A Journey to Stages and Behind Them

A lecture series examining the visual means of theatre and the development of stage technology from the Stone Age to the early 1900s. Theatre has shared its means of expression with literature, visual art, and architecture, and has always employed the cutting-edge technology of its time - lifting and trap-door mechanisms, gas, electricity, optics, and hydraulics.

29.10. From Caves and Squares to Theatre Buildings
Recent research suggests that Stone Age caves may have served as arenas for rituals. In ancient Greece, open-air theatres for thousands of spectators emerged, where dance and drama met. The first stages for Christian theatre were churches, later large squares and theatre wagons. With the Renaissance, ancient stages moved indoors.

5.11. Inventions in Service of the Stage
During the Baroque period, the theatre type that remains most common today developed: the theatre with a single proscenium opening. Moving scenery and figures descending from clouds turned the stage into a magic box, and in the centuries that followed, new inventions pushed effects ever further.

Lecturer: Dr. Jukka O. Miettinen. Free admission.