FREE ESSAY ON THEATER AND CULTURAL EXPERIENCE

THEATER AND CULTURAL EXPERIENCE

How different cultures affected English Theater
Theater unites the past and present in a unique cultural experience. Theatre continues to
thrive and has become an important subject for study in schools and universities.
Reaching back in time and across the world, this ranging new history draws on the latest
scholarly research to describe and celebrate theatre's greatest achievements over 4,500
years, from festival performances in Egypt to international multicultural theatre in the
late twentieth century. English theatre has been changed by different cultures throughout
the world.
The Father of drama was Thesis of Athens, 535 BC, who created the first actor. The actor
performed in intervals between the dancing of the chorus and conversing at times with the
leader of the chorus. The tragedy was further developed when new myths became part of the
performance, changing the nature of the chorus to a group appropriate to the individual
story. Aeschylus added a second actor and a third actor was added by Sophocles, and the
number of the chorus was fixed at fifteen. The chorus' part was gradually reduced, and
the dialogue of the actors became increasingly important. The word "chorus" meant "dance
or "dancing ground", which was how dance evolved into the drama. Members of the chorus
were characters in the play that commented on the action. They drew the audience into the
play and reflected the audience's reactions. 
The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who observed the basic human tendancy to imitate,
recognized the origins of Greek theatre in the dithyramb, a hymn sung and danced to honor
the god Dionysus. This had evolved from earlier ecstatic dances by female celebrants of
shamanism. A chorus of 50 men and related episodes from the god's life performed the
dithyramb at annual festivals of Dionysus. 
The Greeks of Athens invented Western drama. Athenian playwrights used myths and heroic
legends drawn from Homer and other sources, but shaped them to reflect contemporary
issues. Theatre was a civic responsibility: writers and actors helped the people confront
current political and religious problems. Greek drama was at its height between 500 - 400
BC, when three Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comic
playwright Aristophanes were creating there works. 
Although based on Greek forms, Roman theatre differed in being largely for entertainment.
The farces of Plautus were based on stock characters, such as the braggart soldier and
the scheming slave. Terence included less buffoonery in his comedies and had a more
realistic treatment of character and dialogue. Seneca wrote violent, blood-and-thunder
tragedies that were intended to be recited rather than performed. 
Based on the critical theories of the Greek thinker Aristotle and the Roman poet Horace,
the neoclassical ideal was influenced throughout Europe in the mid- 1600s. Dramatic
unites of time, place, and action; division of plays into 5 acts; purity of genre; and
the concepts of decorum and verisimilitude were taken as rules of playwriting,
particularly by French dramatists. 
Renaissance ideas came late to England, where medieval influences were felt well into the
1500s - when Elizabeth I banned all religious plays. The resulting secularization of
theatre, combined with classical ideas from Italian humanism, led university students and
graduates to write for London theatre companies. Notable among these "university wits"
was Christopher Marlowe, whose Dr. Faustus is a traditional work, showing elements of the
medieval morality play, but also anticipating Shakespeare in its use of blank verse.
The greatest playwright in the English language, Shakespeare was also an actor-manager of
a professional company. He wrote to be performed; the script was only important until the
actors knew there lines. Shakespeare never bothered to publish his plays- the first Folio
of 1623, which includes texts of most of his 38 plays, was collected only after his
death. His work, covering a broad range of comedy, tragedy, history, and pastoral,
includes such immoral characters as Hamlet and Falstaff, Rosalind and Lady Macbeth.