Introduction to Roman Stagecraft

The Stagecraft pages are works in progress; more detail and further illustrations will be added over the course of time. Please contact the editors of Didaskalia with comments or suggestions.

Roman drama has several origins, some native to Italy, some imported. One of the most important influences on Roman Comedy (called the fabula palliata in Latin, after the 'Greek' cloak or pallium worn by the actors) was the Atellan Farce, a non-scripted theatrical form which made use of stock masks (characters) and slapstick gags. (It was very similar to the commedia dell'arte of the Italian Renaissance, and not unlike improv theater today.)

These slapstick characters and pratfalls were welded onto the tradition of Greek New Comedy, which was imported into Rome after its conquest of Greece. New Comedy is the ancestor of sitcoms, with plots focusing on domestic issues, usually involving boy-meets-girl-parents-forbid-marriage and the intervention of a clever slave to save the day. The Greek versions were fairly genteel, but Plautus and the other early Roman comic playwrights added lively action, ferocious puns (in Latin and Greek), rude jokes, and lots and lots of physical comedy.

The actors of Roman comedy were all men, and about five of them shared out all the different roles in the play. The costumes were fairly simple, consisting of a tunic and a pallium (square cloak), which was long for female characters and short for male characters. The actors also wore masks, which were wildly distorted stereotypes, not very realistic, but funny.

These plays were performed at religious festivals sponsored by junior officials in the Roman government. The audience was clearly rowdy, and drama competed for audience attention with tightrope walkers, jugglers, and gladiatorial combats.

Permanent stone theaters were forbidden by the uptight Roman government, so the plays of Plautus and Terence were performed on temporary wooden stages like this one, used for performances at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, CA, October 1994. The design is based on theatrical wall paintings from Rome, Pompeii, and Oplontis, a good discussion of which can be found in Beacham, R.C., The Roman Theatre and its Audience, Harvard University Press (Routledge in the UK), 1991. Click the image to see a more complete illustration.

The Romans also produced tragedies, and these were more straightforward translations and adaptations of the Greek plays of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Costumes, masks, and language were all rather inflated. Although tragedy was very popular in Rome in the heyday of the Republic, we have only fragments of Roman tragedy remaining, except for the works of Seneca, which date to between 40 and 60 CE (AD). Whether Seneca's tragedies were ever performed is a matter of considerable debate. We're also short on details of the stagecraft of tragedy, which was presumably presented at the same sorts of festivals as comedy was. It is possible that the Romans adhered to the Greek rule of 3 actors taking all the parts. Seneca violates the Greek tradition of having violence take place offstage.

The Romans also wrote historical plays and comedies set in Rome. (The comedies of Plautus, Terence, and their contemporaries were set in Greece, though the characters displayed a lot of Roman characteristics.) These seem to have died out with the Republic.

The first permanent stone theater in Rome was built by Pompey in 53 BCE. He was only allowed to build his theater by disguising it as a temple to Venus. Others soon imitated him, including the new emperor Augustus, who built the Theater of Marcellus in honor of his nephew.

Theater of Pompey, plan. Theater of Pompey, reconstruction.

The Romans remodeled many existing Greek theaters, including the Theater of Dionysus in Athens, and the theaters at Pompeii. They fused the skene (scaena in Latin) with the theatron (caveain Latin) and reshaped the orchestra into a semicircle. In some cases they built in trapdoors, underground passages, and facilities for flooding the orchestra in order to stage aquatic games and sea battles. Plan of the Theater of Dionysus in Roman times.

Plan of the Romanized theater at Pompeii.

3D Reconstruction of the Theater of Dionysus in Athens during the Roman Period

During later imperial times the Romans built many enormous stone theaters all over Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, like this one at Sabratha.

Very little drama per se was performed in these theaters, which instead hosted mimes and pantomimes. Mimes were acrobatic and bawdy, and women acted in them; pantomime was an art much like ballet, and pantomime dancers became the rock stars of the ancient world.

Bibliography

Beacham, R.C., The Roman Theatre and its Audience, Harvard University Press, 1991.
Dorey and Dudley, editors, Roman Drama, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965. A collection of essays.
Duckworth, George E., The Nature of Roman Comedy, 2nd Edition, Bristol Classical Press, 1994. Originally published 1952.
Izenour, George, Roofed Theaters in Classical Antiquity, Yale University Press, 1992.
McLeish, Kenneth, Roman Comedy, Bristol Classical Press 1976.
Neiiendam, Klaus,The Art of Acting in Antiquity, Museum Tusculanum Press 1992.
Rudlin, John, Commedia dell'Arte: An Actor's Handbook, Routledge 1994.
Segal, Erich, Roman Laughter
Slater, Niall Plautus in Performance, Princeton University Press, 1985.
Sutton, Dana Ferrin, Seneca on the Stage.
Wiles, David, The Masks of Menander, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Relevant Articles in Didaskalia

Richard Beacham on the Getty Casina

Leslie Cahoon on Plautus in the Provinces.

Anne H. Groton 'Rhyme, Women, and Song'

Kenneth Hamma on the Getty Casina

Judith Maitland's Casina in Western Australia

William Slater, 'Pantomimes', Didaskalia 1.2.

Greek Stagecraft

Introduction to Ancient Theater

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Didaskalia: Ancient Theater Today / University of Warwick /edited by Sallie Goetsch and C.W. Marshall/ didaskalia@csv.warwick.ac.uk /ISSN 1321-4853

Last updated 20 February, 1997.