The Impact of Working Conditions upon Acting Style

Abstract

All artistic conventions of each theatrical era have two intertwining aspects: the aesthetic goals, and the technical crafts for achieving them. In some cases, a particular combination or development of skills results in a refinement of the art or the discovery of a newly desirable aesthetic; in others, the demand for new artistic effects leads to the invention of appropriate techniques. Thus, when painterly standards and drafting methods of central perspective spread rapidly over Northern Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, illusionistic spectacle became an indispensable element of theatrical performance. It was eagerly supplied by architects in whom the printing of Vitruvius's De Architectura (1486) awakened both the responsibility for and the challenge embodied in designing theatrical scenery. Conversely, as Elizabethan playwrights conceived of plots dependent on avoidance of meetings between certain exiting and entering characters, second and third entrances were provided—either by cutting into the tiring house wall, or by hanging a curtain with several slits in front of it, to accommodate stage traffic.