8th November 2011 

Play (opera teatrale) → a kind of text written to be performed

The literary genre of comedies, tragedies and farces is called drama.

A theatre is a place, whether open or closed, where performances are given. Whenever we think about a text for the theatre we have to think about a text which has been written to be performed. Theatres as buildings to host plays were built in the Renaissance.

A ritual is a sort of celebration which implies somebody who sends a message and an audience receiving. Medieval drama derived (started) from church rituals.

A play is a representation → it presents something renewed 

In the middle ages, the idea of art, literature and theatre was a didactical one.

Liturgical drama is drama which results from religious rites. At the beginning, drama was played inside the church, it concerned with religious topics and it was meant to instruct people who went to church to religious mysteries and episodes. A further step was when performances were moved out of the church (in the 14th century). Religious and dramatic performances were performed during the main festivals like Corpus Christi (in June) so religious performances at the beginning coincided with Corpus Christi procession which moved around the town or the village.

Gradually an evolution was recorded: a new form of drama was organized and it took place outside the church where the most relevant events from the Old and New Testament were represented by the guilds. This kind of plays was called “mystery plays”. In later times also morality plays were developed. Morality plays developed later (at the end of the 15th century, more or less); they were performed by travelling companies; they represented their moral teachings in an open space or on stages in open air; the main protagonists were abstract vices or virtues. It was only after the tradition of mystery, miracle and morality that plays moved indoor in the banquet halls of noble people or in the common rooms of universities.

Roland Barthes, Frammenti di un discorso amoroso

Nel medioevo Dio era il centro della vita e delle azioni di ogni persona; nel Rinascimento si privilegia l’essere umano.

Humanism → human being at the centre of the attention

Renaissance → new birth of learning

Ogni rappresentazione deriva dalla necessità di presentarsi agli altri in modo diverso.