by Emily Schooley

Created on: February 02, 2007

Theatre has always been a social construction, at least in part. It is created for the people by the people, and it reflects the mind and concerns of society. Ancient Greek theatre was often political; both the comic and tragic poets spoke about the affairs of the state. In festivals like the Great Dionysia, Aristophanes lambasted political figures, while Sophocles showed in great detail the horrors of war. From those first celebrations honouring theatre to the modern day, theatre has displayed the social norms of the period, and was usually produced largely to appeal to the senses of the ruling class. While a great number of human tragedies have occurred over the last few thousand years, nothing has been so earthshaking as the atrocities seen in the last century. Our contemporary theatre is set against the backdrop of terrible wars, presidential assassinations, the attempted genocide of entire races, and the atomic bomb, just to cite a few examples of horrors faced. The picturesque diorama that naturalism and realism presented to audiences a hundred or so years ago does not adequately reflect real life in today's post-war, post-modern society; society has given theatre artists many reasons to ignore the traditional proscenium arch picture box in favour of exploring new forms of theatre in new venues.

Contemporary society has been described as godless, pointless, compassionless, senseless, and with many other adjectives implying a lack of something essential that had previously existed in the threads of civilization. The industrial revolution of the past century was both a blessing and a boon: it allowed for new innovations in manufacturing, transportation, and countless other fields, but it was also the technology that allowed mankind to develop better weaponry and new forms of science. One notable area of science was, of course, eventually responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb. With discoveries such as quantum physics and relativity, scientists began to realize that there was a lot more to understanding the universe than what they had previously believed; instead of being able to neatly fill in a few gaps of information, they now had countless new puzzles to solve. Beginning around the time of the First World War, new theatrical experiments reflected the changes in the mindset of the people - their absolute faith in God, the government, and even the common compassion that held society together was no longer an unconditional constant. A worldwide

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