Theater History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Theater History - Essay Example Entertainment in these early times involved travelling productions. With the rise however of very popular stars and the clamor of audiences to see their performances as often as they possibly could, the stage theaters started to be strongly patronized. This also marked the beginning of the single play with long-running stage productions. Significantly thereafter, the theater started to become one of the oldest forms of entertainment, and this, even long before the televisions and the cinemas were born. This paper will particularly focus on the following key points: realism, the resurgence of new melodrama and that of political censorship, with the end in view of not only discovering the correlations between the aforementioned key points and the rise of the stars, but that of their linkage as well, to the future growth of theater itself. (Germany) and Konstantin Stranislavsky (Moscow) advocated realism, the true depictions of life. Eventually, this soon became the dominant mode in most of the theatrical productions not only in Europe but also in the West (www.wsu.edu/brians/hum_303/naturalism.html). Most of the playwrights and production directors centered on the lives of shining stars like French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844 -1923) and Italian stage player Eleonora Duse (1858 -1924). The renowned Sarah with the reputation of being a very serious dramatic actress then was referred to as "the most famous actress in the history of the world". She would later in this artistic profession earn the nickname of "The Divine Sarah" (Wikipedia). Injuring her right leg in 1905, an amputation was done in 1915, but this did not stop the ambivalent Sarah from continuing to tour and perform. She succumbed to a lingering ailment and made her final goodbye in 1923 while filming La Voyante (www.who2.com/sarahbernhardt.html). E leonora Duse, on the other hand, was considered as the greatest Italian player of her age, marking her American debut in 1893. With nineteen years hiatus, she made her farewell tour in 1923 (Fuse). Both Sarah and Eleonora had beautiful golden voices and each shared their respective abilities to breathe their emotional lives into the classic roles that they performed. Consequently, in their own respective rights, they would each further the movement toward the bringing about of remarkable realistic acting. Their professional careers became major successes despite of the fact that both their real lives were wrought and harrowed by the characters that they played. This fusion of realism and drama that are seen in turn in both these dramatic performers ushered in many changes in scenic and costume design, acting styles and staging. Similarly, in real life, both of them from frequent bouts of physical ailments, most of the time some financial difficulties, and the common problem of havin g countless love affairs. In any event, together, the two great stage actresses were most instrumental to making the concept of realism, the most dominant mode in the history of playwriting and theatrical productions during the 19th century. RESURGENCE OF NEW MELODRAMA "Melodrama was the primary form of