The theatre is a universal and enduring feature of Dorlafan culture. Though it has reached new peaks of refinement and diversity since Christoté and the Cities came into being, the tradition stretches back further. Dorlafans regularly claim to be the very inventors of drama. It is an exaggerated boast, to say the least, but not without some foundation. Many of the conventions of modern theatre were pioneered by Dorlafan playwrights and their works have long spread across the continent; Stayson Cooper studied them during his Hyath childhood, for example. Kings of Dorlaf were entertained by royal command performances as long ago as the 300's; the first known theatre was built in 326, possibly on the sight of an earlier one. The fact that the Erish ordered the arrest of a number of actors in the 800's shows that the political tradition is also a lengthy one. The Yaleth theatre - wrecked when the Erish were driven out and not rebuilt - drama was traditionally seen as an outdoor activity for the summer months. For this reason, no theatres were incorporated into the original plans for the Triple Cities. The Domes was the first to be built, completed in 1055; and it was something of an accident, being originally planned to be a mansion which was abandoned half-complete when costs spiralled and converted by Jalkin Council. Theatres began springing up in the late 1000's though remained, like the Domes, essentially uncovered shells. Roofs, and other sophistications, only came in later, marking the shift of drama towards both an around-the-year event and a place in the very centre of cultural life.
Venues
Today there are any and varied venues. The Domes and the Pastoral Theatre in Jalkin, The Jianda Theatre of Yaleth and the Forgar Playhouse are the chief ones, and they vary only in terms of prominence and repertoire. Their layout is simple; one room where the plays are performed (the stage at the far end) and a foyer at the front. The foyer is well adorned and held to be just as important as the play room, as theatre attendance is as much a social as cultural activity. Ticket prices vary greatly in range, with the Domes especially catering for the top end of the market with a range of exclusive boxes, but in general are kept low. Likewise, the seats for watching the plays are mostly rough and spartan, long rows of benches covered, if one is lucky, by tattered cushions. As well as the Domes and its imitators, there are more specialist permanent theatres. The Piccan Playhouse, attached to the University of Dorlaf, has high ticket prices, luxurious surroundings and a habit of head-hunting prominent playwrights and actors from the Domes. Sunburst Theatre and Charlatan's Hall, both in Jalkin's artist's quarter, constantly search out new and innovative plays. Long-established rivals, they often seem to be in a race to put on the most baffling or obscene performances before their audiences.
Numerous other establishments also put on dramatic performances in addition to their main business. The Bear Pit and Castor's Princeling are both Jalkin taverns which use plays as a means of attracting drinkers; the Partis Arms in Yaleth, though primarily a haven for bards, also occasionally stages some. The Tinners Barn always opens and closes its Garreday Hawkers Markets with performances, generally of maximum hamminess; a tradition recently lifted by the Fishguard Market for its spring and winter seasons. In most cases admittance is free, with the plays used chiefly as bait, and the owners paying the actors involved (though bucket collections are sometimes made). Even less formal venues are often booked by the proliferating (though short-lived) dramatic societies, formed by students and enthusiasts and often putting on the new, experimental plays. They can include the back rooms or attics, rooms in private houses etc.
As well as indoor venues, street theatre is still thriving, particularly around Garreday. The curfewed off areas of central Jalkin are the best places to go for street performances, with Ansell Square in Yaleth being another favourite. Sets and all but the rudiments of costume are sacrificed for these performances, with a hat put down for voluntary contributions being the sole income. The performers, unlike the professionals who play at established venues, are a mixture of die-hard traditionalists, enthusiastic part-time amateurs and aspiring stars hoping to be spotted by Domes talent scouts. Innovative plays are sometimes attempted, but usually they stick to the established canon of maybe 12 plays known by everyone in the Cities, so that any scene is instantly recognisable to casual passers-by.
Trends
These are only very broadly the styles which have developed over the years. There are obviously numerous exceptions at each period, with some playwrights resurrecting old genres, some blending disparate elements together and others finding their own unique voice. But generally the fashion has gone:
Traditional From Dorlaf's early days up to the Garreday Uprisings, there was little change of themes and new writers tended to rework old stories. The genre is now remembered as being by, for and about the aristocracy; a little unfairly as the main theme was religious. Many were dramatisations of Garran legends (Harkanas driving out Aeniss, the martyrdom of St Ostian and being the most popular) others were effectively long parables illustrating religious teachings. They fitted in with the original purpose of drama, which was to form part of the Garran spring, summer and autumn festivals. However, it is true that most of the protagonists were high-born - as were all the writers in the era before mass literacy - and any social messages were usually deeply conservative, harking back to a golden era of feudalism.
