What is the origin of liturgical drama?
The earliest traces of the liturgical drama are found in manuscripts dating from the 10th century. Its genesis may perhaps be found in the chant “Quem quaeritis” (“Whom do you seek”), a trope to the Introit of the Eastermass.
Is your liturgical drama out of date?
It may be out of date, or may reflect the point of view of the Catholic Church as of 1913, and should be edited to reflect broader and more recent perspectives. Liturgical drama or religious drama, in its various Christian contexts, originates from the mass itself, and usually presents a relatively complex ritual that includes theatrical elements.
What is the first season of the liturgical year?
Annunciation (Subara) Weeks of Annunciation (Subara) is the first season of the liturgical year. The liturgical year begins with the proclamation and celebration of the historical encounter between God and man in the person of Jesus Christ, the human appearance of the Divine Person.
What is Western theatre liturgical drama?
Western theatre: Liturgical drama The tradition of medieval liturgical dramastems directly from the mass itself, a complex ritual containing many theatrical elements in its function as a visible reflection of the invisible world. Because it was believed that harmony expressed religious values, an attempt was made…
Where did liturgical drama begin?
The earliest traces of the liturgical drama are found in manuscripts dating from the 10th century. Its genesis may perhaps be found in the chant “Quem quaeritis” (“Whom do you seek”), a trope to the Introit of the Easter mass.
Who introduced liturgical drama?
The term was widely disseminated by well-known theater historians like Heinrich Alt (Theater und Kirche, 1846), E.K. Chambers (The Mediaeval Stage, 1903) and Karl Young. Young's two-volume monumental work about the medieval church was especially influential.
Who wrote the world's first liturgical drama?
Plays and miracles in the 12th and 13th centuries The first French drama offered by the twelfth century is called "Adam", and was written by an Anglo-Norman author whose name is unknown.
When did medieval drama begin?
Medieval theatre encompasses theatrical performance in the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century.
Why can early medieval drama be described as liturgical drama?
Early medieval drama can be described as "liturgical drama" because it was originally part of the liturgy of the Christian church. What were the subjects of the fourteenth-century cycle of plays underwritten by craft or merchant guilds?
What kind of drama was there in early medieval age?
The drama of the Middle Ages began as mimetic representations of religious history, in which clerics and subsequently laymen enacted the events of Holy Scripture, God's dealings with His people in the Old and New Testaments.
How was liturgical drama staged in medieval times?
Liturgical dramas were normally short and were sometimes performed in churches during or after church celebrations or sometimes were performed in the squares or courts outside of churches. These liturgical dramas started as short playlets (sometimes acted and sometimes sung) and eventually emerged into longer plays.
How did medieval theatre start?
During the Middle Ages, theatre began a new cycle of development that paralleled the emergence of the theatre from ritual activity in the early Greek period. Whereas the Greek theatre had grown out of Dionysian worship, the medieval theatre originated as an expression of the Christian religion.
What are the 3 types of medieval drama?
There were three different types of plays preformed during medieval times; The Mystery Play, the Miracle Play and the Morality Play. Mystery plays were stories taken from the Bible.
When did the Renaissance theatre begin?
1576The first successful theatres, such as The Theatre, opened in 1576. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama.
What are the ages of drama?
The Golden Age of Drama also known as the Elizabethan era went on during the years of Queen Elizabeth's I reign, between the years 1558-1603.
What are 5 major time periods in theatre history?
American theatre1752 to 1895 Romanticism.1895 to 1945 Realism.1945 to 1990.
When was the liturgical drama first published?
It was published in 1933 and is still read today, even though his theories have been rejected for more than 40 years. Many college textbooks, among them the popular books by Oscar Brockett, propagated the theory of "liturgical drama" even into the 21st century.
What is liturgical drama?
Liturgy and drama are, for today's standards, subcategories of a greater phenomenon which the 21st century terms performance or enactment. The example of Cistercian nuns crowning Marian statues in their monastic enclosure at Wienhausen shows the limits of "liturgical drama".
Who refuted the idea that plays developed out of the liturgy?
In his 1955 book on the origins of theater, Benjamin Hunningher refuted the notion that plays developed out of the liturgy. He noted that the church setting of the mass does not allow for entertainment, and Christian theologians had severely critized theater artists for centuries. As McCall wrote in 2007:
Is liturgical drama problematic?
By examining factors such as "historiography, etymology, source study, and analysis" of the texts themselves, Clifford Flanagan and, most recently, Michael Norton, have shown that the term liturgical drama is problematic.
What was the liturgy of the medieval church?
The liturgy of the medieval church was essentially theatrical, as was the festive cycle of the Christian year. But at certain times during that year, this theatricality took on a special character. At Easter, and on the days leading up to its celebration of Christ's Passion ("suffering") and Resurrection, and again at the Christmas season, churches throughout Europe provided the settings for musical dramatizations of scenes from the gospels. It is hard to know when these liturgical plays were first performed, because the oldest manuscripts that record them were copied after the Carolingian Renaissance had made the preservation of texts a high priority. Often, the late dates of manuscripts have been taken to indicate that medieval drama itself was a late invention—that in order for there to be a play, there must be a script. But this is obviously not the case: all that a play requires is a story, some performers, and an audience. And medieval people had a wealth of stories at their disposal, thanks to St. Jerome's translation of the Bible, which was supplemented by a series of popular tales from the Apocrypha or "hidden" books of Hebrew scripture, among them the stories of Judith, Susannah, and Daniel. Surviving manuscripts, therefore, allow scholars to view only the skeletal remains of liturgical drama, giving some indication of how these stories were performed. Most of these plays are undetailed and would have existed long before the time of Charlemagne. For example, it is evident that elaborate processions commemorating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday had been staged in that holy city for years, but the earliest record of them comes from the Itinerarium or travel journal of Egeria, a high-born lady or perhaps a nun from the Roman province of Galicia (Spain), written about 384. By the same token, the ceremony for the consecration of churches is surely older than its first ninth-century manuscripts, which show that it was loosely based on the story of the Harrowing of Hell presented in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, when Jesus, on the Saturday between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, descended to the underworld and led out from it the souls of Adam and Eve and other Old Testament heroes and prophets, taking them with him to glory.
