A History of Theater More than you ever wanted to know about where all this drama stuff comes from—turns out it’s nothing new.

The First Performances The history of theater is, and always will be closely tied to that of the world. –A playwright writes about life in his/her time! Wars Politics Issues of the day Love What would you like to see a play written about?

The First Performances Before the written word, stories were told around campfires. –This doesn’t mean it was just an old guy sitting around telling a story! Some of the other men (yeah… sorry girls we didn’t really get to join in for a while yet) would act out the story as well. –Back in the day being the youngest still stunk – you got to play the dead animal, the girl roles, and basically anything else that no one else wanted to play.

The First Performances Topics for early theatrical performances included: –Great hunts –The harvest –Feats of heroism and bravery –Maybe even some love stories –But mostly they thought killing and harvesting were more interesting

The First Performances Eventually, music may have been added, but even that was very basic, such as the beat of a drum. Dancing would almost certainly accompany music though – ladies we finally got to do something besides cook and pop out kids! Well, maybe… We aren’t really sure… There are no written records of these performances, so we can only speculate. –“Oral Tradition” – Passed on by word of mouth, not written down! You had to memorize it all!

The First Record of a Theatrical Performance Found in Egypt on a stone tablet from a long, long time ago… (2000 BC) It describes a lengthy three-day… Now that is a long time without a bathroom break… performance. It was arranged and starred some guy named I-Kher- Wofret of Abydos –I thought it was a fun name so I included it Basically, the dude wrote a play about the murder, dismemberment, and resurrection of the god Osiris using realistic battles and high ceremony. –only a few children were slaughtered in the making of this show