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When Peisitrarus came to power he decided to strengthen and unite the city by holding festivals in praise of Dionysus

In 530 BCE expanded per-existing gods spring festivals and turned Athens to city Dionysia

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Roman Theatre 1 century BCE- 3 century BCE

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Roman Theatre 1 century BCE- 3 century BCE

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Musicians used rooms nearest to stage to play their by adding the mystical effect of music which seemed to emanate from thin air

In late 3rd century BCE and early second century BCE new comedy Fabula Palliata named either for the fact that the actor wore loose cloaks or plays were loosely cloaked versions of the Greek originals

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Wu Priests would stage elaborate seance some were co opted as court performances where priests would zhuzh up the ritual with special effects and jokes

During Han dynasty performers were more widespread and secular practicing: tightrope walking, pole climbing, sword swallowing, fire eating, and occasionally slightly less dangerous stuff like juggling

Emperor Yang-Ti of the Sui Dynasty loves performances so much he opens his own training school, and hosts tens of thousands of performances

During Tang Dynasty music, dance and acrobatics are starting to be combined in innovative ways, also Emperor Xuanzong opens pear garden which is another training school to support and help further innovation

During the Yuan Dynasty, drama drew from history, legend, and those newfangled novel things. Characters emerged from all classes and types, and plays often ranged over months or years(a little like the Elizabethan drama)

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Kabuki was developed during the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military government ruled from 1603 to 1868, after disastrous civil wars, government finally achieved peace and prosperity, while practicing isolationism that allowed native arts to flourish

Around 1603 female dancer from Izumo Grand Shrine named Okuni began to perform publicly on the makeshift stage in the dry riverbed of Kyoto. Her programs became so popular that eventually Okuni began to mix dance with playlets and occasional cross-dressing to create lengthier shows

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Like Greek and Roman Theatre Sanskrit theatre was often staged in Conjunction with religious festivals and preceded by elaborate religious rituals

Unlike Greek and Roman theatre Sanskrit players weren’t exclusively men: troupes were male, female, and mixed gender

Bharata Muni says although the best spectators are noble, theatre is for all classes

Acting in the classical Indian theatre is incredibly specific and highly stylized. The way a performer stands and blinks and crooks a finger and flares her nostrils-all of that is conveying information about her character and the circumstances of the play

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Middle Ages Theatre 5 century BCE- beginning of 15 century BCE

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Middle Ages Theatre 5 century BCE- beginning of 15 century BCE

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In 1210, Pope Innocent III issues edict saying that the clergy can’t perform plays in public

In early 13th century drama moves from being a clerical phenomenon to a secular one

Christians have hated theatre since the Roman times but at the same time loved theatre

Christians performed plays inside church based exclusively on christian liturgy, and had members of the clergy act in them were the strategies chrisians used to make it less sinful

Cycle plays are ambitious genre of medieval drama that depicts the whole history of the christian universe starting with the creation of the world and ending with death and resurrection of Christ skipping most of the Old and New Testaments in between

Point of Mystery plays for York need to be on a wagon, easily moved and easily reassembled

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Renaissance introduced humanism the idea that earthly life isn’t just as vale of tears that might lead to heaven if you’re good, but maybe worthy in and of itself

Italian writers got rid of choruses they moved towards greater realism and often wrote tragedies with happy endings, which we now call Tragicomedies

Staging renaissance gets started when 15th century Italians rediscover Vitruvius’s treaties De Architectura, which was written around 15 BCE which is basically the poetics of architecture, chockablock with set design protips

In 17th century we get shifting scenery accomplished with wing panels that slide in and out on grooves in floors among other methods

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In 1558, Henry’s daughter Elizabeth I cracked down on religious and political plays pretty much ending cycle plays. She also passed a law classifying actors as vagrants who could be fined for going from town to town

Troupes of actors hooked up with nobility and licensed themselves as servants under names like The Lord Chamberlain's Men or The Lord Admiral’s Men

Two of the first English Renaissance plays were comedies written in vernacular English which were modeled on the work of, surprise surprise, Plautus and Terence

Morality plays were an obvious influence maybe also medieval farces

Neoclassicism didn’t catch on in England the way it did in italy and France, so these English plays tend to be looser and more episodic

In 1623 seven years after Shakspear’s death, two fellow actors in the King’s Men John Heminges and Henry Condell, decided to collect and publish Shakspear’s works in an authoritative edition, to honor their friend

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Sentimental comedy by exciting emotions like pity or sorrow, playwrights thought they could encourage an audience to make better moral choices

Sentimental comedy promotes the enlightenment idea that people are mostly good, unless they encounter bad influences. In plays by Richard Steele and his contemporaries, good people triumph over adversity, and bad people get their comeuppance

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Probably the first thoroughly modern musical was the 1927 “Show Boat,” which today is tricky to revive because its racial politics are… a mess

The ShowBoat offered rich roles for African-American actors and gave them character-driven songs like “old man river” and “can’t help lovin’ that man” which are still standards