Essays on Theatre Page 2

Brecht Vs. Stanislavski. To move away from naturalism Brecht methods differs from Stanislavski’s in many ways. In order to achieve a un-natiuralistic performance and create an audience that are critical on the play rather than be emotionally attached to the play. Some of these differences between the two practitioner’s methods that create these two opposite…

I attended the COS Theatre Department production of Picasso At The Lapin Agile written by Steve Martin. The play Picasso At The Lapin Agile, is a comedy that was adapted by James McDonnell and Schyler Mayo in the fashion of a long running Off Broadway historic comedy play. The setting takes plays in a bar…

Attending the evening performance of The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre in Oxford Circus on August 14th, I witnessed a captivating story. Originally written by John Buchan before the First World War, The 39 Steps has had a remarkable journey from book to film adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The plot revolves around Richard…

Steven Berkoff is an English actor/director who trained at the Webber Douglas school of dramatic arts and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, in which he trained in the art of physical theatre and mime. Berkoff is well known for his in your face dramatic styles that causes the audience to react. People describe this style as…

Vsevolod Emielevich Meyerhold, considered one of 20th century greatest theatrical innovators, was born on February 10, 1874 in the Russian town of Penza. He was originally born into a Lutheran German-Jewish family with the name Karl Theodore Kasmir Meyergold. In 1895 he took the name Vsevolod Emievich Meyerhold after converting to the Russian Orthourdox Church….

The idea of theatre as a changeable human construct has been presented by several constructivists, including B. Brecht, V. Meyerhold, and C. Stanislavski, each with their own unique perspective. Meyerhold’s theatrical style incorporated audience participation to reveal the dynamic nature of entertainment and its connection to viewers’ reality. Brecht used an established theatre to symbolize…

Introduction Neoclassical theatre appeared in France in the 17th century and greatly influenced composing, theatrical design, and construction. Its appearance is closely connected with the learning of Latin and Greek performances, and brought some improvements to French plays which started to follow definite “unities”. Place, time and action became the three components to assess in…

            The theatre of cruelty was first theorized by the French dramaturge Antonin Artaud. Artaud first proposed a form of theatre which is able to move away from the traditional textual and scenic representation. Instead of the linguistic struggle for representation, Artaud advocates for an endeavor to bridge the gap between the text and its…

Mary Catherine Bolton (afterwards Lady Thurlow) (1790-1830) as Ophelia in 1813, opposite John Philip Kemble’s Hamlet While it is known that Richard Burbage played Hamlet in Shakespeare’s time, there is no evidence of who played Ophelia; since there were no professional actresses on the public stage in Elizabethan England, we may be certain that she…

Breech wanted audiences to find political lessons in his drama through the conflict of viewpoints, rather than any blatant ‘message’. Does he achieve this in Mother Courage?! Breeches idea that man and society could be intellectually analyses that led him to develop his theory of “epic theatre. ” Breech believed that theatre should appeal not…