History of the birth and development of the theater. History of the theater

The first theater appeared in Athens, in 497 BC. First in Rome stone theater appeared only in 55 BC. . Before this, actors and spectators were content with only temporary wooden buildings.
The performances of past years bore little resemblance to what we understand by a performance today. There could only be one actor on stage, changing masks and playing several roles at once. The need for masks was due to large sizes theaters that could seat ten or even seventeen thousand people. It was almost impossible to discern the actor’s facial features from a long distance, and masks easily solved this problem.

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Educator – Dementieva S.A. MDOU d/s "Fairy Tale" preparatory group

William Shakespeare is an outstanding English poet and playwright. Years of life: 1564 – 1616. Great playwright William Shakespeare said: “All the world is a stage, and the people in it are actors.”

The first theater appeared in Athens, in 497 BC

In Rome, the first stone theater appeared only in 55 BC. . Before this, actors and spectators were content with only temporary wooden buildings. The performances of past years bore little resemblance to what we understand by a performance today. There could only be one actor on stage, changing masks and playing several roles at once. The need for masks was due to the large size of the theaters, which could accommodate ten or even seventeen thousand people. It was almost impossible to discern the actor’s facial features from a long distance, and masks easily solved this problem.

Theater is the union of all arts, it includes music, architecture, painting, cinema, photography, etc.

There was no theater in Russia until the 17th century. Over the centuries, this cultural niche was filled with rituals and folk holidays, which included elements of theatrical action, and buffoons, musicians, dancers, puppeteers, and bear guides.

Types of theater

On October 17, 1672, the first performance took place. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was so delighted that he did not get up from his seat for 10 hours straight while the performance was going on. The boyars stood: they were not allowed to sit in the presence of the sovereign. The day before, the monarch received the blessing of his confessor, Archpriest Andrei Savinov, who assured that the Byzantine emperors staged theatrical performances. It took a long time to convince Alexey to allow the use of music, without which it would be impossible to organize a choir. The king reluctantly agreed. The court theater did not have a permanent premises. The authorities did not skimp on spending on costumes for actors and scenery for theatrical productions, but saved on paying Russian actors.

Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich

Portrait of the founder of the first court theater Artamon Sergeevich Matveev. 1801.

The first actor is considered to be the Greek Thesipus, who won a poetry competition in honor of Dionysus.

In the 3rd century BC. The Romans, inspired by Greek theater, created their own versions of ancient Greek plays and began performing them on improvised stages. The actors in these performances were slaves. Women were only allowed to play minor roles. As Roman theaters had to compete for the attention of audiences accustomed to gladiatorial combat, public executions and chariot races, plays increasingly contained scenes of violence and crude humor. With the spread of Christianity, such ideas came to an end.

The emergence of theater in the Middle Ages

Later, the mysteries began to be played during other religious holidays, presenting various biblical stories.

Renaissance Theater

In 1576, the first theater building was built in London; before that, all plays were performed in hotels, on fairgrounds, or in the middle of halls in castles and noble houses. British Queen Elizabeth I patronized the theatrical arts; in the era bearing her name, the first professional playwrights appeared, the most famous of whom is great Shakespeare, actors, tradition of using props and changing costumes during the performance. Finally classical theater formed by mid-18th century century.

Variety is a type of theater whose performances are based on a combination of different genres of theater, music, pop and circus art. The performances of variety theaters are always light and cheerful. They are filled with humor, irony, and elements of parody. Actors and readers, singers and dancers, magicians and acrobats perform on the stage of the variety show.

Parisian variety shows

Cafeschantans and cabarets are considered the predecessors of variety theaters, although the concepts of “cabaret” and “variety show” are sometimes considered synonymous. Paris remained the center of development of variety theaters for a long time.

The performances of variety theaters were distinguished by incredibly lavish decoration. Perhaps the main genre of variety shows has become the revue - the variety review.

In the 1880s, such famous cabaret variety shows as “The Black Cat” and “Foli Bergere” appeared. In addition to pomp, their performances were characterized by excessive sentimentality and obscene jokes.

Variety theaters reached their peak in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century. Such talented chansonniers as Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker began performing at the famous Parisian cabaret-variety shows “Moulin Rouge” and “Apollo”. They managed to combine vocal and acting skills.

At the same time, variety theaters began to master the technique of spectacular pop dance, which arose in operetta, and later became one of expressive means.

