When analyzing or interpreting a piece of literature, its
useful to know something about the time period during
which the work was written.
Looking at drama is no different if you know a little bit
about the history of the theatre, you will have a better
chance of understanding the context of a play before you
even begin reading it. let us first define drama Drama
comes from a Greek word meaning action, which is
derived from the verb meaning “to do “ or “to act”
Drama is associated with situations that incolve the conflict
of emotions there were originally two types of drama
comedy and tragedy
Since this is a brief of history of drama, you’re probably
subconsciously asking yourself, ‘when did people begin
acting out plays?’. Well I hate to tell you but I don’t know.
Actually no one knows for sure. Well what we do know is
that all drama is simply an imitation of actions or ideas. so
many theoriest suggest that the first dramatic stories were
probably told by primitive tribes who would return from the
hunt and reenact the events for the rest of the tribe.
According to the historians Oscar Brockett and Franklin
Hildy, rituals typically include elements that entertain or
give pleasure, such as costumes and masks as well as skilled
performers. In literature, the word drama defines a genre, or
style of writing. Drama is a play that can be performed for
theatre, radio, or even television. These plays are usually
written out as a script, or a written version of a play that is
read by the actors but not the audience.
This is where theatre comes in. Drama, as in a play, is meant
to be performed on a stage in front of an audience at the
theatre. So, drama refers to the script, while the
word theatre is the performance of the script
 Drama is one of the genres of theater where
comedy, tragedy, or action may be other genres
Drama can be in the form of a text, prose or a verse
composition delineating a story full of human emotions and
conflicts. However, it becomes theater only when it is
performed on stage with actors performing the roles of the
characters in the text.
There’s no origin story for theater that everyone agrees on,
but there are some theories
we can explore.
They took an anthropological approach and saw theater as a
direct evolution of religious
ritual.
This theory really got going with James Frazer, whom we
also discuss in the Crash Course Mythology
episode on Theories of Myth.
In The Golden Bough, written between 1896 and 1915,
Frazer and his contemporaries, the
Cambridge Ritualists tried to take a “scientific
approach” to the question of theater’s origins.
He looked around at so-called “primitive” societies in Africa
and Asia, societies he
didn’t really “know much about,” and decided that theater
had emerged as a sophisticated
refining of ritual.
According to Frazer, here’s how it goes: You start out
worshipping some kind of god
or practice, and that worship gets distilled into rituals to
attract the attention of that
god or guarantee good fortune.
Greek Theatre
And while we aren't quite sure where or how it all began, we
do know that the Greeks embraced theatre as a means to
worship their mythical gods. In doing this, they
transformed drama from a ritual into sort of a ritual-
drama and held festivals in honor of the Greek god of
wine and fertility, Dionysus.
These early plays were performed by a group of men and
boys called a chorus. The chorus worked as a group to
provide commentary on the action of the story.
The chorus in Classical Greek drama was a group of actors
who described and commented upon the main action of a
play with song, dance, and recitation. REPRESENT
PUBLIC VOICE
They wore masks to indicate the character that they were
playing made characters recognisable at a distance
enabled the all-male casts to play both men and women and
some experts claim that the masks helped amplify the voice
The Ancient Greeks took their entertainment very seriously
and used drama as a way of investigating the world they
lived in, and what it meant to be human
In fact, there were very few people on stage in general,
which meant that everyone had to play multiple parts. The
drama masks that so many of us associate with
theatre were used for exactly this purpose. The smiling
comedy mask and the frowning tragedy mask were visual
representations of Greek muses and were used to enhance
the songs and actions on stage.
With this development of drama, it's no surprise that
many famous plays came from this time period.
Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides are all well-known
playwrights from this time, though it is believed that
many of their works were never recovered.
The Middle Ages
Theatre continued to be popular through the fall of the
Roman Empire. With the onset of the Middle Ages from
500-1500 A.D., however, the Church had different views of
the mythological gods and saw theatre as evil. Most theatre
was outlawed, and drama was only performed by
traveling groups of actors.
Eventually, though, the Church saw the value of the
ritualistic nature of drama, and began to reenact short Bible
stories during mass. Mystery plays were stories from the
Bible. Miracle plays focused on saints. Over time, these
plays transformed into something known as morality plays.
These plays promoted a godly life, but they did not teach the
Bible stories exclusively. Instead, the morality plays worked
as an allegory, which is a literary device where the
characters or events represent or symbolize other ideas and
concepts.
Morality plays, which featured a hero who must overcome
evil, were allegorical in nature. In the case of the morality
plays, the hero represented mankind. The other characters
served as personifications of many things, including the
Seven Deadly Sins, death, virtues and even angels and
demons - anything that wanted to take over mankind's soul.
In the end, the hero would choose the godly route.
An example of a 15th century English morality play
is Everyman. In the play, God sends Death to strike down
the sinners who have forgotten him. Death finds the
main character, Everyman, and tells him he is to begin
his journey from life to death. Everyman asks if he can
bring someone with him, and Death agrees.
Unfortunately, Everyman cannot persuade any of his
friends, who include Fellowship, Beauty, Kindred,
Worldly Goods, to go with him on his journey. Finally,
Good Deeds says that she will go with him. Together they
go into the grave and ascend into heaven. The moral of
this story is that good deeds will help every man get into
heaven. It is a subtle turn from the straight biblical
stories, but it allowed for more secular forms of drama
during the Renaissance.
The Renaissance
You might already know the word Renaissance means
'rebirth'. In the case of drama, the Renaissance, which lasted
from approximately 1400-1700, was the rebirth of interest
in theatre across Europe. In fact, the Renaissance
introduced many of the elements we still think of when we
imagine a theatre: indoor theatres, an arched stage, a curtain
dropped between scenes, more elaborate set design. All of
these changes were implemented during the Renaissance.
