Video summary
What Is Theater? Crash Course Theater #1
Main summary
Key takeaways
Main ideas, concepts, and lessons
- Purpose of the series / episode
- Introduces Crash Course Theater as a series that covers different theatrical genres and how to understand and analyze theater.
- Episode 1 focuses on defining theater and presenting theories about its origins.
Definition of theater (multiple layers)
Theater as a place/building
- A theater is where a play is performed.
- The word traces to Greek origins meaning “the seeing place.”
- Performance spaces can vary: indoors/outdoors, purpose-built/borrowed (parks, parking lots, sidewalks, private homes).
Theater as an activity/performance
- Refers to the performance of plays.
Theater as literature/documentation
- Includes the written body of work and other records surrounding performances.
Closet drama
- Some plays (“closet dramas”) are not written to be performed, but are still considered theater.
Improvisation and nonverbal drama
- Improvised plays can count even without a fixed script.
- Plays can exist without spoken words (e.g., Samuel Beckett’s works, mentioned).
What counts as theater: “actor + audience”
- A common working definition: theater needs at least one actor and at least one audience member.
- Examples of exceptions/expansions:
- Not only humans: robots and laptops with voice synthesizers.
- Also animals and puppets (typically with a human helper).
A “scope” question: is everything theater?
- John Cage’s expansive idea: theater “takes place all the time” wherever one is; art just persuades you of that.
- The video rejects this for the purposes of the episode, choosing a narrower operational definition:
- Theater = a deliberate performance by live actors intended for a live audience, typically using scripted language.
- Possible exceptions are noted along the way (e.g., robo-actors).
Spelling controversy: theatre vs theater
- “Both are fine.”
- RE is more common outside the US; some people treat spelling differences as identity markers.
- Crash Course chooses “theater” (er) for consistency.
Theories for how theater began (outlined)
1) Ritualism theory (theater evolves from religious ritual)
Core idea
- In Western history (up to the 6th/7th century BCE), there wasn’t theater like later theater, but there was religious ritual that could be theatrical.
How ritual relates to theater
- Ritual mediates between human and supernatural realms.
- Ritual reenacts significant events (birth, marriage, death, harvest).
- According to mythology scholar Mircea Eliade:
- The ritual makes the time of the narrated/reenacted event present (“re-presents” old stories/ideas so they happen now), similar to what theater does.
- Differences:
- Ritual is sacred; theater is usually secular.
- Ritual often has audience participation; theater usually has audiences that sit and watch (unless participation is introduced).
- Ritual treats mythological sources as fact, while theater typically treats them as fiction.
Key scholars and work
- Late 19th-century classical scholars (the Cambridge Ritualists) used an anthropological approach to seek origins of theater.
- James Frazer is central.
- In The Golden Bough (1896–1915), they propose a “scientific” evolutionary pathway from ritual to theater.
Frazer’s proposed sequence
- People worship a god or practice.
- Worship becomes refined into rituals to attract the god or ensure good fortune.
- Rituals generate myths.
- Myths transmute into theater.
Marshall McLuhan’s framing (as cited)
- Art is described as a “civilized substitute” for magical games/rituals, echoing and relieving older “magic” involvement.
Illustrative example used (via Herodotus)
- Herodotus (5th century BCE) describes a ceremony in Egypt at sunset involving Ares:
- Priests attend to a statue; many men hold clubs and make vows.
- A group with a wagon carrying a shrine/statue is blocked from entering until conflict occurs.
- Fighting breaks out with casualties; locals explain it stems from a myth: Ares (raised elsewhere) comes to lay with his mother; servants resist; Ares fetches men from another city.
- Ritualists use such stories to support: worship → ritual → myth → performance.
Value and problems of the ritualism theory
- Value
- Helps interpret Greek drama as potentially evolving from passionate/magical roots rather than being “pure and stately.”
