Evolution of Theatre

When you hear the word Theatre, you usually associate it with modern day drama and actors both male and female wearing several costumes to stage the play in-front of the audience. Have, you ever given a thought, to the origins of Theatre, how it all started and why did it start and when did it start. Well, all these questions shall be answered in this blog so read on.

In ancient times, theatre was used as a means, to educate the masses about the various religious practices. The religious leaders dramatised the religious activities during various festivities. This was done so that the common masses through, entertainment gained the tenets of religion and subconsciously incorporated these very attributes in their lives. The religious leaders thus, either performed scenes from the lives of saints or acted out portions from religious texts.This was the very crude beginning of theatre as we know now. 

As, people became educated and they began to develop scientific temperament, they became critical of the association of theatre (which they dubbed to be a means of entertainment and relaxation) with religion. Thus, a rift between the two was inevitable. 

During these times, the rich and influential commissioned the writers to write scripts that were either entertaining or plays that eulogised them as great warriors or leaders or saviour of the people. Thereby, a paradigm shift in the content of plays can be seen from being religious didactic and sermonising to that of being boastful and panegyric. 

However, this trend did not last for long as more and more people wanted playwrights to write about their lifestyles and the audiences were not finding this trend to be as entertaining as they did earlier. Thus, now plays were written with plots that had a lot of bloodshed and terror in it. This catered to the masses need, for entertainment and was an instant hit amongst the audiences. 

A note here also needs to made that while the audiences comprised of people from all the social strata and sexes the actors performing on stages were only males. Whenever, a role of a lady was to be enacted a young boy who was rather effeminate was to act as the woman.

As all trends wither, so did the trend of drama being filled with barbaric activities. Now, the stage was to be taken by plays that had the theme of incest in it. Playwrights now wrote plays that had extra marital affairs or cuckold as their theme. 

After this the playwrights instead of blindly following a trend wrote as per their talent. While some aced in comedy, other were writers of great tragic plays. Audiences too, were happy as they were able to choose from the wide array of plays to watch. But, as all good things come to and end, so, did the golden era of theatre, with the invention of Radio and Television. Now, masses had the choice of choosing their mode of entertainment. 

In today's times, people would rather opt to go for a movie which has a successful and famous movie star in it than, going to watch a play which they dub as outmoded. Though, movies are a great source of entertainment but, they cannot be said to be a replacement of Theatre. The onus now lies on us, whether we want to save theatre from the gloomy cage it is in or we want this art form to become history.

Love 

Pankhuri