Theatre in the right place

texts: Kristina Steiblytė

At the very beginning of the 20^th century, a scientific controversy took place at Columbia University in the United States, contributing to the fact that we now talk about theatre not only as a dramaturgy and the traditions of reading it, but as an independent art form and its various influences. This disagreement arose between literary researchers, writers Brander Matthews, and Joel Elias Spingarn. The latter believed that the plays should be read as independent works of art, without regard to the circumstances in which they were created, since all meaning and value  of the piece is encoded in the words of the drama, while the first held to an opposite opinion: for those who read and interpreted texts made for theatre, Matthews suggested keeping in mind even the buildings in which the plays written were to be performed. After all, these texts were not created in a vacuum and were written to be shown on specific stages, often even with a specific audience in mind.

The aesthetic development of theatre in the 20th century and the new theoretical ideas of humanities and social sciences used in theatre research actualized B.Matthews’ point of view. Therefore, while each performance can be viewed as an independent work of art unconnected to its environment, this approach has become less and less influential over the last century. Last century’s research on the art of theatre and its audience has revealed that the meaning of a performance is not only created by the play itself: everything from whether the audience and the actor slept well the night before, to their plans after the performance, to the hall’s size, to scientific progress and the newest technical possibilities matter.

The place where the performance is created and shown is also significant. A historical play in Kaunas Castle will clearly differ from an opera based on historical themes or a contemporary documentary play performed on an independent stage. On the big stage of the National Drama Theatre, “Othello” will not be reminiscent of staging the same play in an apartment. Not only will the means of expression chosen (or available) vary, but the audience to be addressed, the time at which the performance can be shown, and even the texts addressed to the audience.

A short tour of the history and present of European and Lithuanian theatre will help to better understand how the environment affects the art of theatre, wandering into its different venues: open space, distant sleeping districts and city centres.

 

Does a theatre outdoors mean fireworks in the rain?

I would like to start the tour from theatre in the open space, which takes us to the beginning of the history of European theatre – Ancient Greece. Amphitheatres here were mostly adapted to natural terrain, and the landscape served as a scenography for actors playing mythological scenes. It is not yet possible to talk about the theatre as a building during this period, but long-term constructions are already being installed: a wooden and stone slab for the audience is replaced by the theatron, the predecessor of a stage the orchestra, the skene, sometimes taking over the function of a backdrop and backstage. 

In such an open space theatre, dedicated to a large community, it was important for the audience to hear and receive visual cues as clear as possible about what was going on in the orchestra. Therefore, the stories and subjects in such a theatre were chosen to be well-known to the audience. On the other hand, it is also believed that mythological subjects in ancient Greek theatre suggest its religious nature.   

We don’t need to look far for the equivalents of such performances in today’s theatre culture. One can remember, for example, the annual historical plays in Kaunas Castle. Here, the function of scenography given to the Kaunas Castle – as if it were a kind of skene framing the action, the performances are performed for a large group of spectators gathered on a slope, by telling a more or less known historical plot as well as using clear visual signs. Such productions, that usually have an easily recognizable function in the city or the state, are not the only way to apply the principles of open ancient theatre to modern outdoor performances. For example, the first performance of the “Miraklis” theatre, founded by Vega Vaičiūnaitė, was created in an abandoned courtyard of an abandoned building in Šv. Stepono Street in Vilnius. “Pro Memorio St. Steponas 7” (1995) turned the building and the street not only into a a backdrop to the history of the Vilnius ghetto, but also into an independent narrator. This and other “Miraklis” productions combine stories known to wide audiences with the meanings of specific places, thus creating performances that complement and change the audience’s experience in a specific public place.

Looking back at the history of theatre, there is another tradition of performing outside rather than only that derived from amphitheatres. These are the street and market square performances which took place during different ages, sometimes bringing themselves closer, sometimes distancing themselves from the  religious function of theatre important in ancient Greece. Street performances had perhaps the most significance in 5^th-15^th century Europe,  where Christian church after gaining ground in the continent banned theatre, sacraments could not be given to the actors (in many places this was upheld until the 18th century), and performers could be deported if caught wearing sacred robes during one of their plays. 

Many  documented prohibitions and punishments from those times reveal that theatrical activity did not cease throughout this period. On the contrary, the influence of theatrical forms such as the commedia dell’arte grew and developed. Theatre became so influential that, in the long run, the  Christian church itself became involved in the creation and performance of theatre. Thus, at the beginning of the period, traveling troupes, bards and troubadours, animal trainers became an entertaining, albeit illegal, pastime for the public. And at the end of it, in city squares and streets, it was possible to see much more complex and visually expressive performances of religious content, with its aesthetics, complexity and role in society moving away from a mere street event and getting closer to the tradition of ancient amphitheatres.

