Theatre Practitioners

Question 1

Richard Burbage

Answer 1

• 1567 - 1619
• English actor
• first player of Richard III, Romeo, Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear
• was member of the Earl of Leicester’s company
• great performer of tragedy

Question 2

Inigo Jones

Answer 2

• 1573 - 1652
• British painter, architect, and designer
• first important English architect
• introduced roman and Italian renaissance architecture to Britain
• Use Vitruvian rules of proportionate symmetry in buildings
• founder of English classical tradition of architecture
• greatest achievement is the Banqueting House
• only surviving royal building is the Queen’s Chapel
• theatrical designer for Ben Jonson’s masques
• son of a cloth worker

Question 3

David Garrick

Answer 3

• 1717 - 1779
• influential English actor, producer, dramatist, poet, and comanager of the Drury Lane Theatre
• realist actor
• reformed audience behaviour
• brought shakespeare to the people
• brought consistency to production in setting, special effects, and costume
• son of a captain in the English army
• was going into law

Question 4

Duke of Sax-Meiningen (George II)

Answer 4

• 1826 - 1914
• founded the first theatre company where the importance of the director was stressed
• developed many basic principles of modern acting and stage design
• impacted Andre Antoine, founder of the first theatre of naturalism (Theatre -Libre, Paris)
• impacted Stanislavsky

Question 5

Adolphe Appia

Answer 5

• 1862 - 1928
• Swiss stage designer
• known for interpretive use of lighting to bring in new realism
• early training was in music
• established a hierarchy of ideas for achieving aims 1) 3D setting instead of flat, dead, painted backdrop 2) lighting that unifies actors and setting into artistic whole, emotional response from the audience 3) interpretive value of mobile and colorful lighting as visual counterpart of music 4) lighting that spotlights the actors and highlights areas of action.

Question 6

Max Reinhart or Reinhardt

Answer 6

• 1873 - 1943
• original name Max Goldmann
• one of the first theatrical directors to achieve recognition (Berlin, Salzburg, NYC, and Hollywood)
• oldest of 7 children, Orthodox Jewish family
• was suppose to be bank clerk
• went to Berlin, Germany for Theatre
• eventually sick of naturalism
• was part of a lighthearted revue, Schall und Rauch (Sound and smoke), he contributed sketches
• new concept in theatre, kammerspiele “chamber plays”
• early landmark directing production was 1905’s A Midsummer night’s dream
• The Miracle, 1911, one of his most amazing and characteristic work (2000 actors, musicians, dancers, personnel). Performed as drama and ritual, inspired by Gregorian chants and Catholic rites.
• His staging of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in 1910, first large-scale revival of Greek theatre in more than 2000 years.
• didn’t return to Germany because the Nazis came into power in 1933. Exiled.
• went to the US, hollywood.

Question 7

Erwin Piscator

Answer 7

• 1893 - 1966
• famous for his expressionistic staging
• originator of epic theatre that was further developed by Bertolt Brecht
• documentary theatre
• theatre to provoke people into action, social issues

Question 8

Tadashi Suzuki

1939 -

Answer 8

• theatre director, writer, philosopher working out of Toga, Tyama, Japan
• breaking away from orthodox realism
• founder of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT)
• organizer of Japan’s first intl theatre festival (Toga Festival)
• work with Anne Bogart to cofound the Saratoga Intl Theatre Institute
• creator of Suzuki Method of Actor Training (“physical exercises aimed to reinvest performance with an ‘animal energy’ he feels has been lost in modern civilization”)
• directed tragedies, Shakespeare, Chekhov
• traditional Japanese theatre and the avant-garde (inspired by Grotowski)