Theater and Other Performing Arts As I will claim repeatedly in this class, modern entertainment is grounded in the theatrical traditions of Greece (primarily tragedy) and Rome (for comedy). Many modern sports also originated in ancient ritual performances. These websites should provide substantial support for my arguments, and introduce you to other aspects of the performing arts and stagecraft in general. As time permits, I'll add links to good sites on music, dance, and other examples. The links are arranged as follows: theater l tragedy l comedy l puppetry l dance l sport Masks The Art of the African Mask is a catalogue for an exhibition at the Bayly Art Museum at the University of Virginia. Several different categories are featured, with multiple examples of each type: spirits, ancestors, rulers, icons of power, etc. The Mask Monger's page on Mexican Masks includes some wierd and wonderful examples, constructed from a variety of materials. The Yu-Pik people of the Arctic Circle are terrific mask makers, and the Arctic Studies Center home page provides a nifty little catalogue that includes a huge variety of characters. Note that there are two owl masks. Here's a page on Noh Masks (for the traditional Noh theater in Japan); the site's a bit goofy and it's commercial, but contains a good deal of information on the various types of masks and the roles they were used in. For a more scholarly look at these masks, see Pitt Rivers Museum collection. Elsewhere in Asia, see Demons and Deities: Masks of the Himalayas, which includes useful historical information on the origins of masks, as well as a gallery of Shamanic masks from the area. This is cute: here's a page with some Greenlandic masks you can download as a screensaver. This page on American Indian Masks images, further links, and some books on the subject. Like New Orleans, the Dominican Republic celebrates Carnival with elaborate costumes and masks. To see what they look like, and for possible inspiration, take a look at Carnival Masks of the Dominican Republic. For a bit of history about traditional masks in Italy, check out Tragicomica and read this article on the company from the New York Times. Before I started constructing this list I had no idea how many mask pages and mask makers were available. Some of the commercial mask creators are incredibly imaginative. Try this, for example: Shape Shifter Magickal Masks and Sculptures--gorgeous masks, plus history and some background on how the masks are developed. Here's the mask page to end all mask pages: Masks of the World (nicely designed, with a huge number of catalogued images). For basic ideas on how to construct masks, you can't do much better than this page for kids: Paper Mache Masks; it describes the necessary materials and has some decent ideas for how to create a mask simply and inexpensively. Another page for kids, well-illustrated and straightforward can be found at Mask Making By Crede Calhoun. For a more sophisticated approach, see Art Lex's page on Maskmaking with Plaster Bandages. And for those of you really serious about this topic, there's the Mask Maker's Web. Costumes The Costume Page is a clearinghouse that considers various uses of the word "costume." Take a look at the History section, and cruise around on the site. It's pretty comprehensive. The Costumer's Manifesto is a pretty comprehensive page with lots of links to useful information. See especially the page on ancient Roman dress. There are also three pages of designs for a production of The Comedy of Errors (the link is to the first page). Since we're doing Shakespeare, here's a page on Elizabethan Costume. Here's a useful page on Costume Design Resources from Arstlynx's International Arts Resources (devoted to the performing arts). Theater History: Classical Greece and the development of tragedy The Origins of Tragedy and Comedy Aristotle, Poetics Aristotle codified Greek tragedy for us, and his analysis of tragic structure has been relied upon since. Didaskalia: Ancient Theater Today An online journal about ancient theater and modern interpretation, Didaskalia provides a nice introductory essay on ancient theater, and good articles on appropriate topics. The "related resources" button provides links to other ancient theater-related sites. Greek Tragedy & the Ancient Stage Introduction to Greek Tragedy The information on this course page is of particular help in understanding the nature of tragedy and how it was understood by those who invented it; it was created by Roger Dunkle of Brooklyn College. A Trip to the Theater gives a short account of what took place during a Greek theatrical festival. Introduction to Old Comedy I'm still looking for a good site on New Comedy, but this one (another from Prof. Dunkle) provides a helpful starting point. Here's a good course site on Masterpieces of Greek and Roman Theater from Cornell. See also this page on Connections between Ancient Greek Theater and Religion by Peter Baiter, Betty Banks & John Burke, from the Classics Technology Center. Tragedy after the Greeks Here's an interesting page by Larry Brown that contains several articles on the relationship between myth and theater, and the connections between ancient and modern theater. Brown teaches at Lipscomb University, a Christian college in Nashville. See especially his essays Aristotle on Greek Tragedy, and Tragedy After Aristotle. He has also written a very nice essay about why a Christian might want to teach humanities: "Think on these things: The place of Humanities in Christian education." Greek and Roman Comedy Here you can find a helpful essay on the connections between Greek and Roman comedy, and their relationship to the development of modern comedy. The main site, TheatreHistory.com, offers pages on the history of drama from Egyptian times on. Introduction to Greek and Roman Comedy The Romans did with Greek New Comedy what they did with Greek scuplture and architecture: they admired it, emulated it, and in some ways improved upon it. Just as the Renaissance reflected the resurgence more of Roman art than Greek, modern-day comedy has derived more from Roman comedy than Greek. This is another of Prof. Dunkle's course pages; see also Roger Dunkle on Miles Gloriosus, devoted to one of the Plautine plays that inspired A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Also take a look at John Porter's Greek and Roman Comedy, A Brief Introduction (a course page from the University of Saskatchewan). Julie Taymor as Puppet artist Taymor is renowned for her work on The Lion King, and this paper from the Puppetry Home Page explores this aspect of her craft (she's also a director and costume designer). A good place to start for information on the various ramifications of dance and its history is Wikipedia's article. The Dance (by An Antiquary): Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. (Project Gutenburg): this e-book contains useful images on the history of dance. The U. S. National Museum of Dance: according to the site itself, "an all-inclusive institution, related to a diversity of professional dance forms, and representing dance from a diversity of cultural, religious, sexual, and class segments/backgrounds of American society." There's also a pretty cool "video of the week" segment. Most cultures take dance much more seriously than we do, and it often forms an integral part of cultural life. For example, here's a page on dance in India: The Living Spirit of Indian Arts. The Maya Ball Game The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame: an educational site with extensive features and a clever Flash introduction. Extreme Sport: an article from Archaeology Magazine on Ulama, a descendent of the Maya ballgame played today in Mexico. Here's a short article from the Unviversity of Maine library on the Maya Ballgame, illustrated with artifcacts from their collection. Bull Leaping in Crete Bull-Leaping in Bronze Age Crete, an exhaustive article with a solid bibliography. Wikipedia's short article features a couple of pictures and a good introduction. The Olympics The premier site on the history of the Olympics is the Perseus Project's The Ancient Olympics. From Ancient Olympia to Athens of 1896: the page begins with a summary of athletics in prehistory, and has a side bar with links do different historical sites and periods in the ancient Mediterranean. |