The School of Cooper The shift in mood brought by the Garreday Uprisings turned many against traditional drama. For a while the theatre became a minority aristocratic art form. The Domes was itself an attempt to revive popular interest, but far more was achieved by the arrival of Stayson Cooper from Hyath. Cooper, the father of Cities theatre, retained historical and sometimes semi-mythical settings but turned the messages on their heads. He used his plays as direct attacks on the status quo, sometimes through lampooning comedy and sometimes through impassioned appeals. Most of his work contained great sophistication and moral complexity. Unfortunately, the numerous imitators he spawned were often just straightforward good v. evil yarns, with heroic commoners struggling against evil monarchs. One notable exception was Jed Briac, a late 1000's writer largely concerned with dramatising established facts about the Kingdom of Dorlaf rather than exaggerated or apocryphal tales.
The Satirists Gradually the sub-Cooper historical settings became discarded in favour of more modern settings. Conducive was a relaxation of censorship and treason laws in the early 1100's; for the first time, serving regimes could be attacked directly rather than through oblique allegories. The Civil Wars of the mid 1100's brought about a widespread revulsion towards mainstream politics, and for a time shattered the post-Uprisings optimism that there was a universal will to change the country for the better. As a result, playwrights retreated into ever more scurrilous and savage attacks on the rich and powerful, creating a bleak world which was so bad it could only be laughed at. The most prominent was Myers Cass, whose poetic cynicism and ability to meticulously flay his targets rivalled Cooper's best satires. Less gifted writers were responsible for introducing nudity and obscenities into mainstream theatre for the first time in a bid to cause fresh shocks. The satirist era definitely established the theatre in Cities culture; it was also a boon to the legal profession as libel cases were numerous.
The Agitators By the dawn of the 1200's, peace and national belief had returned. The Civil Wars had also turned most Christotans off the idea of armed uprising. Yet here were still inequalities everywhere to be addressed. The result was peaceful agitation, leading to the proliferation of newsheets, pamphlets and, in the theatre, the rediscovery of Cooper's political strand. Playwrights began using the theatre to grind numerous axes, whether concerned with class, religious, urban/agrarian, provincial or sexual issues. The most celebrated, though, were the female writers who were first entering the theatre in large numbers and often used it to contribute to the protracted feminists campaigns. Playwrights like Ellisa Molack and Allinon Smithson both revised historical events - such as the Garreday Uprisings, which they recognised was only rescued from being a straight-forward cock-fight like the Civil Wars by female influence - and addressed issues like abortion and rape. Many plays became simple polemics, though as always the best writers were able to combine issues with compelling human dramas. There was also experimentation with form. Molack and Smithson wrote large-scale plays designed to be staged outdoors with dozens of extras, Shantar Frane replaced conventional narrative structure with a series of loosely connected monologues.
The Urbanites Although many of the reform campaigns rumbled on for most of the last century and into this, mainstream theatre eventually grew tired of politicised drama. It moved back into comedies and social commentaries. The new wave of satirists, enjoying the comforts of late 1200's life, were less savage than the old school, preferring gentle mockery of flawed but sympathetic characters. Their themes were also more diverse and small scale; rather than simply attacking power and wealth, the writers explored a range of topics including sexual politics, professional rivalries and the vagaries of fashion. At the same time, settings grew more insular and became almost exclusively set in present-day Cities. The natural conclusion was the Cities Satires; dramatised commentaries on recent events, usually but not exclusively scandals. Often appearing a few short weeks after the events happened and with the characters scarcely veiled, individual Satires have usually suffered the same fate as the news itself and are barely remembered a year later. The genre, though, has remained enduringly popular. Knocking off a quick Cities Satire is a painless way for new playwrights to gain attention, or for established ones to pay the bills in between more demanding projects. The Urbanite period was a golden age for theatre in terms of attendances but was scarcely an artistic high point. The few playwrights to have survived with reputations intact today include Relcceca Astan, penner of fine and wise romantic comedies, and Kellin Stanze, a highly prolific writer whose quick-moving farces briefly elevated Cities Satires into high art.