However, these dramatic changes in the late Middle Ages did not make street theatre and the tradition of performing outdoors, on the streets, or in squares disappear. This democratic form of theatre, open to any passer-by, has recently been trying to re-establish itself in Lithuania as well. The “Spot” festivals in Vilnius and “Šermukšnis” in Klaipėda, aiming to popularize street theatre and spread the word about it to the townspeople and the town’s guests, not only present works by foreign creators, but also provoke local ones to address the public without usual tools such as theatrical lights and smoke machines, expensive audio equipment. Even though the climate in northern Europe, unlike in Greece, where outdoors theatre was born, is often not so favourable.

 

Theatre not for all

Widespread in public urban spaces in the Middle Ages, presented for a long time simply on the street or in temporary structures, eventually theatre established itself indoors. One of the first buildings where it would be played were churches. Here Easter performances showing the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ were performed . However, gradually churches could not fit everyone during the Easter celebrations , so the religious theatre began to move  outside the church. Not only did this change the content of street theatre, but resistance to the construction of public theatres gradually began to cease.

Moving indoors theatre had two different directions: to private and public space. Private theatres for kings, princes, and nobles, now largely remembered in history books or turned into museums, were set up in palaces and mansions. Such theatres, sometimes even very large ones, accommodating several thousand spectators, were intended only for an audience with invitations, most of which entered the theatre hall through other spaces of the building. Some of these theatres also had their own troupes, playwrights, and  a complex for that time stage machinery that allowed them to create various effects. They were also luxuriously decorated to remind the visitors of its owner’s status. Thus, in this private space of the noble and the rich, the art of theatre would be, at best, equal, and often even less significant than the social plays happening in the audience.

Palace (or manor) theatre, which flourished in the Renaissance, spread throughout Europe from Italy. Such entertainment for nobles was usual in Lithuania as well. One of the best among such equipped theatres in Lithuania was to be in the Palace of the Great Dukes, where in 1636 the first opera in Lithuania, “The Abduction of Elena”, was shown. But during the war of 1655-1661, the palace was destroyed and not rebuilt. Thus, the development and spread of theatre art in Lithuania was much more influenced by smaller manor theatres. For example, the theatre in the Radvilai manor in Nesviz, where in the first half of the 18th century Uršulė Radvilienė not only founded a theatre, but also took care of the plays to be performed there. She translated Molière and Voltaire’s texts into Polish and wrote dramas and comedies herself. Such theatres not only contributed to the popularization of theatre art, but often also had  a social and educational function involving the children of local serfs in the   performances.

In the 17^th century these theatres began to open: to work as rented performance spaces or to sell tickets to non-selected audiences. In this way, they joined the network of theatres open to the urban population, which had been gradually developing in Europe for several centuries. The first public theatre in Europe was a theatre built at the end of the 14^th century in Paris built specifically to perform Passion Plays – plays about the suffering and death of Christ. This and similar later public theatres in the Renaissance were established outside the city centres and often even outside urban areas. This was particularly evident in France and England, which lived through a long period of opposition to any constructions in which artists could settle. In London, for example, not having attained the royal approval, the first public theatres had to be built just outside the city. Consequently, their spectators had to choose to go to the theatre and leave the city because of it. This meant that these  theatres attracted a specific audience, for which different content was relevant than that to the upper classes watching performances in manors or diverse crowds gathered in market squares.

During the  Renaissance era, these theatres, far from the city centre and with a clear hierarchy in the auditorium,  attracted mostly the bourgeois.  Later, as the cities grew, the theatres found themselves in the central part of these. However, historical changes expanded understanding of theatre making and theatre audiences,  thus theatres for new, previously unwerlcome audiences began emerging. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries theatres for working-class audiences , and in the 19^th and 20^th centuries experimental and avant-garde theatres were deliberately established outside the city centres or traditional acting spaces to be closer to their target viewers or further away from the undesired ones. And sometimes theatres began to move away from city centres for financial reasons or trying to circumvent the censorship of various regimes. This category of theatre includes national and free theatres, mainly based in Germany, naturalist theatre, “Lithuanian evenings”, Dadaist theatrical experiments of the early 20^th century, mid-20^th century troupes of the American political avant-garde, and Soviet experimental artists working further away from major cities or  exhibiting their works in their own private spaces.

