Musical Theater History: The Origins of Theater

Musical Theater
History
Musical Theater in
Ancient Greece
The origins Playwright

of theater
Charles Mee

The decline of theater as a essential art form
in America coincides with the triumph of
naturalism and the well-made play - which
is boring people crazy out of their minds.
The great hope for the theater is that it
returns to the immense energies that were
in Greek theater and Shakespeare, theater
that includes not just text and interpersonal
relationships but also spectacle, music,
dance, physical performance, color, noise,
fabulous events happening. The stuff of
musical comedy - such a popular form should always have been the stuff of all
theater. What happened was that the work
of Ibsen - which in its time was wonderful,
innovative, avant-garde, rule-breaking
theater - became a standard of reduced,
reductionist, drawing room, interpersonal
Musical Theater History
The origins of theater
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Apollo
God of music
Nietzsche: god of
individuation and just
boundaries
the patron of the legal
or statutory aspect of
religion
Paglia: He is fabricated
form.
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Theater that sings ... is demonstrably

older, more normal and more
widespread than spoken or prose
theater. (Eric Salzman)
Since the Renaissance, over half the
creative energy put into theater music
has gone toward efforts to recreated
Greek tragedy for contemporary
audiences. (Michael Feingold)
Dionysus + Apollo =
musical theater?
Dionysus
God of theater
God of disguise, trickery,
transformation
Both male and female;
transvestism among
worshippers
God of wine and revelry;
the liquid god
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The origins of theater
The origins of western drama can be traced to the celebratory

music of 6th-century BC Attica, the Greek region centered on
Athens.
The poet THESPIS developed a new musical form in which he
impersonated a single character and engaged a chorus of
singer-dancers in dialogue.
As the first composer and soloist in this new form, which came
to be known as TRAGEDY, Thespis can be considered the first
dramatist and the first actor.
In 534 BC, a contest in tragedy was instituted at an Athenian
festival held in honor of DIONYSUS, the god of wine, fertility
and revelry.
relationships best suited for small

television sets, not for large theatrical
spaces. People who thrive on that kind of
theater are well served by television and
movies. I'm talking about a whole tradition
of brilliant, genius, masterful, great
playwrights whose time is over. People
who love theater as it has been for 5,000
years, with the exception of this small,
unusual period in theatrical history,
welcome the return of a more highly
theatrical form. And that's the tradition out
of which, I think, I work, out of which a
lot of work is being done in Europe today
and out of which a lot of downtown avant
-garde work is being done.
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Apollo vs. Dionysus

from Camille Paglias Sexual Personae

The quarrel between Apollo and
Dionysus is the quarrel between the
higher cortex and the older limbic and
reptilian brains. Art reflects on and
resolves the eternal human dilemma of
order versus energy Dionysus is
energy unbound, mad, callous,
destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law,
history, tradition, the dignity and
safety of custom and form. Dionysus
is the new, exhilarating but rude,
sweeping all away to begin again.
Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal.
Dionysus is the god of theater,

masked balls and free love - but
also of anarchy, gang rape and
mass murder. Playfulness and
criminality are first cousins,
flouting the norm. Frosty Apollo
has a sculptural coherence and
clarity. The Apollonian One,
strict, rigid and contained, is
western personality as a work of
art, haughty and elegant.
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Characteristics of
Greek Theater
Theater ofadjoining
Dionysus
the Parthenon

Highly formal, written in verse

Episodes: scenes among characters,
with never more than three characters in
a scene
Odes: choral songs interspersed among
the scenes
Stories drawn from myth or ancient
history: familiar to audience
Focus often on a consideration of
humanitys place in the world and the
consequence of individual actions
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Theater of Dionysus
Theater of Dionysus
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3-D model of theater as it existed during Roman times
Characteristics of Greek
Theater (cont)
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Elements of
heightened style
Protagonist and antagonist: agon

= conflict
Catharsis: a therapeutic release of
emotions achieved through an
empathetic relationship with the
protagonist
Chorus, choregus (chorus master)
--> choreographer
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Heightened language
Style of declamation: 10,000 in
audience
Use of masks: project identity,
amplify voice
Cothurni: sandals to make actors
taller
Choral movement and speech
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About the chorus and

principals
Vocabulary from the

Greek theater
Young men in their late teens

/20s
Equivalent to participation in
Olympics
Koryphaios: chorus leader
No more than three actors
Actor could play more than one
role
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Music in Greek Theater
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Music in Greek Theater

(continued)

To project text and enhance mood

Percussion, winds (flutes), strings
(lyre, kithara)
Monophonic music - no use of
harmony
Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote
their own music, Euripides did not
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Music does seem to have been a motivating

force in Greek tragedy. It was performed on
a dancing floor (orkestra); it had a chorus
that sang, in a variety of verse meters and
musical modes keyed to the changing
mood; it had stage directors (didaskaloi) to
teach the chorus the tunes and choreograph
its moves. Some people think the whole
thing was sung, or at least chanted in
rhythm; for all we know, it may have been a
rap. (Michael Feingold)
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The Frogs
Sondheim, Burt Shevelove and Nathan Lane

