When prehistoric people had no answers for natural forces that controlled their existence, they attributed them to the supernatural—super-human forces, gods—and began to search for ways to influence them, among which were music, song and dance, mimicry, self-sacrifice, epic stories, spectacle—all elements of theatre—which evolved into codes of religious ritual. So popular were these rites (and festivals) that they continued to be performed even after the mysteries were solved, at which point theater emerged as a separate entity.
DISCLAIMER: The following essay derives from what I’ve learned from life and what I’ve plagiarized from two primary sources: Oscar Brockett’s History of theTheatre, acknowledged as definitive, and The History of Theatre According to Dr Jack (Hrkach) online, along with countless multitudes of Wikipedia articles. I beg the authors to forgive me; if I live long enough, I’ll add a million footnotes.
For the first two thousand years of Western Civilization, the only literary art most people knew was acquired by ear, because they couldn’t read! Everything they knew they learned from what they saw and heard, from priests and politicians, poets, story-tellers, and, most effectively, from actors on a stage. From the Ancient Greeks and (lesser) Romans through church drama to the Renaissance and Shakespeare, most of what the hoi polloi made of their world and human nature—and of language, its evocative power—came from actors playing characters in worlds imagined by the greatest writers of their times.
Underlying all the lame excuses for excluding plays from our post-modern lives is the intense love-hate relationship between most all religions and live theatre dating from the dawn of Western Civilization. Continue reading Thespis and Theocracy→
When prehistoric people had no answers for natural forces that controlled their existence, they attributed them to the supernatural—super-human forces, beings—and began to search for ways to influence them, from sacrifice to poetry and music, acting out their hopes and histories, theatrics, evolving into rituals performed by priests. So popular were these rites that they continued to be played even after the mysteries were solved, at which point theater emerged as a separate entity. Continue reading My One True Faith in the Willing Suspension of Disbelief→
Cold Reads/International 