Variety art in Russia

Variety theaters in Russia began to actively develop during the period Silver Age. At this time, numerous artistic taverns, restaurants, cabarets and miniature theaters opened. The famous Aquarium and Hermitage restaurants and miniature theaters appeared in Moscow. Bat" and " Distorting Mirror "; in St. Petersburg - “Theater Buff”, cabaret “Comedians’ Halt”, cafe “Stray Dog”. They hosted parody and variety performances, poetry evenings, puppet shows. One of the most prominent representatives of variety show aesthetics was the outstanding Russian actor and singer Alexander Vertinsky, who performed as Pierrot.

In the 1920s, one of the main elements of a variety show, tables in front of the stage, which brought the theater and restaurant closer together, ceased to be mandatory.

In recent decades, the aesthetics of variety shows has experienced its new bloom. True, the boundaries between the terms “cabaret”, “variety show”, “revue”, “burlesque” and “music hall” have now blurred.

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It all started in primitive society, when a person was completely dependent on the forces of nature that he did not understand. Change of seasons, unexpected cold, crop failure, fires, diseases - everything was attributed supernatural forces, which had to be won over. One of the surefire ways to achieve success was magic or sorcery. It consisted in the fact that before the start of any work, a scene was played out depicting the successful completion of this process. Participants in these performances used complex pantomime, accompanied by singing, music and dancing. And in these ritual actions, elements of modern theater have already begun to appear... Photo-1L

IN Ancient Egypt already at the end of the third millennium BC. Every year, theatrical skits were staged at the temples about the patron saint of farmers and artisans - the god Osiris.

In Greece, carnival-type rituals in honor of rural gods have long been widespread. Big role in development Greek theater played by the cult of the god Dionysus. These performances consisted of three tragedies and three comedies. Theaters were built under open air and were of enormous size. The actors were only men who also played female roles. Comedy characters were supposed to evoke laughter, so the masks the actors wore had flattened noses, protruding lips and bulging eyes. Folk theater performances called mimes were also popular in Greece. Mime is small scene of an everyday or satirical nature, in which both market thieves and mythological heroes. Not only men, but also women performed in them, and in these theatrical productions the actors performed without masks.

The theater of Ancient Rome was a spectacle intended primarily for the entertainment of the public. And actors were considered people of the lowest classes, but some actors achieved universal respect.

Theater of the Renaissance, these performances were cheerful, full of sharp satire and rich humor. Theatrical performances were held in squares, on wooden stages, around which there was always a large crowd of people. Theaters began to concentrate in large industrial and cultural cities. During the same period, theater was divided into types. Opera, for example, arose at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries, ballet from the mid-18th century, operetta from the mid-19th century.

A feature of the dramaturgy of this era of theater was the presence of a high heroic principle, the division of concepts into good and evil, a free transition from the sublime to the base, from the tragic to the comic.

The Renaissance gave impetus to further development theater and bringing it closer to the one we know now.

It began in ancient times. Let slavery reign in those days and there was no education. But people knew what theater was. Growing from the depths of a long human history, its roots go back to the mysteries of the most ancient folk mass rituals, games and festivals. The traditional primary actions of a comic and tragic nature (such as Saturnalia, Mysteries) that arose on this basis contained elements of a dramatic (mythologically framed) plot and included dances, dialogue, choral songs, mummers, and masks. Gradually, the separation of action and ritual and cult foundations took place, the selection of a chorus of heroes from the crowd, the transformation of a massive significant celebration into an organized spectacle. All this created the preconditions for the appearance of the much-loved literary drama. The forced division into spectators and actors revealed the important social functions of this

This process was clearly expressed in the theater Ancient Greece, which had a huge impact on the active development European art. In the city-states he became an important head public life. What is theater in Ancient Greece? The performances were then a great national celebration. Tens of thousands of spellbound spectators gathered in huge, gigantic open-air amphitheaters. In addition to the available professional actors, the performance could also be performed by the citizens themselves - directly by the choir participants. Dance and music remained necessary, the main elements of the action.

What is theater in Ancient Rome? Here the staging side of most performances developed more actively, even the type of stage changed, professional theatrical technology increased, various types of performances arose (musical and dance performances in mythological stories- pantomimes, which, having reached their heyday during the Empire, remained until the 5th century. most popular theatrical genre).

