Since then the various eras witnessed changes in the kinds of theater stages, which affected the actors and also gave rise to different forms of acting.

In ancient Greece, plays were staged to mark a religious occasion in theatres where only prestigious men were allowed as at that time ladies and slaves were looked down on in the society. Theatres popularly known as amphitheatres housed a large round stage which was encircled three-fourth by audience. This is how a stage would be set in the Greek duration. Amphitheatre could accommodate an audience of 25,000 at a time which made it  hard to see what’s going on for the audience at the back. To overcome this obstruction the actors would be loud with grandiose voice and giant gestures and to be more noticeable wore mask and symbolical attires. High pitched chorus was used to as a way of cautioning of an upcoming event or to advice co-actors. To improve the visibility and to give a deception of reality to the plays they were held in daylight as well as a actual landscape acted as the background of the play.

In the medieval duration facilities were more often available to plenty of of the inhabitants of the community. Theatres  were no longer reserved for the rich. Plays were hld on wagons better known as pageants. The wagon would be dragged in to the marketplace where the play was decided to be held. Spectators would surround the stage from all sides and would watch the play. The themes of most of the plays at that time were the every day happenings and day to day experiences depicted as an ironic comedy or as a actual mime depending on the taste of the audience. This created an interplay between the audience and the actors with the audience expressing their views on the theme.

in the course of the Renaissance duration theater performance took the form of professional performance more than an artistic one. The blueblood of England started investing in to performing groups and theatres with an apron stage.  The apron stage had an rectangular platform with  an audience of 2,000 surrounding the two sides of it and was in close nearness with the actors acting on stage. With the rich aristocrats funding the plays the costumes were designed with more details and were elegant. Plays were enacted at daytime which made the creation of illusion of nighttime difficult which was overcome by dispatching the information as an element of an actor’s dialogue which is termed as word scenery. Denizens from all sects of the society attended these plays so an hard work was made to plz a large array of spectators by taking different storylines in to consideration.

Read the rest of this entry »