Journal Entry 3 - Medieval Theatre, Renaissance Theatre and Comedia dell Arte

This week was full of new ideas and topics to learn. I thought learning about the medieval period and their theatre was extremely fascinating. Beforehand, I had no idea how significant that period was to theatre until this class. This is because people usually skip over the medieval period and jump straight to discussing Renaissance theatre and Shakespeare. The significance of Medieval theatre, however, is that there was a period of time between the Roman period and the medieval period were theatre was not allowed to be performed. When the medieval period came about, theatre was reborn into liturgical dramas. I find this process fascinating because I had never known previously that theatre was banned for years and until the medieval period came around, it was only limited to religious performances. I think the medieval period might be my favorite period so far just because of how unique and different it was from the previous periods. Although, there were many changes and rules put in place during the Renaissance period. I think what was the most interesting part of this period was the significant number of rules people had to follow when writing a play. Playwrights had to make the story accurate to real life, they couldn't combine the comedy and tragedy genre, their characters could only represent "types" and be almost 2D, and their plays had to have a 5 act form and the 3 unities (time, place, action). To me, that seems like too much work to make a play, and almost impossible to make an exciting/interesting story. However, I do think Comedia dell Arte is an incredibly interesting type of play that came out of the Renaissance period (or the Greek period, we don't know). I think the idea of representing a character through the body rather than dialogue is an important skill to learn if you want to become a better actor. I think the physical ideas that Comedia dell arte introduces can be used to embody most, if not all characters that you could play at some point. It's both a great exercise and a cool way to perform.