Theater Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Theater - Research Paper Example According to Stanton and Banham (1996), the first recorded theater of this type was a performance held in Egypt in 2500 BC enacting one of the sacred plays of the myth of Osiris and Isis. In the west, though, the beginning of theater is generally recognized as having its start in Ancient Greece, resurging going into the Renaissance and changes coming into the modern age. Greek theater history starts with Thespis, apparently a playwright whose name is recorded in history as the first winner of the play competition in honor of Dionysus in 534 BC (Wicker, 2004). It is from Greek theater that we get most of our current conventions, language and definition. In Greek theater, the play was generally narrated by a chorus who would let the audience know what they were supposed to be seeing and the background information of the story being told. Sometimes they took part in the action as they interacted with the principle characters. Under Greek influence, the theater developed into two major camps – the comedies and the tragedies. Major playwrights in the ancient period were Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander (Wicker, 2004). These men did much to develop theater into a fully-told story complete with actors, histories and a somewhat scientific approach to the development of story. As the Greek society began to fade, the rising Ro mans adopted their entertainment and brought it into further development. Some of the famous playwrights of this period included Terence and Plautus (Wicker, 2004). Like the Greeks, the Romans generally performed their plays in large amphitheaters where the audience would sit on graduated rows of horseshoe-shaped terraces while the actors would perform on a stage set at the base of these rows in the center of the pinched horseshoe opening. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans reduced the importance of their plays to