Stages of the Ages - Single session

Theatre hasn't always looked exactly the way it does now. In this course, we'll travel back through time to explore some of the early roots of performance, from Ancient Greece to the Mummers Plays of medieval England and the melodrama of the Victorian stage. These are wildly different worlds from the mostly realistic acting that dominates today, but every one of them has left its fingerprints all over the way theatre still works. We’ll look at how people have used performance to worship, protest, and entertain - and how masks, movement, and voice have changed with every age. It's a chance to try performing in a very different way, and maybe to bring something back to the present from your time-travelling into the performances of the past.