Introduction Copyright © 2000 Robert C. Huber
I believe that theatre, film, and television are not differentiated enough to require that they be approached as separate subjects at the introductory level. In fact, it really makes more sense if they are not. These three mediums have vastly more in common than they do differences. Not so many years ago, drama was the name used to describe my subject, but the term theatre was substituted for it in the sixties partly because, I suppose, it sounded more inclusive of the specific interests of that era. It was a time of experimentation, exploration, and breaking the rules. Drama implied an emphasis on literary forms, whereas theatre was about action. Such performance modes as mime, improvisation, story theatre, happenings, and street theatre were seen to be the essence of the art and only the term theatre seemed broad enough to contain them all. For some even the term theatre was not broad enough and performance was for a time championed as a better name for this activity since it went beyond art to include anthropological dimensions as well. Scholarly journals published "performance studies" of primitive peoples. And we all know that science adds a whiff of legitimacy to that which is regarded a frill by many. I assert that drama and dramatic art are perfectly good global terms to encompass the human urge to tell stories through impersonation, and that theatre aptly describes this storytelling when it occurs live on stage.
My view is this. Dramatic art is the foundation. It describes a form of artistic communication in which actors become characters for the purpose of telling a story. For most of human history this was accomplished through a single mode: the stage. In the twentieth century new technologies emerged to make possible the development of two additional modes of dramatic art: film and television. Therefore, to understand theatre in a way that is truly meaningful in our time, it makes sense to encompass all three modes of expression: stage, film, and television.
This is not to say that all serious study of dramatic art should take this holistic approach. Certainly there are the necessities of specialization. Upper division and graduate study must go more deeply and minutely into distinct aspects of the field. It is not the purpose of this class to give equal weight to all three modes. I am a theatre man, and this class is about the theatre. On the other hand I was born, raised, and have had most of my schooling within the shadow of the famous Hollywood sign. This experience informs my teaching: life in a town in which theatre is vital, but dwarfed by the other arms of an entertainment colossus. When trying to look at theatre today it is as if we are looking into the front of a movie projector. The heat and light generated by the modern entertainment industries obscures and distorts our view. This is a class about theatre in a world awash with television and film--the very world in which most of us live. It embraces this fact. It focuses on theatre yet takes every opportunity to examine each element of theatre as it applies to the other modes of dramatic expression as well.
Why Study Theatre?
Most people who are taking this class are not theatre arts majors, and many will have little interest in the arts at all. The probability is that you are taking this class because you have to. Or more exactly, you need an arts class to fulfill your general education requirement, this one seemed like it might not be too tough, and it was open. This is all part of a grand scheme called a liberal arts education. It is widely held that for a democracy to survive it must be composed of an informed electorate. Informed implies that you know more than just what is needed to get a job. Every educated person should know a lot about some things, and something about of lot of things. That, in a nutshell, is why you are taking this class.
But why theatre? Is it important enough to represent what may be your only formal study of the arts? I believe it is. First, it has a track record; second, it is pervasive; and third, it is big business. Theatre in some form has existed from the dawn of human culture. Today we are exposed to its modern manifestations of film and television on a daily basis. We each spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars every year to see it, making a certain segment of the population very rich indeed. You may not have thought of film and television as having anything to do with theatre, but that is my view and it is the basis of this class.
Where Did Theatre Come From?
There was a time (which ended at the turn of the twentieth century) when to get what theatre had to offer, people had only one choice--the stage. And just what was it that the theatre had to offer? Sitting near the front of the auditorium and looking back at the audience one night before the opening curtain of a play I asked myself that very question. Why were all these people here? What did they come to get?
People have always come to theatre for an experience. An experience with each other, and with the performance. They come to be told a story in the unique way that theatre tells it--actors becoming the characters and living the tale. Until our great-grandparents' day only the stage could provide this experience. Today, we can find similar experiences by going to the movies or sitting at home in front of the television. Does this mean that the theatre is now obsolete because these new media offer an improved and more convenient version of what had gone before? Is theatre to survive only in a shadowy half-world along with opera and other quaint entertainments on the edge of popular culture?
Let's go back even further. How did theatre get started? Basic communication came first. It seems that all life communicates in some way. Even plants communicate through chemicals and in ways scientists are just beginning to understand. Humans communicate to help get their needs for food, shelter, and reproduction met. But at some point communication went beyond the requirements of physical survival, to the realm of personal enrichment. People communicate because they feel the need to do so, there is pleasure in it, there is relief in it--it feels good. One theory of the origin of theatre holds that the telling of stories for entertainment evolved from the communication of necessary information to others. Scouts returning to the village had to communicate the location of danger so that others could avoid it. Some people were so skilled at this that others wanted to get the information again and again, just for the enjoyment of the performance rather than the message it conveyed. As storytelling evolved it certainly became one of the important precursors of theatre.
How were such stories told? Someone sat by the fire and spoke? Some have suggested that storytelling may have predated spoken language, but how could you tell a story without words? Your dog tells you he wants to go outside without words, toddlers are quite clear about their requests before their first word is learned. The language of storytelling includes vocabularies of actions as well as non-verbal sounds. A young rapper was recently featured in a Pepsi commercial in which he performed an entire song without a word or an instrument by using non-verbal sounds. Mimes have a long history of silent storytelling using only gesture and facial expression. A person skilled in the use of these modes of storytelling, action and sound effects, can be quite entertaining even without the use of words.
Dance is another way stories can be communicated. It can be said that dance is its own language, more universal perhaps than spoken language, but one whose finer points can be learned nonetheless. Dance may have began as a form of personal expression, a playfully spontaneous release of excess energy, and later formalized into religious ritual, social custom, and storytelling. When dance is combined with the previously mentioned forms of storytelling expression, great theatre is possible even without spoken language. Examples of this theatre can still be found in the classical dance-dramas of India and Bali.
