Forms of Theatre: Entertainment & Art

Theatre as a Form of Entertainment 

Commedia dell'Arte

Commedia dell'Arte is a form of theatre which began in Italy in the 16th century. La Commedia dell'Arte translates as "Artistic Comedy"; The form is based on the free improvisation on stage. It started in the second half of the 16th century, in a period when theatre plays were classing, stylish, cold and rigorous. Maybe as a reaction, the Commedia dell'Arte was the opposite: loud, colourful representations blossomed everywhere in Italy, and the rules of theatre were subverted. It is considered a type of comedy as it amused those who watched it at the time; improvisation and rebellion amused the audience of the period as it contrasted with their typical theatre, so it became a form of theatre to 'entertain'. 

Pantomimes

The pantomime first arrived in England as an "entre acts" between opera pieces, eventually evolving into separate shows.

These pantomimes gradually became more topical and comic, often involving as many special theatrical effects as possible. It was quite amusing for the audience as these plays often featured clowns; mime was still a very new and peculiar form of theatre at the period and so people found this new practice cheerful.

Performance Poetry

Poetry that is specifically composed for an audience.

This practice began with the performance of poems in pre-literate societies. By definition, these poems were transmitted orally from performer to performer and were constructed using repetition, alliteration and rhyme to facilitate memorisation. The performer would add their own flavour to the poem, although fidelity to the traditional version of the poem was favoured. 

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering. It gives catharsis to an audience through their experience of emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama. 

Often, humans are entertained by pretend suffering, so this can be a type of entertainment.

Black Comedy

Black comedy is a type of humour revolving around a subject that might upset or be offensive to the audience e.g. death or war. 

"The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure." - Sigmund Freud, 1927

Theatre as a Form of Art

• The horrors of the Second World War showed the total impermanence of any values, shook the validity of any conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness. The trauma of living from 1945 under threat of nuclear annihilation also seems to have been an important factor in the rise of the new theatre.
• At the same time, the Theatre of the Absurd also seems to have been a reaction to the disappearance of the religious dimension form contemporary life. The Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical experience in confronting the limits of human condition.
• Parodies language, no dramatic conflict, no logic, scenic effects
• One of the more extreme manifestations of the avant-garde was the Dadaist movement, which took the desire to do away with obsolete artistic conventions to the extreme. Some Dadaist plays were written, but these were mostly nonsense poems in dialogue form, the aim of which was primarily to 'shock the bourgeois audience'. After the First World War, German Expressionism attempted to project inner realities and to objectify thought and feeling. Some of Brecht's plays are close to Absurd Drama, both in their clowning and their music-hall humour and the preoccupation with the problem of identity of the self and its fluidity.
• French surrealism acknowledged the subconscious mind as a great, positive healing force. However, its contribution to the sphere of drama was meagre: indeed it can be said that the Absurd Theatre of the 1950s and 1960s was a Belated practical realisation of the principles formulated by the Surrealists as early as the 1930s. In this connection, of particular importance were the theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud. Artaud fully rejected realism in the theatre, cherishing a vision of a stage of magical beauty and mythical power. He called for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce collective archetypes, thus creating a new mythology. In his view, theatre should pursue the aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered metaphorically in a wordless language of shapes, light, movement and gesture. Theatre should aim at expressing what language is incapable of putting into words. Artaud forms a bridge between the inter-war avant-garde and the post-Second-World-War Theatre of the Absurd.
• Similarly, Franz Kafka's short stories and novels are meticulously exact descriptions of archetypal nightmares and obsessions in a world of convention and routine.
• The idea of a theatre of cruelty was first introduced by Antonin Artaud to describe a form of theatre that he hoped would unleash unconscious responses in audiences and performers that were normally inaccessible. Artaud was opposed to theatrical productions based on venerated classical texts or established literary forms and thought they merely represented worlds that were irrelevant and highly artificial constructions. He wanted audiences to find in the theatre not an area for escape from the world, but the realisation of their worst nightmares and deepest fears. He therefore tried to provoke conditions that would force the release of primitive instincts he believed were hidden beneath the civilised social veneer masking all human behaviour. Describing the energy and impact of a radical new way of performing and responding in strong and often dark imagery, he envisioned a theatre that rejected rational interpretation. Instead, he welcomed the irrational impulses that could be stimulated by suffering and pain and argued that every facet of theatricality should be employed to increase a sense of danger, violence and disorientation in the audience. However, Artaud argued that his concept of cruelty was not sadistic. He wanted to stimulate what was honest and true and the cruelty he envisaged required a rigour and determination that was necessary if performers and audiences were to confront and experience the dark and terrifying responses that lay at the heart of each human being.