History

Greece and Rome

The first identification of theatre as a distinctive art form in the city-state of Athens can be dated to 534 bce, when the first prize in a competition for tragedy was awarded. The Roman writer Horace, writing 500 years later, believed that Thespis, who won the competition, had developed theatre while traveling with a cart that he used as a stage in any open area where an audience could gather. Such portable stages were used for centuries in the performance of variety entertainments (called mimes). The 12th-century Byzantine encyclopaedia known as the Suda indicates that the earliest theatre in Athens was built in its market square (agora) and used temporary wooden stands (ikria) for seating and a cleared area of the market for a stage. This arrangement would have resembled, and may even have inspired, the oldest existing Greek theatres, which are at Árgos and Thorikos, both of which were built before 500 bce. These were open-air end stage theatres in which the house (theatron, or “a place of seeing,” in Greek) was a bank of straight-line seats (perhaps originally in wood but eventually in stone) supported by a hillside, while the stage (orchēstra, or “a place of dancing”) was a roughly rectangular space at the bottom of the hill. At these sites there is today little evidence of a skene (from the Greek skēnē, or “scene-building”), which was the third basic component of later Greek theatres, so it is assumed that if such a structure existed, it was temporary. Greek theatres of this form continued to be built into the 3rd century bce.

Sometime before 497 bce, the Athenians moved their theatre from the market square to a precinct dedicated to the god Dionysus on the southeast slope of the Acropolis. It is likely that it at first followed the straight-line form of the theatre in the agora, but gradually the seating benches were laid out in sections in the shape of wedges that formed a polygon around part of the northern half of the stage, giving it a thrust stage configuration. By the middle of the 5th century bce, the stage area had taken on the shape of a U, with a polygonal house of wooden benches around just slightly more than half of the northern loop (the lower part of the U), a straight-line scene building closing off the southern end (the top), and an empty space just below the top of the U into which the entranceways (parodoi) led. The scene building was substantial enough to provide a small playing space on its roof and at least one set of doors facing the stage. The doors may have led onto a porch, raised two or three steps above the orchestra so it could serve as a raised stage or “place of speaking” (logeion). This was certainly a feature of later Greek theatres when small buildings were actually constructed on each end of the skene to enclose the ends of such a raised stage. The performance area of Greek theatres was often divided into two sections, the main stage and a raised stage at the back. The scene building had sufficient space for the operation of complex stage machinery both for flying actors onto or off the stage and for revealing a tableau of an interior scene on a platform rolled out from within. This building also provided up to three entrances along the back of the raised stage.

It was not until 330–325 bce, at the beginning of the Hellenistic Age, that the house in the Theatre of Dionysus was built in stone and took on a shape, slightly more than semicircular, that has so often been identified (mistakenly) with the theatre buildings of a century earlier. The semicircular house ran in tiers up the hillside, where it ended in a walkway. Beyond the walkway was a rise in elevation of several feet and another section of seating, which had been added to extend the house farther up the hill. In the largest of its many renovations, the theatre may have held an audience of over 17,000 people.

It is not clear whether the Theatre of Dionysus established this form of theatre architecture or was merely following a trend established elsewhere, but this was to become the basic model for theatres for the next 500 years. The most complete existing example of this kind of stone structure is the theatre at Epidaurus, across the Saronikós (Saronic) Gulf from Athens. Epidaurus was a healing sanctuary in the countryside. The theatre, which could hold 12,000 to 14,000 people, is noted to this day for its almost perfect acoustics and for the circle outline that occupies the lower two-thirds of its U-shaped orchestra. But there is no evidence that plays were performed at Epidaurus, and this theatre may well have been designed for the presentation of some form of healing ceremony.

About 440 bce, Athens became the site of the first documented indoor theatre, the Odeum of Pericles. This was a square building with seating along all four walls and a performance area in the centre. It had a seating capacity of perhaps 4,000 people, though the view of the stage of more than half the audience members would have been obstructed by columns. This was a theatre used more often for poetry recitals, music recitals, political ceremonies, and religious events than for drama. It may, however, have been used for the rehearsal of performances scheduled for the Theatre of Dionysus, which was nearby. Later odea, especially in Roman times, were laid out much like the open-air stone theatres but scaled down to fit inside a much smaller square or rectangular building that was as free as possible of column supports for the roof. These were of the end stage, rather than of the thrust stage, form. The semicircular house and the lower stage were foreshortened to a shallow shape rather than the longer U shape of the outdoor theatres, and most of the performance occurred on the raised stage (pulpitum) along the rear wall.

