Chapter 2Scenic Design in the Past and Today
To work seriously in any field, it is necessary to understand both something of its history and the characteristics of the work being done today. The theatre has a long and distinguished history. The role of scenic design in it has changed quite a bit over the centuries but never so much as in the last 100 years.
A (Very) Brief History of Stage Design
The Greek and Roman Theatre
To start at the beginning, the theatre of ancient Greece and Rome was a fixed architectural form that placed the audience in an arc around a performance space, providing a focused playing area and an architectural background that contained some permanent entrances (Figure 2.1). For the most part this background was not scenic. ...
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