Crash Course Theater

Ancient Sanskrit theater is one of the oldest theater traditions, and thanks to Bharata Muni and his treatise on theater, the Natyashastra, we can tell you quite a bit about it, all the way down to eyebrow and nostril poses. This week you'll learn about the drama of ancient India, and its connection to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

In which Mike delves into the theater of ancient Rome. It wasn't all gladiators and Christian-killing, you know. There was theater, too. Roman drama drew heavily on Greek drama. So heavily, in fact, that many of the stories and characters were lifted directly from Greek plays. This time around, you'll learn about Plautus, Terence, and Seneca, and just what they owe to Menander.

Today, Mike Rugnetta takes you from our beginnings in ancient Greek theater, and moves on to the development of Roman theater. Which, it turns out, is A LOT like Greek theater. Because the Romans were real Grecophiles, they modeled their plays on the Greeks.

This week, we're diving head first into Greek Comedy. But don't get TOO ready for hilarity. Taste in humor has changed a little over the last couple of thousand years. You already know about Greek Tragedies, with their hamartia and catharsis and whatnot. Today we're going to look at how Greek comedy evolved out of those tragedies, first as Satyr plays, and later as full-blown comedies.

Aristotle. He knows a lot, right? And if you choose to believe Aristotle, then you must believe all the mechanics of tragedy that Mike is about to lay on you. This week, we're looking at Aristotle's rules for the basic elements of theater, and how those can be used to bring about catharsis, the emotional release triggered by onstage trauma. You know you love the catharsis.

This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike is acting like theater started in Greece. Well, for the western theater, this is true. The earliest recorded drama in the west arose in Athens, and these early plays grew out of religious ritual. Namely, they evolved from the worship of Dionysus, god of wine, fertility, and RITUAL MADNESS. That's right. I said RITUAL MADNESS.

We're going to ask the two classic questions about theater. 1.What is theater? And 2. Is it spelled -re or -er? Well, there's a clue to question two in the title of the video. The first question is a little trickier. We'll look at some of the historical definitions of theater, and investigate some of the ways people have thought about theater in different times and places in the world.