- Problems
- Eurocentrism / limited knowledge of the “primitive” societies studied (described as inadequate understanding).
- Heavy guesswork: theorists infer backwards from classical theater rather than relying on solid comparative evidence.
- A belief in a universal societal progression toward Western civilization.
- This worldview is labeled positivism in the video.
2) Functionalism (myths explain the world)
Core idea
- People create myths to rationalize/explain the world.
- Unlike ritualism, myths arise from needed explanations rather than from ritual evolving into theater.
Key theorist
- Bronislaw Malinowski
- Myth is a statement of “primeval reality” embedded in institutions and pursuits.
- Myths justify the existing order “by precedent.”
How this connects to theater
- Malinowski focuses on myth broadly, but followers apply his ideas to theater.
- Claim: some early Greek dramas’ origins are in myth, and some myths are etiological (explaining origins/cause).
Examples given
- Oresteia: explains the legal system.
- Prometheus Bound: explains how we get fire and related technology (the explanation is paraphrased humorously as “liver is tasty”).
Drawback highlighted
- Some of the earliest recorded plays are said not to be myth-based, e.g.:
- Aeschylus’s The Persians, said to be based on contemporaneous historical events, not myth.
3) Clown/shaman/game-based theories (theater’s social/play roots)
Clown figure theory
- Theater may derive (at least partly) from a clown figure, described as a secular equivalent of a shaman.
- The clown’s role is to mock headmen and the establishment.
- A possible link is noted to satyr plays (promised for coverage in the next episode).
Ludic impulse (play instinct)
- Related view: theater may originate from games and humans’ playful instincts.
- Term mentioned: ludic impulse.
Mimetic impulse theory (Aristotle)
- Humans have an instinct to imitate and to act/pretend.
- Learning and cultural development involve imitation.
- Over time, imitation/pretending becomes refined into theater.
- The video strongly associates this approach with Aristotle.
Why theater matters (closing idea)
- The episode doesn’t fully develop the “why it matters” argument yet, but frames it as a recurring theme.
- Uses a quote associated with Percy Bysshe Shelley:
The highest moral purpose in the highest drama is teaching the human heart through its sympathies and antipathies—knowledge of itself.
Methodology / structure used in the episode (how it proceeds)
-
Step 1: Define theater
- Distinguish theater as place, performance, and documentation/literature.
- Use “actor + audience” as a working boundary.
- Adopt a narrow definition for the series: live actors, live audience, typically scripted language.
-
Step 2: Present major origin theories
- Ritualism (ritual → myth → theater)
- Functionalism (myths explain the world; some drama uses etiological myth)
- Clown/shaman/game-based instincts (satyr plays; ludic impulse)
- Mimetic impulse (imitation/pretending → theater; Aristotle)
-
Step 3: Provide a “why care” motivation
- Theater’s moral/psychological/social impact is teased as the series theme.
Speakers / sources featured
- Mike Rugnetta (host/narrator)
- Dionysus (Greek god of theater; introduced as a framing motif)
- John Cage (quoted: theater “takes place all the time”)
- Mircea Eliade (quoted/paraphrased: ritual makes the event’s time present)
- James Frazer (The Golden Bough; ritualism theory)
- Cambridge Ritualists (group referenced alongside Frazer)
- Marshall McLuhan (quoted/paraphrased: art as substitute for ritual/magic)
- Herodotus (quoted/paraphrased account of a ceremony in Egypt)
- Percy Bysshe Shelley (quote on theater’s highest moral purpose)
- Bronislaw Malinowski (functionalism concept of myth)
- Aristotle (mimetic impulse / theater origins through imitation)
- Samuel Beckett (mentioned as an example of nonverbal drama)
- Aeschylus (The Persians)
- Referenced plays: The Persians, Oresteia, Prometheus Bound
- Yorick (mentioned in a “to be or not to be” example)
- Thought Bubble (used as an on-screen “source”/segment label for the Herodotus example)