeus Seneca
(4 b.c.-65 a.d.), the Corduba-born Stoic
philosopher and tutor of Nero

25. A well preserved Roman theater
in Bosra (Syria)