The first great theatrical construction boom came in the Hellenistic period, when the building of theatres in stone became one way in which cities competed with one another. During this time the house became increasingly ornate, but its basic design, and that of the main stage (orchestra), changed very little. It was the raised stage (logion) and scene building (skene) that underwent radical change. The skene was now typically two stories high. Projecting out from its first story, at about 10 feet (3 metres) above the orchestra, was the raised stage, supported by a row of columns along its front edge (proscenia, from which the English word proscenium is derived). Decorative panels could be fixed between these columns to create a variety of backgrounds for the orchestra. Backgrounds for the raised stage were provided by the second story of the skene, which seems to have had a number of large openings that could be used as entrances, as spaces in which to reveal scenes, and perhaps even as spaces for small sets.

The Romans encountered Greek theatre design as they conquered the Greek colonies of southern Italy between 343 and 341 bce and added Sicily in 241 bce. The start of Roman theatre is usually dated to 240 bce. It was in all ways based on Greek models, though it did not slavishly copy them. For reasons that are not fully understood, the Romans did not immediately build theatres in stone, as the Greeks were doing at a remarkable pace. The Romans built their theatres of wood for a specific festival; when the festival was over, the entire structure was taken down. Gradually these structures became fantastically elaborate. Pliny the Elder reports that, by about 50 bce, wooden theatres with audience capacities of up to 80,000 were being built three stories high, with decorations made of glass, marble, and gilded lumber. Even allowing for considerable exaggeration, these theatres were extraordinary feats of engineering. Stone theatres were gradually built in cities outside Rome in the early part of the 1st century bce, but it was not until 55 bce that a stone theatre was finally erected in the city itself. This was the theatre of Pompey the Great, and it became the model for Roman-built open-air theatres thereafter.

The theatre of Pompey was built on flat ground, using arched substructures (something the Hellenistic Greeks used only on a small scale). These substructures allowed the audience to access several levels of corridors that ran beneath the seating and led to entranceways (vomitoria) that opened out into the seating area itself. The house was much like a traditional Greek theatre except that there was now a covered colonnade running around the uppermost level. This colonnade was broken at the centre by the entrance to a large temple of Venus that projected out behind the theatre. The builders of nearly all subsequent Roman theatres incorporated this upper shaded walkway into their designs, though few found it desirable to include the temple.

Designers of later Roman theatres made use of hillsides so as to reduce the cost of building substructures. But while Greek theatres laid out most of the seating directly onto a hillside, Romans terraced the hillsides and built seating on single-level substructures at each terrace level so that passageways under the seating would still be available. By far the most distinguishing characteristic of the Roman theatres, however, was the redesigned scene building that closed them off from the outside world. In Roman theatres the raised stage (pulpitum) was low, generally only about three feet (one metre) high. It came out almost to the centreline of the orchestra, which was commonly used for additional seating and occasionally used for everything from small-scale gladiatorial combats to water ballets. The raised stage was backed by a scaenae frons that was as tall as the seating area and was divided into at least three stories with a roof extending over the raised stage area from the top level. The parodoi that had separated the house from the scene building in Greek theatres were now covered entranceways, and the entire theatre became an unbroken D shape, much like a traditional odeum. The uniform height created by the scaenae frons and the covered walkway made it possible to stretch large pieces of fabric over whatever part of the audience needed to be shaded from intense sunlight. Roman theatres were sometimes also cooled with sprays of water.

Practically every city of any size either modified its existing Greek theatre or built a new Roman one during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. So many theatres were built that, by the start of the 3rd century ce, only the colonies of north central Africa and northern Europe lacked new theatres, and that century witnessed construction in those places. As the political stability of the Roman Empire deteriorated, theatres were gradually abandoned. In the four centuries after the collapse of the empire, they were used as stone quarries, and the remains were sometimes used as fortifications.