Impact industrialisation and new technology had on theatre
In Jackson's Victorian Theatre (1989) he discusses how during the nineteenth century the British theatre was pretty much exclusively commercial and was central to popular culture and to the entertainment industry of an urban industrial society. Its purposes and effectiveness were argued over by critics and practitioners, and its ability to reach a newly created mass audience made it a prime target for social legislation. William Hazlitt remarked on the inadequacy of the theatres' attempts to bring the playss visions to life and concluded: 'The boards of a theatre and the regions of fancy are not the same thing' (Hazlitt, Jackson, 1989, P1). The Victorian theatre was devoted to illusion, an attempt to confute these claims. The stage should contrive to lose its identity in the service of this absolute illusion and make the spectators forget - for as much as possible of their time in the theatre - that they knew a world more 'real' than that placed before them on the stage.Despite the success of this technological advance, there were many who feared that the theatre, in its pursuit of illusion, might have forfeited its ability to deal directly with human feelings and behaviour. There was concern that pantomime and melodrama - tra
Their assessment of seven theatres in very different demographic environments, and their study of a wide range of social history source material, would seem to demonstrate that earlier assumptions about the relationship between theatre, social class and social economics were not accurate. For the production of Faust (1885) the stage had a 33 foot 5 inch proscenium opening and a depth of 40 feet. It is notable that new fire regulations had to be introduced, stage conflagrations being extremely popular and rather likely to get out of hand, thus involving the audience in a more realistic theatrical experience than they had anticipated. The upper classes did not confine themselves solely to what might be described as upper-class theatres, and nor was it only the working classes who patronised melodrama. Because of the fierce competition between theatres, theatre managers vied with one another to produce the most dramatic and realistic spectacles, often involving the use of complicated technical machinery to produce impressive special effects. As seen in Southern's illustrations, nineteenth-century stages tended to be large, to accommodate the big crowd scenes, and featured numerous complicated devices for producing the realistic special effects demanded by melodrama. This was intended to help reduce the amount of over-crowding, very apparent in all London theatres, by making room for more stall seats and making the seats already there more comfortable by offering more legroom. As noted by Davis and Emeljanow (2001) the changes that took place in theatre during the nineteenth century were mainly the result of population growth, but also came about because of the extension of "legitimate theatre" from the three patent houses that took place after the passing of the Theatre Regulation Act in 1843. The poorer districts, such as the East End, began to produce more serious drama, whilst the popularity of melodrama remained consistent. The plays performed where mostly romantic melodrama. Successive directors brought their own creative techniques and visualisation to productions, using, for instance, lighting and sound far more effectively than had previously been possible. 1981) rise in Victorian theatre clearly defined a turn in theatre arts. It is therefore easy to see how in a cultural environment where engineering and science were so vitally important to social economics as a whole, theatre managers would take advantage of available technology and incorporate it into their artistic vision. ditionally hospitable to spectacle - might be losing dramatic qualities in favour of pictorial splendours. The performances were praised for the fidelity to the pictorial values of fashionable painting.
Common topics in this essay:
Davis Emeljanow,
P1 Victorian,
Lyceum Theatre,
Victorian Theatre,
William Hazlitt,
Regulation Act,
Irvings Booth,
victorian theatre,
crowd scenes,
Hazlitt Jackson,
spectacle crowd scenes,
theatre arts,
theatres theatre,
booth 1981,
lyceum theatre,
audience participation,
theatre managers,
davis emeljanow,
social economics,
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Acceptance Essays
