The Beginnings of Theatre

Since the beginning of humanity, there has always been an essential need to tell a story. This was born out of necessity to survive in a world in which early humans did not yet understand, whether that was to show where a source of vital food was, what to avoid, or just simple curiosities. This was told to fellow humans through the use of physicality, gestures and tones of 'speech' (mainly grunts) to communicate this. And thus theatre and the idea of performance was born.

Of course, this wasn't the only way that early humans communicated, as they used plenty of other techniques such as the well-known cave paintings, or more unorthodox methods like utilising fire and smoke, drums and/or whistles. However, we as Theatre Studies students predominantly focused on the use of gestures, limited speech and physicality as well as how to achieve this ourselves.

EXERCISE 1:

For our first exercise, we were split into to groups and given a brief. This brief was that a member of our group had found some food and was trying to communicate this with the rest of out group. We thought that it would be personally best to show different reactions to this information, such as disbelief, excitement, etc. We managed to convey this story through use of many different hand gestures and facial expressions to portray the varying reactions and just the story itself. 

In terms of our physicality, I decided to make the creative choice of being very ape-like in mine, as I felt it represented best what primitive man would have acted like. To achieve this I made sure to have a very forward posture, with an arched spine and emphasizing most of the weight in my hips. I also slumped my arms and curved my hands, which I used thrusted forcefully and with not a lot of care to show how limited I am in complex and dexterous movements at this time. I also utilised and emphasised my breath too, and used it as my 'speech' through emphasis and differing pitches.

I felt this exercise was very helpful in establishing the limitations early humans felt, and how that necessity to communicate birthed theatre as we have come to understand it, or at least the early saplings of the concept of 'theatre'.  

EXERCISE 2:

We then moved on to looking at another aspect of early theatre, which was the idea of celebration and ceremonies. Whether this was to worship a God, celebrate a discovery, or honour the defeat of a beast, early humans would perform rituals to educate their tribespeople about their history. This would typically take form through the use of dance, chants and symbolic actions. In this second exercise, we seeked to replicate this through celebrating a subject of our choice, but specifically if it contributed to the survival of our clan.

Our group thought that the discovery of fire would suit this brief best, as it marks a major discovery in early man as well as being certainly a discovery that would ensure the survival of a clan. To do this we decided to focus our celebration around the moon. We also thought it best to have the celebration be educational, and to show the younger members of our tribe why we survive. To do this, we used symbolic arm movements of bashing two stones together to symbolise the initial discovery of fire. Alongside chanting and grammelot, this helped to convey well what and how we as primitive man celebrated as well as how theatre was further used to communicate, this time not strictly for survival as it continued to evolve.