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Stagecraft

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For the video special effects process, see StageCraft.

Early stagecraft master Robert Edmond Jones drawing at a high table (c. 1920).

Stagecraft is a technical aspect of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes constructing and rigging scenery; hanging and focusing of lighting; design and procurement of costumes; make-up; stage management; audio engineering; and procurement of props. Stagecraft is distinct from the wider umbrella term of scenography. Considered a technical rather than an artistic field, it is primarily the practical implementation of a scenic designer's artistic vision.

In its most basic form, stagecraft may be executed by a single person (often the stage manager of a smaller production) who arranges all scenery, costumes, lighting, and sound, and organizes the cast. Regional theaters and larger community theaters will generally have a technical director and a complement of designers, each of whom has a direct hand in their respective designs. Within significantly larger productions, for example a modern Broadway show, effectively bringing a show to opening night requires the work of skilled carpenters, painters, electricians, stagehands, stitchers, wigmakers, and the like. Modern stagecraft is highly technical and specialized: it comprises many sub-disciplines and a vast trove of history and tradition.

History

Ancient Greece

Greek theatre made extensive use of stagecraft, and Greek vocabulary and practice continue to influence contemporary Western stagecraft. The defining element of a Greek theatre's stage was the skene, a structure at the back of the stage, often featuring three doors. The usual setting for a classical Greek tragedy was a palace, and skenes were decorated to support that setting.[1]

On the audience-side of the Skene, what are now known as "flats" could be hung. Flats developed to two-sided painted flats which would be mounted, centered, on a rotating pin, with rope running around each consecutive pin, so the flats could be turned for a scene-change. The double-sided-flat eventually evolved into the periaktos (pl. periaktoi).

Greek stagecraft was essential to the storytelling of its works. The ekkyklema, a platform on wheels analagous to a contemporary wagon, supported the convention of not showing violence on stage. A character who had died would be wheeled out on an ekkyklema, sometimes for serious purposes, and sometimes for humorous purposes.[2] The mechane, a crane for lifting actors over the skene, supported the conclusions of plays, whose storylines were often suddenly resolved by the introduction of a god. The mechane is the literal source for the contemporary phrase deus ex machina.[3] Performances were lit by sunlight, often taking advantage of the particular time of day to support the story.[4]

Medieval Europe

Plays of Medieval times were held in different places such as the streets of towns and cities, performed by traveling, secular troupes. Some were also held in monasteries, performed by church-controlled groups, often portraying religious scenes. The playing place could represent many different things such as indoors or outdoors (as in the Cornish plen-an-gwary amphitheatres). They were played in certain places so the props could be used for the play. Songs and spectacles were often used in plays to enhance participation.[5][page needed]

More modern stagecraft was developed in England between 1576 and 1642. There were three different types of theaters in London – public, private and court. The size and shape varied but many were suggested to be round theaters. Public playhouses such as the Globe Theatre used rigging housed in a room on the roof to lower and raise in scenery or actors, and used the raised stage by developing the practice of using trap-doors in theatrical productions. Most of the theaters had circular-design, with an open area above the pit to allow sunlight to enter and light the stage. It was a penny admission to stand in the pit. Prices increase for seating. Court plays were used for holidays and special occasions.[6]

Proscenium stages, or picture-box stages, were constructed in France around the time of the English Restoration, and maintain the place of the most popular form of stage in use to-date, and originally combined elements of the skene in design, essentially building a skene on-stage. Lighting of the period would have consisted of candles, used as foot-lights, and hanging from chandeliers above the stage.

Stagecraft during the Victorian era in England developed rapidly with the emergence of the West End. Prompted by and influx of urbanites in the greater London area, Parliament was forced to do away with previous licensing laws and allowed all theaters to perform straight plays in 1843. Electric lighting and hydraulics were introduced to draw large audiences to see on-stage storms, explosions, and miraculous transformations. Technologies developed during the latter part of the 19th-century paved the way for the development of special effects to be used in film.[7]

Lighting continued to develop. In England, a form lamp using a blowpipe to heat lime to incandescence was developed, for navigation purposes – it was soon adapted to theatrical performances and the limelight became a widespread form of artificial light for theaters. To control the focus of the light, a Fresnel lens was used.

Originally intended to replace large, convex lenses in lighthouses, Augustin-Jean Fresnel sectioned out the convex lens in a series of circles, like tree-rings, and keeping the angle of the specific section, moved the section much closer to the flat side of the convex lens.

After candles, came gas lighting, using pipes with small openings which were lit before every performance, and could be dimmed by controlling the flow of gas, so long as the flame never went out. With the turn of the 20th century, many theater companies making the transition from gas to electricity would install the new system right next to the old one, resulting in many explosions and fires due to the electricity igniting the gas lines.

Modern theatrical lighting is electrically-based. Many lamps and lighting instruments are in use today, and the field is rapidly becoming one of the most diverse and complex in the industry.[8]

Sub-disciplines

For a topical guide, see Outline of stagecraft.

Stagecraft comprises many disciplines, typically divided into a number of main disciplines:

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stagecraft.
  1. ^ Wilson, Edwin; Goldfarb, Alvin (2012). Living theatre: history of the theatre (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-07-338220-3.
  2. ^ Eis, Joel D. (2016). "Confirming an Ekkyklēma in Sophocles' Acrisius". Acta Classica. 59: 193–202. ISSN 0065-1141. JSTOR 26347107. Retrieved 1 April 2023.
  3. ^ Wilson & Goldfarb 2012, p. 47.
  4. ^ Wilson & Goldfarb 2012, p. 44.
  5. ^ Coldewey, John (2001). Drama: Classical to Contemporary. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0130884411
  6. ^ Styan, John L. (1967). Shakespeare's Stagecraft, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521094356[page needed]
  7. ^ Bratton, Jacky (15 March 2015). "Theatre in the 19th century". Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians. The British Library. Retrieved 1 April 2023.
  8. ^ White, Timothy R. (2015). Blue-Collar Broadway: The Craft and Industry of American Theater. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0812246629.[page needed]
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