It is universally acknowledged in western societies today, especially among theatregoers, that popular theatre is killing off serious theatre. There is a longstanding complaint that comedy, with its direct appeal to laughter and entertainment, has commandeered the market to such an extent that people will no longer buy tickets for serious theatre and only the popular comedies will fill the theatres. The audience for serious plays is so small that producers stage them at the risk of losing money at the box office.
But how true is this? If we confine ourselves to the performance of drama on the mainstream stage we can confirm the dominance of the popular, mainly comedy and farce, and the fact that in the Caribbean only these plays attract ticket sales. Other plays – the tragic, the experimental, the artistic, the polemic, the intellectual – have diminished in their frequency on stage largely because producers face small audiences and financial loss.
However, there are three important questions that challenge this so-called universal acknowledgement. It is assumed that popular theatre is inferior: entertaining, but simply gratuitous, low, and of very little value in education, intellectual fulfilment and social engagement. It attempts to do nothing else but provide entertainment and offer cheap laughter. On the other hand it is assumed that serious theatre is of superior quality, appeals to the intellect, is of higher critical acclaim and addresses values and social statements in which popular theatre has no interest.
The second is, what really is serious theatre? Does it really exist as a brand separate and apart? What makes it serious as theatre performed for the entertainment, enlightenment, instruction and upliftment of an audience? Does the popular variety not achieve any of these and what renders it not serious? Third, it is not true that this acknowledgement is universal. The primary assumption cannot be applied to theatre across the world, especially where the theatre industry is more developed and the audience larger. There is still a demand for the so-called serious theatre, and furthermore, as can be seen throughout the history of theatre, both western and traditional, this notion of the popular versus the serious is a false dichotomy.
What do we find in the history of popular theatre, and has it ever been divorced from whatever may be regarded as serious? The evidence will show that the two have been indivisible. We will focus our examination on the mainstream stage in western theatre. But let it be remembered that the findings here apply as well to traditional theatres. In prehistory, and in traditional societies for long afterwards, theatre was not performed for entertainment but for the survival and well-being of mankind. It was, to begin with, for religious practice or spiritual beliefs, social control and education. Through evolution it also became entertainment and developed dual existence. But there was never any dilemma or contest.
Theatre was performed by and for the benefit of the people, and one cannot get more popular than that. Here are some interesting episodes taken from history. In the Classical era, the ancient Greeks had state-sponsored drama because plays were done for the benefit of society. The entire population looked at plays to learn about their society. There were satires among the comedies commenting seriously on political and social life and the tragedies educated the population about the Greek religion. This may be regarded as a mild form of popular theatre in one interpretation of it, meaning for the people. But Classical drama was never classified as popular theatre; the term has always been used for other forms.
This same mild and partial label may be applied to Roman theatre, which appealed to the Roman population in a somewhat different way and one may regard some of it as popular. Unlike the Greeks the Roman audiences were thrilled and entertained by seeing blood and killings right before their eyes on stage. There developed a particular form of drama known as the Senecan Revenge Tragedy, named after its creator Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD), Roman playwright and governmental advisor. His plays became popular because of their themes of vengeance, in which the hero’s quest for revenge, driven by a blood-thirsty ghost, left several slain bodies strewn about on stage. These plays were rediscovered centuries later and were very popular in Elizabethan times – the sixteenth century. The model was adopted by some leading playwrights, including Shakespeare. Yet, as in the case of the Classical, the type was never categorised as popular theatre, although it was for the Elizabethan audience.
Likewise, Shakespeare wrote popular theatre. A few examples may be found in his Senecan Revenge plays like Julius Caesar and Hamlet, and in what has to be his bloodiest and most outrageous play Titus Andronicus. He wrote several episodes in different plays especially for the entertainment of the so-called common members of his audience who stood up in the pits. Some examples are the porter in Macbeth, the street combatants of the Capulets and the Montagues in Romeo and Juliet, and the working men on the streets in Julius Caesar, to start with. And yet, Shakespeare aimed at all members of the audience with such ribaldry and banter filled with wit, sensual imagery and humour. These are serious cases of popular theatre in the work of the world’s best dramatist.
We may go back a bit though, to find the period when the real hard-core popular elements were introduced into western theatre in a way that was integral and was never to leave it, but became more entrenched till it branched out into the many plays of pure farce that were to develop. This was in the Middle ages in Europe. To give just a brief account, we start with the rebirth of western drama when the Mediaeval Roman Catholic Church reintroduced theatre after many centuries of total disappearance. The priests introduced it in the church to educate the uneducated parishioners about the Christian Bible. It was a successful initiative that grew so large the church could not contain it and it was taken over by the people out in the towns.
A form of drama developed known as the Morality Play. The Christian themes remained central, but the performers became professionals who charged fees paid by the audiences. They were therefore motivated to entertain, and gradually introduced farce and slapstick in the dramatic plots. The paying audiences were thrilled by this and the Morality Play remained popular right up to the sixteenth century.
Another very notable period in history for the rise of the popular was the Restoration in 1660. Again, to give a brief account, the Puritans in England, an order of Christians who were so extreme that they burnt witches at the stake and considered anything pleasurable as sinful. They became so powerful in Parliament that they got the House to pass a law banning public theatre in 1642. This stranglehold grew to the point where they murdered the King and took over the English government in 1649. When the Royalists finally overthrew the Puritan Commonwealth established by Oliver Cromwell and King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, theatre was recalled to life.
A number of plays emerged during the Restoration period and after, including the Comedy of Manners and a very popular type sometimes called the Restoration comedy. One of the remarkable features of the return of theatre was that women appeared as actresses on stage for the first time in history. The actual presence of the opposite sex on stage allowed for more realistic love scenes, more physical contact and a greater emphasis on sexuality for the delight of the audience. Several plays were not only funny, but included sexual content and humour based on it.
The early part of the eighteenth century was another strong era for the rise of popular theatre in the west. This was a period known in Britain as the Neoclassical or Augustan era. It was called the Age of Satire because it was very strong for the emergence of works in fiction, the novel, in poetry and drama that created different kinds of satire turning the spotlight on British politics, corruption, and social manners, hypocrisy and double standards.
Foremost in this was theatre. Popular forms of plays developed. For example, there came the Opera – a type of play that was humorous, that told stories about people in some fashion of the musical because it interspersed in the play the use of songs with lyrics to already existing popular tunes. This type of Opera was a comedy that always ended happily. Another was the Burlesque – the High Burlesque and the Low Burlesque – in which the society was satirised in laughter. These were very popular types that made much money for the playwrights.
This is a convenient place to pause, since no other period stepped forward with equal strength after this until we get to the period of Modern Drama which saw diverse forms. All along it can be seen that there were very close relationships between popular theatre and other forms that coexisted in the times. Further discussion of this can take us to the contemporary situation regarding popular theatre in these present times. These were interesting sequences in the history of the popular stage play.