The buildings of these theatres do not stand out from their surroundings – they do not become architecturally dominant,  and sometimes they even shelter in buildings with a different function. For example, the “Keistuoliu Theatre” in Vilnius, located in Press House (Spaudos rūmai). The fact that the theatre shares a building with publishers and radio stations and is located in a neighbourhood away from centre means that it is almost impossible to go to their performances spontaneously – just by passing by in the street and seeing the theatre’s repertoire. Thus the viewers that gather here know where they are going and what content they can expect. This creates a close relationship between the artists and the spectators, based on trust and understanding. However, theatres meant for a specific audience risk getting stuck with their usual form and content, thus losing the opportunity to attract new generations of spectators to a remote area.

The crown jewel  in the heart of the city’s

Theatres located in the heart of the city, in decorative, eye-catching buildings, belong to a different tradition than the ones just describeds. Although both were meant to tend the cultural needs of an increasingly growing bourgeois class, the  later ones  emerged later than, for example, the theatre district of London on the south bank of the Thames. To talk about the theatres that were built to adorn the heart of the city, we need to begin from classicism.

Thinkers of the 17^th and 18^th centuries saw a connection between an orderly city and an orderly society. Thus, they also imagined the ideal city arranged in neat geometric quarters, replacing the chaos of the street network typical tomany cities that naturally formed in the Middle Ages. And at the intersections of the streets framing such quarters, public buildings of various purposes had to appear, including theatres. In such way, together with their expressive façades and the possibility to admire them from all sides, these public buildings had to become objects of attraction in the city.

These ideas did not remain mere abstract considerations. In 19^th century Paris, for example, part of the old city was replaced by a more orderly, wider network of alleys. And the north end of Avenue de L’Opera lead straight to the Paris Opera. Such buildings, which mostly received the style of neo-baroque architecture, in the 19th century became an architectural symbol of the high bourgeoise culture  for the emerging middle class. This symbolism was so significant, and the construction of theatres became so widespread that in the second half of the 19^th century, any city in the world (for example, North and South American capitals such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, Mexico City) built opera houses to prove their Europeanness.

In Lithuania, the building of the State Theatre, which now houses the Kaunas State Musical Theatre, reveals this tradition of building a baroque-inspired theatre building in the heart of the city. The neo-Renaissance theatre building,  planed and built in the current location by the tsarist government at the end of the 19th century, had to meet the cultural needs of a small provincial town. After Lithuanian declared independence and  theatrical activities were continued in the same building, it was decided to reconstruct it, giving the building neo-baroque features. During the Interwar period, this theatre worked as the perfect symbol of the greatness of a nation, capable to create performing arts conveying the nations spirit in its national language.

The building has something to say too

Contemporary theatre is not only made in buildings of historical significance or in historically formed theatre quarters. One of the most important styles of theatre architecture in the 20^th and 21^st centuries are multifunctional buildings, containing galleries, offices, educational spaces, cafes, concert or cinema halls in addition to the black box stages suitable for acting. Such buildings are built on empty land lots or by reconstructing buildings that lost their former industrial use. Lithuania has also joined this trend: at the beginning of the 21st century, „Arts Ptining House“ (“Menų Spaustuvė”) was established after the reconstruction of an abandoned printing house in the centre of Vilnius, and “Culture Factory” (“Kultūros fabrikas”) has been operating in Klaipėda since 2015 after the redesign of the cigarette and tobacco factory. By opening up to all the artists  who are willing and able to rent halls and by providing  the opportunity to change the number of spectators and their seating in the space, such venues democratize the creation and viewing of the theatre.

The process of theatre democratization  is also unfolds  in the works of contemporary performing artists inspired by the avant-garde movements of the 20^th century, who boldly leave the theatre space and move their performances elsewhere: to abandoned factories, closed or still operating schools, libraries, Soviet-era apartments, galleries and museums, parks, bars, etc. These choices reveal not only creativity of theatre makers, but also the understanding that not only the performing arts piece but also the space itself speaks to the audience. Choices like these  also show the understanding that the performance created and shown in the right place not only acquires additional meanings from the environment itself, but can also attract the right audience ready to accept those meanings. So while it is still acceptable to think of theatre as an independent work of art, detached from the environment it is created and performed in, it is also  worth agreeing with B. Matthews, who invited to see theatre not just as the play, but also as a building, significantly contributing to the meaning of performance.