Exploring Interests

As I flipped through the pages of our theatre textbook, the illustrations and descriptions of Medieval drama sparked my interest. And so I decided to begin my research on Medieval drama. This era of theatre originated in Europe from the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance.

Medival drama consisted of three genres of plays: mystery plays, miracle plays, and morality plays. Mystery plays were performed every summer through a joint community effort. This meant that each trade guild was responsible for the reenactment of one specific portion of the Bible in which the purpose was to share gospel stories. Because of the era of Medieval theatre, only men were permitted to act in these plays. Miracle plays differed from mystery plays in that they focused on the spirituality outside of the Bible. These plays emphasized Truth instead of facts which oftentimes meant that the stories tended to be unrealistic. The last genre consisted of morality plays which were allegorical and instructed man on how to lead his life. Morality plays could be extremely entertaining; however, death was a rampant topic because it was viewed as being the ultimate societal equilizer for this was part of post-plague Europe.

Medieval drama sets consisted of the locus/place which was the open field or amphitheatre where the general action occurred. Scaffolds also known as plateas, mansions, houses functioned as ways for actors to demonstrate scene changes. Rather than having actors remain stationary and having the scenes change around them, the actors moved through these scaffolds to show scene changes. At the start of Medieval drama, these make-shift sets were created out of wooden wagons. With the construction of permanent theatres, actors no longer needed to rely on church facilities for their performance stages and so medieval drama transformed from amateur traveling art to professional theatre.

Other students researched on a variety of other topics, but two other topics that sparked my interest were those of Commedia dell'arte and Greek theatre. Contrasting with the idea of solely male actors in medieval drama was that of Commedia dell'arte in which actors consisted of both males and females. On the other hand, Greek theatre originated in the 5th century B.C. which actually marked the birth of all theatre. This meant that theatre derived from Greek theatre rather than that of the popular belief of Shakespearean theatre. Because the Greeks had only outdoor stages, all performances were done during the day with masks rather than make-up.