Finally, stories can be told. Spoken language, like narrative dance, is a kind of metaphor--the imaginative substitution of one thing for another. The word "cat" has nothing to do with the qualities that define the animal it stands for. It is simply a combination of sounds (phonemes) that had its origin in early western Europe as a vocal symbol for this common animal. If the cat were not there to point at, this sound could stand in its place. As spoken languages developed, stories could be told in greater depth. The best storytellers have always known that words themselves are no substitute for direct experience, and have thus included sounds, gestures, mimicry, and actions to help bring the story to life.
At that point in the development of human communication, theatre as we know it was possible. Theatre is not a simple thing, but rather a complex matrix of related modes of communication in the service of a story. Once the storyteller gets off his rock, imitates the voice, mannerisms, and actions of a character in the tale, we are mostly there. What is left? Only the final break between storyteller and story. As long as the teller retreats back to himself with such narrative statements as: "And then the king said to . . ." he has not made the final leap. When he does become the character and enters into the world of the story, showing us the actions without returning to be the narrator, when the storyteller enters this imaginary world for the duration of the tale, he is, of course, an actor.
What Is Theatre?
Theatre is a storytelling form in which the characters in the story are impersonated by actors who perform their actions and speak their words as though the events are actually happening in the present moment.
Succinct definitions such as this are one way of staking out the territory of a new realm of study. The next level of analysis might be to dissect the subject, laying out its parts with the intention of discovering the organization of its systems. We might also try to find which of the many parts are the most important--the prime elements. What parts of theatre are necessary for it to be what it is and nothing else--the sine qua non of the art?
If we were to look at a modern automobile we would see that it is composed of many parts, some more necessary than others. Which parts must a car have to be a car, and which are merely extras? Certainly it must have wheels, and they in turn must be attached to a frame in order to roll. A seat and basic controls are necessary to guide it. Finally, an engine is necessary if it is to be more than just a wagon. At this level we have a vehicle which can perform its primary function: moving a person from one point to another under its own power. What of the CD player? windows? headlights? While these elements undeniably add comfort, convenience, and safety, they are not the essential or primary elements.
The theatre too is composed of many elements such as playwrights, actors, stages, directors, costumes, scenery, scripts, and sometimes even masks. So, which of these are the prime elements of the theatre? There are only three: actors, story, and audience. With these three elements alone we can produce a complete and effective play.
Actors can do their essential work without a mask or its modern equivalent, make up. Costumes, while adding interest and reality to a performance, can be implied by the movement and body language of a skilled actor. In fact, whatever the actor happens to be wearing when he mounts the stage is assumed by the audience to be his costume.
While the playwright's output, the script, is nearly always the source of the story, it is certainly possible for actors to generate the story as they perform, either from tradition, or by improvisation. Scenery, like costume, may be desirable, but again skilled actors can help us to imagine the environment of the action by their responses and reactions to it. Some of the greatest practitioners of theatre in the past, the Elizabethans and Greeks, made little use of scenery. Directors, too, while a normal part of the theatre today, are a comparatively recent addition.
And what of the stage and the theatre in which it stands? Is that not at least a prime element? There again, wherever an audience gathers to watch actors tell the story is a theatre. This may be on a street corner, in a classroom, a church, or in a park. Plush lobbies, comfortable seats, and elaborate stages make it easier to see, hear, and more comfortable to sit, but are not necessary for the experience of theatre.
Definition of Terms
In every new field of study you will encounter words that are unfamiliar to you, or familiar words used in a new way. The theatre is no different. For instance, you may have noticed that the word theatre itself is sometimes spelled theater. There is no absolute rule for this, it is simply a variant in spelling. However the re ending, which comes from the French and British, often is used to distinguish between theatre as the dramatic art form or cultural institution, and theater as a building where movies are shown.
While theatre is the most commonly used word today to describe the art form we are studying, it was not always so. In Shakespeare's time this word was fairly unusual. Play was the stem used to form such common Elizabethan words as player for actor, playing for acting, playhouse for theatre, and of course play for performance. There was a playhouse in London at that time called The Theatre, but this was probably done to call attention to it since this was a somewhat exotic word.
In today's usage the word play means dramatic art done on stage. Its secondary meaning is the book which the actors read and study to learn their lines. The more precise word for this book is script.
The word performance indicates the doing of a play. And since there is no theatre without the actual doing of it, performance is the word which comes closest to indicating the art itself.
Drama is the most ancient word of all. It comes to us from the Greeks who essentially invented theatre as we know it. Their word drâma meant "a thing done," action as opposed to discussion, doing as opposed to talking about what is being done. Today drama is used most often to indicate a play that is serious. However, I prefer its original meaning which denotes the doing of theatre, as in dramatize. One takes a story and dramatizes it; makes it into theatre.
Which brings us full circle, since the Greeks also gave us the word theatre from their theatron, which meant that part of the theatre where the audience sat to watch the play.
Lecture Exercise
Write a simple definition of theatre (the art form, not the building) in your own words. It should be clear enough that someone who had no idea of what theatre was would read it and come away with a clear idea. Beware of simply substituting other specialized words for theatre. Telling someone that theatre involves acting only begs the question "what is acting?" Use simple words that need no further explanation. I'm not looking for an essay, but be complete. I did it in one long sentence; see if you can. E-mail your answer to me at DrRHuber@aol.com.
Oh, and please put these short Lecture Exercise answers in the body of the e-mail message, not in an attached document--it saves me some extra steps in grading and getting back to you.
Note that when submitting the answer start the subject line with:
TH101DE -- YourFirstAndLastName -- L-1
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