Drama Essay

Bruce Burton’s statement from Living Drama (2001), states ‘Drama is an art form which is directly concerned with living, with the way we lead our lives. Through drama we explore the way the humans being think, feel and communicate, learning to understand others and ourselves much more fully.’

I agree with this statement and believe that theatre is directly concerned with the way people live their lives. Through drama, we explore many aspects of our lives and learn to understand ourselves and others in differing perspectives. Various theatre styles reflect and address the contextual issues of their times, thus providing evidence to my thesis.

Theatre is involved in many aspects of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. It is present in politics, in religion, in the way we participate in the rituals of daily life.

It was in Ancient Greece that the first theatre originated – drama had its roots in religious ritual and celebration, particularly in the worship of Dionysus, the god of festivity. Festivals were serious religious occasions in Ancient Greek times. Tragedies were the main types of plays performed during these festivals – these plays always told the stories of Greek heroes and gods, and showed how good and evil were always in conflict. Citizens of Ancient Greece valued the teachings and values Ancient Greek theatre presented to them, and it affected what they believed in and the way they lived their lives. As the Ancient Greek plays idolised the gods, people were highly religious and worshipped the gods and dare not offend them – this is proof of theatre directly affecting how people lived their lives.

Highly religious values were also the main theme presented in medieval drama. During this context, The Christian Church had dispersed popular entertainment and theatre activities. Ironically, it was the Church that helped revive theatre activity by introducing theatre into the Mass exchanges of dialogue and allowing the presentation of a cycle of plays based on biblical stories. People highly values these stories with moral messages performed in the Medieval Drama period, and were also highly religious and worshipped God and live morally just like the people affected by Ancient Greek theatre in Ancient Greek times.

Even in modern times, theatre is used to affect what people believe religiously and how they should live their lives. In the twentieth century, churches, particularly evangelical churches, still employ the use of theatre as a form of outreach to the public.

In Ancient Greek theatre, males performed the male and female parts. No females were allowed to participate as it was perceived that their job was to run the house and bear children, with the exception of the Greek city-state, Sparta. This barring of females was also evident in Ancient Greek life. Women were perceived to have a lower status than men and were no allowed to attend parties, watch the Olympics or have a rich education. This is evidence of how theatre and daily life reflect one another’s values and beliefs.

Unlike Ancient Greek Theatre and Medieval Drama, Realism or Naturalism dealt with real life problems and people, instead of emotional or mystic ideas. Realism explored social issues, such as the role of women, alcoholism and poverty.

During drama class, we did a workshop based on ‘Stanislavsky’s System’. Through this workshop, we explored how human’s realistically thought, felt and communicated and expressed their emotions. The workshop activities included developing our ability to draw on life experience, through muscular memory and emotional memory. This helped us to become observers of human behaviour and learn to understand our own purpose for our actions in the way we lived our lives.

The play, ‘The Seagull’ is Chekhov’s attempt to put life itself on the stage so we can see it for the accidental, nonsensical and achingly beautiful muddle that it is. Belvoir Theatre’s production of ‘The Seagull’ was not only based on realistic theatre, but other theatrical styles as well. The production placed heavy emphasis on the psychological reality of each character’s inner world and their emotions. The characters dramatically explore their thoughts and opinions on life and themselves as they pass the time telling each other stories and dreams.

Thus, ‘Stanislavsky’s System’ and Belvoir Theatre’s ‘The Seagull’ production, is evidence of how drama explores the way the humans being think, feel and communicate, and learn to understand others and ourselves much more fully.

Unlike Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht opposed the realistic expression of emotions and actions – instead he believed in a social activist theatre that treated issues in a strictly intellectual, educational perspective. Influenced by the horror of World War One’s human cost, Brecht and his fellow epic theatre artists devised a set of staging and acting techniques meant to teach their audience to criticize the injustices and inequalities of modern life. Brecht wanted to banish emotion from the stage completely, thus he formed Epic Theatre. Brecht did not intend to pacify audiences; his plays were meant to arouse shock and alienate his audiences by making them think and hopefully, act to change society, thus affecting how people intended to live their lives.

Augusto Boal’s establishment of ‘The Theatre of the Oppressed’ is another example of how theatre is directly concerned with the way we live our lives. When Boal was a city-councilman in Rio de Janeiro, he created a new form of theatre called ‘legislative theatre’ in order to give citizens the opportunity to voice their opinions. These citizens would be called ‘Spect-actors’ and could take the stage and express their opinions, thereby helping with the creation of new laws. Approximately 13 laws were created through legislative theatre during Boal's time in government. This technique is still being used in contemporary times in countries including Canada and the United Kingdom. Such use of theatre for political means is evidence of how drama allows people to explore, analyse and transform the reality in which they are living.

Not all drama styles had such civilised use of theatre, but they still affected how people led their lives. An example would be Ancient Roman Theatre – performances consisted of death duals, with people being thrown to the lions and eaten alive. This era of theatre affected society quite negatively; society was crude and bloody thirsty and enjoyed the spectatorship of blood and gore provided by Ancient Roman theatre.

Absurdist theatre during the 1950s-1960s was mainly influenced by the philosophy of existentialism and by theatre practitioners such as Brecht and Antonin Artaud. The philosophy of existentialism suggests life is meaningless and useless as there is no God or religion, and that ‘life’ was essentially absurd.

Another important influence on the Theatre of the Absurd came from Antonin Artuad. Artuad felt that the Western theatre was slave to words, text and realistic imitation. Instead, he wanted the Western theatre to use the aspects of Eastern theatre and create a shock force that would awaken audiences from their complacent acceptance of the problems in society and motivate them into finding solutions and acting upon them. Artuad called his theory, Le Theatre et son double, and explained that he saw life and theatre as a ‘double’ – one reflecting the other. He called his dramatic theory the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’. Artuad believed theatre had the power to disturb member of the audience so much that it would impel them to take action and re-evaluate their lives. This is evidence of how theatre allows people to explore different aspects and questions about their lives and learn to understand themselves and others in differing perspectives.

The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ suggested life was just ‘a waiting room’ between birth and death. The Absurdist’s justified the creation of art in this meaningless world was merely a fantasy and ‘escape’. The First World War was supposed to be ‘the war to end all wars’, so the outbreak of World War Two, along with all the atrocities it brought, destroyed all the basic assumptions people had about life. The attitude of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ is probably best summarised by Samuel Beckett’s character, Clov, who questions ‘…You and I mean something?’. World War Two was the catalyst which set the movement of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ into motion. This new style of theatre affected how post-war people viewed the purpose of their life and prompted them to transition from the conservatism, restraint and formality of the 1940s to a less formal, rebellious lifestyle.

During this year, our year eleven class put on a production of ‘The Bald Prima Donna’ – an absurdist play written by Eugene Ionesco. At first, we thought the play was essentially just ‘mumbo jumbo’, as the dialogue seemed meaningless because of the use of repetitive phrases, countless puns, purposeless nouns and speech inversions. The logical structure of a play seemed to have been done away into an endless loop. However, when we learnt about the context the play was written in and its targets of satire, we could understand how this style of theatre reflected its time period and affected how the audience of its time lived their lives.

Through drama, we explore many aspects of our lives and learn to understand ourselves and others in differing perspectives. Overall, I agree with Bruce Burton’s statement from Living Drama (2001) and believe that theatre is directly concerned with the way people live their lives and is present in politics, in religion and in the way we participate in the rituals of daily life.