The Curtain Rises: A History of Theater from Its Origins in Greece and Rome Through the English Restoration

Applause. Applause. The curtain rises. The actors and actresses smile and bow to the audience. The scene is a theater...in London's West End, on Broadway, at a local community center, in a cramped schoolroom in South Africa. Plays, players and playgoers can be found everywhere around the world. But it wasn't always so.

Mystery surrounds the beginnings of the theater. When primitive man impersonated animals, acting out the hunt, was that theater? As early as 30,000 years ago, people sang and danced in ceremonies to honor their gods; they dressed in animal skins and wore make-up made of ashes or plant juices. Was that ritual or theater? When did these ceremonies advance from ritual to theater?

Most of what we now know about the origins of the theater starts with the Greeks, whose rituals evolved into plays hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. The evolution of the theater continued, as Roman theater followed; then Medieval theater, the Italian Renaissance, the Shakespearian era, theater in Spain, French Neoclassical theater, and English Restoration theater. And while theater in Europe was growing and changing, Asia was independently developing its own unique theaters in India, China and Japan.

While this book is a true history of the theater, taking readers from its origins in Greece and Rome through the English Restoration, it makes the stage come alive for its readers. They will read about how a page boy quietly arranged her gown around her while the actress swooned during her death scene...how actresses held their faces stiff so their makeup wouldn't crack...about the Hell Mouth of the Middle Ages; a huge monster's mouth from which smoke spewed and actors leaped...young boy actors traveling by cart during Shakespeare's time to entertain Queen Elizabeth. There are many exciting, dramatic stories of courage and persistence, of obstacles overcome. Clearly "The Show Must Go On" has been an honored tradition for centuries.

Paula Gaj Sitarz was stagestruck at the age of seven, beginning her lifelong love of the stage. After she majored in Theater History as Smith College, she acquired a M.S. Degree in Library Science from Simmons College. Now a children's librarian, she lives with her family in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.