Roman Theatre : A Diverse Art Form

Comedy has played a great role in the history of literature. It has created a professional entertainment which includes jokes, humorous plays, and comic characters to make audience laugh. In early Roman republic, slaves used to take parts in comedy. They used to represent the relationship between slaves and masters by creating hilarious skits or sketches. The comedy was invented as a Greek art form. The Greek comedy was later adapted by Roman Empire. The Roman Empire started with the earliest settlement in the Tiber River that flows through the city called Rome. Roman Empire was founded by twin sons Romulus and Remus in 753 BC. There are many famous Roman comedy playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Plautus was Roman playwright that has written different types of comedies.

Roman art, although it was largely based off of Hellenistic art, is unique in its own way. Glencoe World History describes how Romans borrowed from the innovations of Greek artists and mixed it with their own style of art:

Roman drama was highly influenced by Greek drama. Roman playwrights included Seneca for tragedy and Plautus and Terence for comedy. For details of other Roman authors please see Roman Literature. Two of the most famous plays of the Roman Theatre were the Menaechmi by Plautus and Oedipus by Seneca. Roman dramas had two sets of actors. There was an actor who spoke the character's lines and a different actor mimed the part on stage. The gestures used were also stylized to emphasize the lines as were the masks that they

In the Roman Empire, culture was almost solely dependent on the several forms of entertainment, which consisted of various sports along with theatre. Panem et circenses, meaning “bread and circuses”, was penned by the Roman poet Juvenal who wrote that those were the only two things the people “anxiously desire”. The phrase is used by Juvenal to deplore/condemn the declining heroism of the Romans after the Roman Republic ceased to exist and the heavy-handed Roman Empire began. The government kept the Roman populace happy by disrupting free food (bread) and staging huge spectacles (circuses). Spectacle, or spectaculum - meaning “a show”, is a term of art in theatre, referring to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Playwrights would use humour in their plays to connect with the audience as a chorus of laughter meant that the audience were attentive. As a playwright’s main focus was to entertain and teach, the attention of the audience was essential. Roman dramatists like Plautus incorporated humour in many of his plays to achieve the praise of audiences.

     The gladiatorial contests began at the reign of their first emperor Augustus to pay tribute to their warrior traditions. The Romans built artificial battlefields within amphitheaters in cities and towns for public entertainment. It is very obvious that gladiatorial contest were important because of the enormous size of the amphitheaters.

Rome was one of the last of the ancient civilizations that had the most impact on today’s modern architecture,and engineering, leaving some of the most famous monuments to this day, with this poster you will learn how did roman architects used to build the Colosseum,the Circus Maximus, The baths of Caracalla, Appian Roads, The Pantheon, The Famous Aqueducts, The Trajan’s Forum and learn a little about the city of Pompeii.

Roman theatre had no originality; anything Roman theatres presented was plagiarized Greek comedy and tragedy "no one wrote for the stage except to make money" (Beare 235). There was very little original drama developed within the roman theatre. Many slaves and foreigners were illiterate had no interest in literary drama and theatrical entertainment had became so static roman citizens became bored. There for "something cruder developed" (Chambers 3). Religious festivals, chariot races, and gladiator fights became the new entertainment for roman citizens. Gladiatorial presentations were different from theatrical entertainment and chariot races. The purposes of gladiator presentations were to exemplify the military ethic as well as to

Ancient Romans, like the Greeks, loved entertainment. Their idea of entertainment was usually something involving death and drama. They liked to watch plays, watch gladiators, participate or watch games, and watch or participate in animal hunts.

century BCE and it was quite small with only 5,000 seats (S1 Cartwrite). The early theatres came

The Greek theatre was a huge, public-air design used for dramatic performance. Theatres usually took benefits of Cliffside's and commonly sloping terrain and, in general, utilised the panoramic landscape as the backdrop to the stage itself. The Greek theatre is collected from the seating field, a circular room for a group of singers to perform, in the stage. Tiered seats in the theatre supplies a space for the people who watch the event. In the 2nd of one hundred years ago, the Romans defeated the Greece and marked a new era in the Greek architecture. The Roman architecture was truly a mixture of the ancient Greek, the Phoenician and also the Etruscan manner with some authority from different cultures of the Roman

I believe the Romans enjoyed these the most because hearing a story of sorrow and sadness might make the audience feel better about their selves, and seeing a comedy act; well, let’s face it, who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh? You can still see these same styles of theater around America, from New York’s Broadway to the Las Vegas Strip. Some great places to see staged performances in modern times are festivals and fairs. Unless you were wealthy and were able to pay professionals to perform at banquets or parties, festivals were the only place to see these performances in Ancient

Numerous influences established Roman theatrical entertainment. Etruscan and Greek antecedent are what predominantly shaped ancient Roman entertainment. Etruscans were people who lived in modern day Tuscany and parts of Umbria (Beacham, 1991). Rome inherited all attributes of the Etruscan religious festivals, where various theatrical performances were given, ranging from acting to chariot racing. For instance these carnival-like festivals occurred to please the gods though theatrical offerings. Another element that the Etruscans contributed was the importance of music and usages of masks and dance. In Etruria, music was accompanied in most activities varying from sacrifices to daily work (Brocket, 1995). Additionally roman theatrical

Centuries passed in which theatre was scarce, hence theatre was ‘revived’ rather than ‘continued’ in the Middle Ages. Previously, Greek theatre, from the sixth century BC, was vastly popular from tragedies to comedy. Even in the third and second century BC, Roman comedy was a popular form of theatre, influenced greatly by the Greeks. However, up until the 5th century, as the Roman Empire thrived, popular performance taste had diverted its attention to other activities such as

Rome, the eternal city filled with beauty, wonder, history, ancient monuments, breathtaking views and iconic stories. Rich with architecture and design that has lasted for centuries. The Romans innovated creativity techniques in combination with brick, concrete, marble along with other various materials to create lasting structures. Architectural structures as; amphitheatres, triumphal arches, aqueducts, forums, temples and basilicas. Romans not only created an empire but were also one of the world's forerunners in inventions, art and design. Of these legendary structures and historical events that followed, I will be focusing on the gladiators and the different arenas structures used in Rome specifically.

The Colosseum, also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre , started construction in 72 AD during the reign of Vespasian. Although construction wasn’t finished, it was opened in 80 AD. The construction finished between 81 and 96 AD during the reign of Domitian. Events held here included gladiator battles, animal fights and