Reading on Theater

In the reading we read about theater. The origin of the theater really interested me the most. I thought it was interesting how the book related the beginning of the theater to a parent reading the book and just getting into it. I know that when I have read stories to little kids going to bed I have created different voices and have maybe gotten into it a little more than the book required. I can easily see how people read stories and then decided to pass the book around and read it like a play where different people have different parts. Then I could see someone acting a little bit and it would just grow. I also thought this analogy was a little strange at first because the ancient people didn’t really have books but as I started to think about it made more sense. People would have the story memorized and they could even add their own parts to it. I can’t quite make the jump in my head to where they performed it on the stage but of course it happened.

I think it would be cool to see the ancients perform a play with their masks and really taking in the whole atmosphere. I’m sure I could really only take one before I got bored then I would want to see some special effects or something. The way the stages and the performance areas that the Greeks and Romans used really fascinate me a lot too. I have been to many different stages in the past and I am always amazed. My favorite was in Ephesus for different reasons. Probably the biggest reason that it is my favorite is because Paul spoke there to the Ephesians. It is also the biggest that I have seen and had a huge library not too far away that I’m sure housed many of the plays that they used.

They book explained different things that surprised me greatly. I thought that comedy and tragedy had always been the way that we know them but like Jasie put in class it really is how many people are dead at the end. After thinking about how these words could have evolved into the definitions that we today it could really easily happen. I just think it is fascinating to learn about this stuff and how our modern entertainment used to be people with masks walking around in the dirt interacting with each other.