What was the setting of the medieval church for Christmas?
The geography of the medieval church was vitally important to the staging of Christmas drama. At Easter, the sole stage setting could be "the place of the sepulchre," which was usually located at or near the altar. At Christmastime, the entire church became a theater, if only because so much of the action of these plays involved traveling: Mary and Joseph journey to Bethlehem, the Magi come "from the East" to Herod's court and from there to Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt, the Magi return to their homes. Each of these trips provided an opportunity for the actors to process around the church and through the audience, who would be standing in the nave (the central hall). Since all medieval churches were oriented on an East-West axis, with the altar in the apse at the eastern end, it would be from this part of the church that the Magi would "come together, each one from his own corner as though from his own region," according to the rubrics of the play from Saint-Benoît. The star that guides them rises from behind the altar, also in the east, and then leads their procession around the church. The citizens of Jerusalem are the members of the choir, while the members of the congregation are the people of Bethlehem. When the shepherds find the baby Jesus in the manger, they worship him and then "they invite the people standing all around to worship the child." Through such simple, effective techniques, the staging of liturgical drama allowed the events of the Bible to be mapped onto the church space, collapsing the distance between actors and audience, the past and the present, the local and the universal.
What is liturgical drama?
The term liturgical drama was first used in the mid-19th century to denote religious dramas that were part of, or closely tied to, medieval church services, whether before Mass, during the divine office, or liturgical processions. The term has not been unequivocally used or accepted, but a more fundamental question has been raised in modern times: do the various phenomena that have been subsumed under the term liturgical drama constitute a well-defined area of study? The most crucial problem concerns the possibility of a clear division between “liturgy” and “drama,” notions not used in the Middle Ages. Some modern scholars reject the idea that the earliest examples of what were considered to be liturgical dramas can reasonably be regarded as drama, partly because the liturgical manuscripts in which they were included do not display any particular awareness of a dramatic genre. The earliest examples of these so-called liturgical dramas were short, vocal, and staged Latin dialogues among the women at the grave of Jesus and an angel announcing the Resurrection. These are usually named Quem quaeritis (Whom do you seek?) dialogues after the beginning words of the first central line of the angel; they were performed in churches from the 10th and 11th centuries onward, continuing throughout the Middle Ages as part of Easter celebrations in many monasteries and cathedrals. In quite some (Catholic) places, the practice continued also after the Council of Trent, even into the 18th century. During this time, many other biblical matters were represented in more or less similar ways (including nonbiblical saints’ narratives). Importantly, and mainly since the 12th century, some biblical representations were large musico-literary structures; those for Easter were still built around the same core dialogue. By then, these short, very liturgical dialogues had longer counterparts, and the spectrum became wide and complex, sometimes mixing Latin with the vernacular. Later on, spoken plays (often referred to as “mystery plays”) also appeared, usually containing some liturgical songs as well. As much as the simple representations are liturgical, the more complex were often shaped for entertainment, and some continuity between these practices and early modern theatrical practices is difficult to deny. Thus, the field of liturgical drama studies cannot be sharply delimited from liturgical studies, early theater studies, or medieval chant studies. In modern times, anthropological methods have been applied; many studies of the texts in question regard these as aesthetical objects.
Why are liturgical dramas not considered drama?
Some modern scholars reject the idea that the earliest examples of what were considered to be liturgical dramas can reasonably be regarded as drama, partly because the liturgical manuscripts in which they were included do not display any particular awareness of a dramatic genre.
Is liturgical drama anthropological?
Thus, the field of liturgical drama studies cannot be sharply delimited from liturgical studies, early theater studies, or medieval chant studies. In modern times, anthropological methods have been applied; many studies of the texts in question regard these as aesthetical objects.
The Tradition of Theatricality.
Liturgical drama refers to medieval forms of dramatic performance that use stories from the Bible or Christian hagiography.
The term was widely disseminated by well-known theater historians like Heinrich Alt (Theater und Kirche, 1846), E.K. Chambers (The Mediaeval Stage, 1903) and Karl Young. Young's two-volume monumental work about the medieval church was especially influential. It was published in 193…
Basic Components.
The Integration of Drama and Worship.
The Visit to The Sepulchre
The Expansion of Christmas Theatricals.
The Long Reign of King Herod.
- The many manuscripts which provide us with different versions of important Christmas and Easter plays are all of more recent date than the dramatic traditions to which they refer. These plays demonstrate that there were many ways to perform the story of Christ's Birth and Resurrection, some highly creative. But all shared certain essential components. At Easter, the …
The Church as Performance space.
- It is worth noting that what made these musical dramatizations effective was not their separation from the theater of worship, but their participation in it. One of the earliest manuscripts of the Easter play, the Visitatio sepulchrifrom Winchester in England, demonstrates this beautifully. Four members of the religious community are instructed to disguise themselves by dressing up in co…
Sources
- introduction: Between the years 965 and 975, Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester promulgated a series of liturgical reforms which were crystallized in a collection called the Regularis Concordia, a "Concordance of the Rules" for worship and religious life among the monastic communities of England during the reign of King Edgar (959–975). These guideline...