Stagecraft Fundamentals

A Guide and Reference for Theatrical Production

Rita Kogler Carver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351816175
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Stagecraft Fundamentals tackles every aspect of basic theatre production with Rita Kogler Carver's signature wit and engaging voice. The history of stagecraft, safety precautions, lighting, costumes, scenery, career planning tips, and more are discussed, illustrated by beautiful color examples that both display step-by-step procedures and break with the traditionally boring black and white introductory theatre book. This third edition improves upon the last, featuring three new chapters on design for props, projection, and touring. Also included are new end-of-chapter questions and an expanded discussion on LED lighting, stage automation, digital technology, stage management, makeup, theatre management, and sound design.This is the must have introductory theatre production book.

PART
ONE

History and Art

Chapter I: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going
A Brief History and Introduction

Chapter II: It’s All About Collaboration
Design for Theatre

Chapter III: Making lt Visual
Composition

Chapter IV: Black and White Are Colors TOO!
Color Theory

Chapter V: Creating the Stage Picture
Drawing, Rendering, and Drafting

CHAPTER ONE
Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

A Brief History and Introduction

Student Learning Outcomes

• After completing this chapter, students will be expected to formulate a list of the different dramatic styles and genres—and their individual characteristics.

• An understanding of each individual genre’s development and how it builds upon the previous one will be demonstrated.

• Styles of modern theatre will be identified and real world importance should be illustrated.

We start this chapter by honoring the history I talked about in the Introduction. I’m sure you either have or will be taking a full class on theatre history, so this first chapter is meant more as a refresher. Think of it as an abridged history, as the full history of theatre takes up a whole book the same size as this one and has its own class as well.

The pageantry that evolved into theatre is usually connected with the Greek Theatre that we will discuss next. However, before this evolution there were many religious passion plays. These are the true predecessor and origin to today’s theatrical performances as we know them. Many may have heard of Oberammergau, or perhaps you haven’t. Let me explain. Oberammergau is a town in Bavaria, Germany. Their passion play came out of a vow in the year 1634, asking God to stop the bubonic plague that had been brought to the village by a traveler during the Christmas season. The villagers promised to perform a passion play, based on the last days of Christ from The Last Supper through to his Crucifixion, every ten years to thank God for saving their village. Their promise continues to this day.

Oberammergau is not the first time a passion play was ever performed. In this instance I use the phrase “passion play” a little loosely from its more modern meaning. The earliest known religious play dedicated to a culture’s God is from about 2000 bce in Egypt, based on a stone tablet in a German museum. The central figure in this play is the King-Divinity Osiris. Passion plays in his memory were performed annually. According to the accounts we have, these performances were quite realistic and actor/warriors often died during battle scenes due to the use of real weaponry!

Theatre history as we think of it actually started with the Greeks. Our overall organization of almost everything in the theatre as well as some of the basic conventions we still use have their roots in Greece. If you have ever been backstage in a theatre, it may seem like the technicians are speaking an entirely different language. Well, in some ways, they are. In this chapter, we discuss the history of many of the terms that form a foundation on which we build in later chapters, as we continue to expand our new theatre vocabulary.

Let’s begin at the very beginning. The word theatre comes from theatrum in Latin or theatron in Greek. It means a space designated for dramatic performances and spectacles. Only in more modern times have we come to use the same word for the actual buildings and for the performances.

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

—Euripides Tragedian of Ancient Greece, 480-406 bce

GREEK THEATRE

Let’s dive right into history and begin with the genre created by the Greeks. Since I said much of what we still do today is based on the Greek theatre, what does that actually mean? Well, keep in mind that what we actually know of the Greek theatre we gather from ruins of architecture as well as from artwork of that period. With that said, most of today’s scholars agree that the Greek theatre evolved from religious performances, as I mentioned earlier regarding passion plays; in fact, most of theatre around the world did. The church has always contained an amount of pageantry that is easily transformed in our thoughts to theatrical performances. In fact, many major religious festivals encouraged theatrical performances and often prizes were awarded.

Very few texts from Ancient Greece survive today. But we do know that Thespis, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Euripides were the important playwrights. All these playwrights wrote with similar conventions and themes. The plays were written in what we would consider today to be four acts. The first three acts were concerned with everyday issues. The fourth act was often based more on mythology and usually had a lighter subject matter than the first three.

Theatre Traditions: The Origins of Thespians

In the 6th century BCE, a priest of Dionysus named Thespis first engaged in direct dialogue with the traditional chorus of actors. This is widely considered to be the birth of Theatre and subsequently Thespis is considered to the first true actor. Thus actors ever since have been referred to as Thespians.

These plays rarely had more than a few actors (all men, by the way), who played all the roles, using masks to change characters as needed. Have you heard of a Greek chorus? Or, have you possibly seen the Woody Allen film MightyAphrodite? Well, the chorus was a group of people, sometimes as many as 50, onstage, who sang or chanted in unison to give the audience additional information that was usually moral in tone. Musicians often accompanied the chorus.

The Greek amphitheater was a huge cavernous space. It was simple in its design, based on a circle. That circle often had a diameter of close to 80 feet. That is at least two times the size of most theaters we use today! The amphitheater was most often built into the slope of a hill, which allowed for seating a large number of people, often up to several thousand. Figure 1.1 shows all of these features.

Once the Greeks decided to perform a play and build the amphitheater, the next thing to worry about was sound. Would the audience be able to hear the actors? Remember all that math in high school you never thought you’d use again? Well, the Greeks used it and used it well. Mathematics played a huge role in the construction of these theaters and in the acoustics. In an audience that seats up to 15,000 people, how could anyone possibly hear the actors’ voices? Many people today believe the Greeks were very advanced on the subject of acoustics, maybe even having a better understanding of it than we do today. However, how the Greeks were able to use acoustics is still not completely understood. Lost in the sands of time, so to speak. They needed to understand it as they couldn’t simply turn to microphones and speakers for help.

■ Fig. 1.1 The Epidaurus Theater during 4th century BCE.

■ Fig. 1.2 Illustration of a Greek theater, showing the playing area, seating, and surrounding hillside.

So, here is what they did. By building the theatre into the side of a hill, they used the natural acoustic properties of the hill to bounce sound up toward the audience (Fig. 1.2).

Let’s discuss the physical theatre for a second. The first seats built for the audience were temporary wooden benches. Fairly quickly, these were changed to inlaid stone, which created permanent seating. Once the audience seating was set in stone, literally...