More importantly, however, the purpose of drama
transitioned from stories told by the Church to stories made
primarily for entertainment for both royalty and commoners.
Usually when we hear the word Renaissance, especially in
conjunction with drama, we think of Shakespeare's England.
What most people don't know is the Renaissance actually
began in Italy, where music, song and dance were
implemented into the plays produced in the new indoor
theatres. From there, the rebirth of the arts moved to other
countries in Europe. The French imitated Italian theatre and
boasted the talent of playwright Molière, whose plays poked
fun at the people in important positions.
In Spain, they kept some of the religious dramas, but also
began performing action-based plays. It wasn't until later
that the Renaissance was embraced in England during the
reign of Queen Elizabeth I and continued through the reign
of King James I and King Charles I. Theatre flourished
during this time, producing several great playwrights. These
included Christopher Marlowe, who was known for
writing tragedies, and Ben Jonson, who was known for
writing comedies. Of course, most well known of all
was William Shakespeare, who wrote both and is still
popular today.
Theater remained popular with a few minor changes after
the renaissance and during the reformantion, when women
began acting on stage. By the 1800s, however,
Romanticism, which began in Germany, began to influence
the content of scripts written for the stage . The typical
romantic play focused on a hero who was fighting against an
unjust society to maintain his right as a human being. These
plays embraced nature and the supernatural. The most
popular of these was the melodrama a play where the hero
always succeeds. There was usually a battle of good and
evil, complete with special effects, like train crashes, horse
races and earthquakes. It was during the Romantic period
that German playright Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe wrote
Faust, and French playwright Alexandre Dumas produced
scripts for the novels The three Muskateers and the The
Count of Monte Cristo . With new scientific and
psychological discoveries people began to want more
realistic stories that reflected the world around them. This
transition into realism was a reaction against the
Romantic idealism. In fact, most literature can be
characterized as either romantic or realistic. Unlike the
melodrama, realistic plays usually did not have a happy
ending. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House tells the story of a
woman who leaves her husband and children in an effort to
find herself. Ibsen argues that a woman could nit find herself
in modern society, a controversial idea at the time of its
production. At first, audiences preferred the melodrama to
the more serious nature of realism, but overtime, these plays
did become popular even today.
Modern theatre
Eugene O’ Neill, who wrote in the first half of the 20 th
century, was a Nobel laureate and the first American
Playwright to find success abroad. His realistic play, long
day’s journey into Night, Is somewhat autobiographical, as
it explores his family’s struggle with addiction and loss.
After world war II, several American playwrights became
popular. Arthur miller, who was once married to Marilyn
Moroe, wrote the play, The Cubicle, in response to the
McCarthy trials of the 1950s. His play Death of a Salesman,
won the 1949 Pulitzer prize. Tennessee Williams is another
famous American playwright, whose works have more
poetic genre. Williams the Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar
Named Desire are still widely read and performed. Realistic
theatre is extremely popular in spite of some of the attempts
to move away from the style. Among these attempts is
absurdism. The primarily European Theatre of the Absurd of
the 1950s sprung from the belief that our existence has no
purpose and, as a result, there is little in the world that Is
logical or rational. In absurdism, the dialogue is illogical and
the actions irrational. These plays usually end in silence.
Absurdist plays, while still written and produces today, are
not part of mainstream theatre. Minority theatre, a term for
plays focused on minority groups and their struggles, began
finding success in the 1960s. Lorraine Hansberry was both
the first African-American woman to find success in
Americn theatre. Her play, A Raisin In the sun, shows the
struggels of a Multi-generational African-American family
as they attempt to achieve the American Dream. Minority
play continue to be written. In 1983, August Wilson wrote a
series of plays called the Pittsburgh cycle, 10 plays that
explore the African- American experience. The most famous
of these is Fences, Which looks at race relations in the
1950s. today, modern theatre has become a mix of styles
and has expanded with the use of multimedia.
SUMMARY
As we’ve seen, theatre has changed quite a bit over time. It
started with the ritualistic nature of primitive theatre and
continued through the ritual worship of the Greek Gods.
This ritualistic tendency changed during the middle ages,
when the Christian Church insisted on morality plays that
showed godly heroes overcoming evil. During the
Renaissance, there was a rebirth of the arts, including
drama, which resulted in more modernized theatres, sets and
scripts. It also gave us the most famous of playwrights,
William Shakespeare. After the Rennaisance, The Romantic
period introduced the melodrama, where the hero always
wins. This was followed by the realism period. Todays
modern theatres uses mix of these styles to entertain live
audiences across the world
Drama as we know it began in ancient Greece. The first
plays were religious affairs, with dancing and music. Then
came a chorus, which eventually had a Leader, who was the
first actor in the history of drama. Aeschylus, a playwright,
invented what we now call drama when he wrote a play that
featured two actors and a chorus, who symbolized the
common people or sometimes the gods. Other important
Greek playwrights were Sophocles and Euripides. Most of
what they wrote is lost.

What are the major time periods in theater history?

Major periods in theater history include the Classical,
Medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration periods and modern
theater. Each period of the theater features characteristics
that reflect its time period and issues of the day.
How did the theater begin in early productions?
The theater began as part of religious rituals. In ancient
Greece, people presented performances to honor Dionysus,
the god of wine and fertility, and give thanks for a good
harvest. These performances gradually developed into
scripted presentations.
Who first created theater?
Forms of theater have been around for thousands of years as
part of religious rituals. The ancient Greek people, however,
laid the foundations for what most people consider theater
today.
Why was the theater created?
Some early civilizations originally created theater to please
the gods. For example, ancient Egyptians performed
elaborate rituals to worship and honor the god Osiris.