Admit me chorus to this history

"So what is theatre history and why are you studying it?" all of the fictional yous in my head asked. Well, theatre history is kind of a broad brush that falls under an even broader brush called Dramaturgy. In theatre history, you can study how theatre has been done throughout the years, or you can work on historical plays and research the time it's about, or the time it was written, or how it's been performed over the years. But what I am particularly interested in studying is how theatre and society have interacted throughout the past,  causing changes that have greatly impacted history. 

For example, did you know that the reason we have customs such as opening doors for women, or rising when a woman enters the room, or anything else than be counted as "chivalry"  is because of performance art? My dearest hero, Eleanor of Aquitaine, saw the awful way that women were treated in court and wanted to change that. So, she hired minstrels and troubadours to write and perform stories in which the only way a man could win his lady love was by performing acts that showed his absolute devotion and servitude to her, including things like opening doors and standing when she entered the room. 

Or, if you need a more recent example, did you know that Times Square, that well-known tourist location, was actually just the place to go when you wanted a prostitute or an X-rated... well... anything up until recent years? In the early 90's, a magical company called Disney decided to make a stage production of my favorite movie, Beauty and the Beast. Of course, in order to do a stage production, you need a stage. So Disney searched around the Broadway district and found an old, abandoned, but beautiful theatre on good, old Times Square.  Of course, you can't have a family show with hookers right outside your door, so Disney started socking money into the area, made a few shady deals, and by the opening of Beauty and the Beast in 1994 (the year I was born, do you need anymore proof I was born to play Belle?) Times Square was a perfectly respectable tourist location. 


To explain how I got interested theatre history, I feel like I need to first tell you my theatre history. 

I have been involved in theatre for ten years. My first step into theatre was a production of Annie Jr. at my local community theatre when I was 13 years old. 

This is a picture of me in my very first show. with one of my scene partners. 

I'd comment on how young I look, but I basically look exactly the same today. 

Just with bigger boobs. 

From then on, I was hooked, participating in theatre as much as I possibly could. People call it a bug, but I really think it's more of an addiction. 

When I moved out of my parents' house at 17, it was because of theatre. They had moved to a new state, and I couldn't find places to act, so I moved back to my hometown so I could continue to act with my community theatre. (That's when I was living with the family friend, as I mentioned yesterday.) Two years and two jobs later, when I no longer could support myself outside of my parents' house, I had to decide if I was going to move back in with them. I love my parents, living at home isn't a bad thing, and I was beginning to feel like I sucked everything I could from my hometown and that I couldn't grow there anymore. But one thing was holding back from moving, and that was the theatre. What was I going to do with myself if I couldn't act? So, I did what any sane person would do, I applied and was admitted to a $50,000 a year school that was 15 minutes from my parents' house and began studying theatre.

My original plan was to study theatre performance as my major and German as my minor. I had been obsessed with German since I was 10 years old and one of my camp counselors spoke it fluently. I needed a minor, so why not? So I started along on my German minor and end up in a class on German mythology, which focused on the myths about the Ring and followed the tellings of these myths from antiquity up to the present, including Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series and Wagner's Ring Cycle. 

In case you are not familiar with Wagner's Ring Cycle, it is a 15-hour series of four operas telling the myth of the ring. It is from this opera cycle that we get the saying, "It's not over until the fat lady sings", as the final scene of the final opera is ushered in by a (nearly 20 minute) magnificent solo by Brunhilde, who is traditionally played by a larger woman. 

Amalie Materna, the original fat lady. 

We were required to watch a few select clips from the opera (maybe an hour's worth) for our homework. I watched every single beautiful moment of this 15 hour masterpiece. And that, my friends, is how I came to love opera. 

Through this class, I was learning a LOT about Wagner, who, let me tell you, is a piece of work. Absolutely brilliant, arguably insane, and undoubtedly racist as all get out. He was also a game changer in the theatre world. He believed theatre was for the purpose of creating a mythology, he believed the audience should be fully emerged in the story, he believed the playwright should be left to dream and someone else can be left to figure out how to put the whole set up in flames at the end of every show, and, with a radical thought that would change theatre forever, he believed that the theatre was a place to see and not to be seen. 

Up until this time, the theatre was considered a place to go to hang out with your friends, and show off your wealth, and show off what a cultured human you were, spending your nights at the theeee-ah-terr. Lights would remain on for the entire performance and people would talk, and flirt, and eat, and comment on what everyone was wearing. The best seats had nothing to do with how well you could see the show, and everything to do with how well the rest of the audience could see you. And then Wagner completely turned everything upside down by announcing that, if you were going to come see his show, you were going to come see his show. He even designed a theatre for this very purpose. 

Wagner's Theatre. 

At this theatre, you couldn't purchase tickets to sit in fancy boxes (or on stage, which was practice in some theatres) where everyone could see how cultured you were, and how nice your wig was, or who your latest beau was. Everyone sat facing the stage. And, to add insult to injury, Wagner even dimmed the audience lights. How is one supposed to show off in conditions like these? But Wagner had made his point. He was the one who got to show off, because he was the playwright. And that is why, when we go to the theatre, we sit in the dark and quiet staring at a lit stage. 

I was devouring all of this information like candy and begging for more. That's when the lightbulb went on and I called my mom. "I want to study theatre history!!!" I'm pretty sure her response was something like, "okay..." But, my mind was made up. I declared a history minor, began taking history classes, spent a summer in Austria studying Austrian theatre, plan to do my senior thesis on Charles Winter Wood (a black tragedy actor from the days when black actors were not okay in the US), and now I'm applying to graduate school. 

Because, if I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to pay off my student loans, I might as well do that while doing something I love, right?