Greek Comedy:
Aristophanes
Aristophanes comedy adapted by Stephen
Festival performances included

both comedy and tragedy
Humor: bawdy (erections,
flatulence), topical (politics and
current events)
Lysistrata: anti-war comedy written
during a time of war
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Theater (theatron =
viewing place)
Protagonist, antagonist
Orchestra
Chorus, choreography
Proscenium
Critic (from kritia)
Performed in 2004 season at Lincoln

Center Theater, production directed
by Susan Stroman
Sondheim and Sheveloves version
premiered at Yale Rep in pool in
1974
Shevelove first created a version of
The Frogs for Yale Dramat in 1940s
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The Frogs
Summary

In 405 B.C., Aristophanes
imagined a highly impractical
solution to that seemingly
timeless problem: a lack of
good plays to see. In The
Frogs, Dionysus, the God of
drama, is so unhappy with
the state of the theater that
he descends into the
underworld with his slave
Xanthias to bring Euripides,
the king of dramatists, back
from the dead.
The Bacchae
drama by Euripedes

In 1974, more than 24

centuries of theater
complaints later, Burt
Shevelove and Stephen
Sondheim wrote a musical
adaptation of The Frogs,
in which Dionysus heads
to Hades to find George
Bernard Shaw instead. In
both versions, Dionysos
seeks a great playwright to
revive the theater and help
advise the state.
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One of the greatest of all Greek dramas,

The Bacchae powerfully dramatizes
the conflict between the emotional
and rational sides of the human
psyche. When the people of Thebes
deny the existence of the god
Dionysos, he punishes them by
unleashing the full force of female
sexuality, thereby destroying social
order and driving them to certain
tragedy.
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The Bacchae
(continued)

The Bacchae
Background situation: Pentheus, ruler of

Thebes, has sought to prohibit the
worship of Dionysus, but his mother,
Agave, has become one of the
Bacchae. Pentheus disguises
himself as a woman to observe their
rituals, but is discovered and
attacked by the fierce women, and
Pentheuss mother kills her own son.
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Cumming as Dionysus with the

Bacchae as backup singers
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The Bacchae
(continued)

The Bacchae
Alan Cumming played Dionysus in

a 2008 production of The Bacchae
from the National Theater of
Scotland seen at Lincoln Center
Festival
Go, track to the mountains

Dogs of madness,
Run, dogs, run,
Find the daughters of Kadmos,
Snap at their dancing heels, sink your fangs in their
brains,
Then turn them loose on the would-be woman,
The spy in the flapping skirts,
Who goes mad for the secret of the possessed.
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Revelation in the
Courthouse Park (1960-1)
Revelation in the Courthouse Park

in the Great Hall at U Arts
Composer Harry Partch (1901-76)

Hobo, eccentric, instrument builder
Microtonal music (37 tones to
octave)
Premiere staged in Great Hall at
The University of the Arts in
October, 1987
Directed by Jiri Zizka,
choreographed by George Faison
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From Revelation
Hell-hounds of madness,
Stung with fury,
Justice draw close
Slay the unrighteous.
Hell-hound of madness,
Bring him down,
In toils of destruction,
His mother shall scream.
Strike at the throat,
The mad spectator,
Girlish impersonator.
Who suckled this seed?
Stung with fury,
Justice draw close...
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Oedipus at Colonus
Oedipus
Oedipus
Rex
at Colonus
final
chapter of Oedipus life

notorious sinner and sufferer seeks
his final resting place in an unfamiliar
land
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Oedipus at FDR
Playwright and director: Lee Breuer

Composer: Bob Telson
Performances in Phila and
Brooklyn 1987
Transposes action to Black
Pentacostal church
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Part of Sophocles Oedipus trilogy

Antigone
Gospel at Colonus
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Philly Fringe 2008

presentation
FDR skatepark as
outdoor amphitheater
Skaters as chorus
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Romans perpetuate
Greek traditions
Roman Comedy
Rebuild Theater of Dionysus

Adaptation of Greek tragedies
More extensive physical production
and elaborate theaters
Stone theaters were forbidden

in Rome; the plays of Plautus
were performed on temporary
wooden stages like this one
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Character types in
Roman Comedy
The clever slave (Pseudolus)

The bumbling slave (Hysterium)
The doddering old man (Senex)
The cunning, venal old man
The braggart warrior (Miles
Gloriosus)
The shrewish wife
The inamorata (Hero and Philia)
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Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC) - actor turned playwright,

using Greek comedy as model
The Menaechmus Twins source for The Comedy of
Errors and The Boys From Syracuse
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The
Forum composite of Plautus plots and characters
Women come to the stage as singers, dancers
Situation comedy: characters and situations from
everyday life, greater emphasis on farcical
interaction of characters, chorus becomes more
decorative (i.e, dancing girls)
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Musical Theater

The origins Playwright

The origins of theater

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