The European theater of the Middle Ages practically ceased to exist. William Shakespeare and several other playwrights in the 15th century. revived it. Then, without exception, all the roles in the performances were performed by boys and men. Actresses first appeared in the popular troupes of Italian traveling actors who performed comedies "cel arte" (small comic plays with the obligatory participation of masked characters).

The humanistic culture of the Renaissance period revived the traditions of ancient theatrical arts, combining them with the rich traditions of the people's national heritage. In the plays of famous playwrights of this era, history was revealed in the most acute political and social conflicts.

The rise of the theater is associated with the active spread of classicism, the social basis of which is the strengthening of certain absolutist regimes in some European countries. The actors' task was to create a complex image of a hero who, through internal struggle and severe trials, overcomes his own dichotomy between the demands of society and private interest. Contemporary issues During this period they acquired both abstract and universally significant character. This is what the theater of classicism is.

In the second half of the 18th century, he became the main exponent of the ideas of the stormy bourgeois Enlightenment. In the art of actors of that time, high citizenship was perfectly combined with an active desire to create new holistic characters showing interest in historical truth.

Romanticism became the expression of the aspirations of the democratic masses and humanistic ideals. Under the banner of this era, a serious struggle unfolded in drama against the so-called epigone classicism - for nationality, historicism, and national identity.

Realism, which was prepared by the theater and then by romanticism, acquired worthy independent forms in the 30-40s. 19th century and reached its highest position of dominance by mid-century.

IN modern theater there is a synthesis of many types of art, social problems and emotions - psychological analysis, high moral issues, spontaneity emotional state, authenticity and grotesque, experience and detachment, lyricism and satire. All this comes into the most daring and unexpected combinations. What is modern theater? This is a pronounced tendency to strive for increased activity of images, to save important artistic means, as well as their content. Today this type of art is unthinkable without a director. Scenography is also important now.

For anyone modern man theaters have become an integral part of planned cultural leisure. And many are interested in the history of the theater, because there was a period when there were no theaters? It is difficult to remember when this was, because the very first theaters appeared in primitive communities.

In those distant times, people still did not understand why it's raining, why it suddenly got colder and what they did wrong before the Almighty, that he sent snow or heavy rain. So that nothing threatened them, they tried in front of everyone important event conduct a theatrical ceremony. Information about such events gave us the opportunity to understand how the theater appeared and why such attention was paid to it.

From primitiveness to modernity

The primitive theater, naturally, was not like modern productions. There was no talk about professionalism or talent here - people tried to dramatize events the way they felt, putting their soul and all their experiences into each event. They sincerely believed that the more emotionally they could represent their devotion, the better the harvest would be, for example. All this was accompanied by improvised music and songs.

Later, somewhere in the third millennium BC. In Egypt, more organized theatrical skits were already performed about the patrons of artisans and farmers. Greece became the birthplace of carnival performances, which were organized mainly in the open air. Were popular here folk theaters. The actors almost always had to wear masks.

Renaissance - During this period, mainly comedic performances were staged. They were held in city squares, and many people gathered to watch the spectacle.

Somewhere at the end of the 16th century. - At the beginning of the 17th century, the world learned about opera, and only later, by the mid-18th century, ballet appeared; the first operettas appeared only in the mid-19th century.

Productions from past years today

Speaking about the theater of the 18-19 centuries, we are already talking about the performances and performances in which we took part talented actors. They were staged on stage and the theater structures themselves were radically different from the primitive ones and the Renaissance. So, since the end of the 19th century, a magnificent production of the ballet “The Nutcracker” came to us. Both in those days and now they were not available to everyone. This is, of course, due to the great and constantly growing popularity of the production. If previously only a select few, noble ladies and gentlemen could afford such luxury as a theater, today they are available to everyone. Despite the rush for tickets, people continue to find alternative ways purchasing tickets. So, for example, you can order them on our website. This will save you from queues and unexpected unpleasant situations.

Today the theater has acquired a different look. It has become a symbol and pride in every country. Architectural ensembles, decorative design and spacious halls, portraits of famous poets, directors and theater creators, as a rule, always decorate the hall. On modern scene we often see performances that were first staged during the reign of the Tsar. Yes, they have undergone some adjustments, perhaps some have been made more real events, and somewhere artistic directors decided to add musical accompaniment, combining opera with ballet. But, nevertheless, this once again confirms that theater has always existed in the past, and in the future it will attract the attention of spectators, even if the performance of the last century is presented on stage - this is our history and for many this is an important component of the formation of culture and traditions.