The Modernists Mainstream theatre has been in a rut of late - ever since the Labbish invasion really, which robbed culture of much of its confidence. The Domes, for example, has been content to churn out a lucrative but unedifying mixture of Cooper/Smithson classics and Cities Satires. The fringes, however, have seen increasing experimentation, often with the very form of drama itself. Holin Callar is widely regarded as the movement's founding father. Though conventional in his themes (love, betrayal etc.) and presentation, he eschewed lineal storylines and wrote complex cyclical tales in which key events are repeated time after time. His most famous work is a rather atypical piece, Curtain Arrested. A satire on the state of modern Cities drama, it portrays a group of actors performing yet another Cooper revival who are gradually consumed by the play and trapped forever in its ossified, archaic settings. More recent writers have revived Shantar Frayn's style of pared-down monologues or duologues. Gellina Eskton and Tomas Ollic have both pioneered 'participatory plays', aimed at reducing the distance between actors and audience by giving the latter a role to play in each production. Teresa Farson's plays have no spoken words at all, the story being told through a blend of song, dance and orchestra. Many experiments are mere gimmicks (a recent craze for 'Theatre in the Nude' was an especially lamentable example and mercifully nailed by the authorities) but there is no doubting the extraordinary effects the best can produce. What's still missing, however, is any real impact on the mainstream. The division between artistic and popular drama has never been greater, and the Artists Quarter theatres and the Beat Pit are the only formal venues where modernists plays are regularly staged.
The
Players
Playwrights The most influential group in Cities theatre. This is partially a continuation of the tradition begun in Stayson Cooper's day and partially due to the importance, aforementioned revivals of classics notwithstanding, of the constant importance placed on new productions. Playwrights essentially form two groups; freelancers and writer-in-residence. Freelancers are jobbing writers who sell their work were they can; or rather they loan it, for copyright remains theirs alone. Once a piece is accepted by a theatre, however, they have little control over how a theatre produced it. They vary considerably, from the vast majority making a pittance and supplemented by other incomes, to the odd success like Sebsen Ellerton in the late 1200's, who could auction off his plays for thousands of gold. (They weren't any good, just popular). The chief problem freelancers have (beyond the fact that there are too many of them) is that the theatres are generally controlled by other writers, fiercely jealous of rivals.
Writers-in-residence are contracted to a theatre for a specific period. Generally they are paid a regular salary, and any work produced during this period is owned by the theatre itself. The system is particularly favoured by the Domes, though all the main theatres have a few writers on their books. Staff writers have a great deal of control over their production of their own work, though still subject to the authority of the various managers etc. above them. They may direct the actors, make decisions about set and costume, and sometimes even pick the cast and backstage crew. The level of control tends to vary according the writer's seniority and inclination. Holin Callar, for example, tried to oversee every detail personally, right down to button colours in one notorious case; whereas the early 1300's Domes writer Teresa Galcic was renowned for simply knocking off three plays a year and spending the rest of her time drinking herself silly.
Managers Management tends to vary from theatre to theatre, but the larger concerns all have salaried managers and, above them, owners or boards of patrons. The managers are generally recruited from any senior staff writers who have the taste for leadership. Generally these are the less rarefied writers who have run out of inspiration in later life but are unable to get the theatre out of their blood. The managers and their underlings handle most aspects of the daily running of the theatres, including hiring writers, actors and stage hands, upkeep of the building etc. In a more general sense they are supposed to determine its direction and what type of plays it should be staging - though the owners often have a large hand in this. The managers are also generally responsible for producing and directing any plays which staff writers don't want to become involved with, those bought from freelancers and adaptations of old works. The Domes is large enough to have two distinct post; artistic director (ex-writers) and commercial manager (generally a protégé of one of the board of patrons).
A few of the small theatres are one-man operations but they tend to be small and transient. The fact is that theatre rarely makes a profit. Ticket prices are kept low because the art is supposed to reach the whole community; income certainly hasn't kept up with the spiralling production costs. Therefore, most theatres exist on the charity of wealthy philanthropists who, in turn, have ultimate authority over them. Sometimes these are individuals - like the Jianda Theatre, which was built from scratch by an idealistic benefactor, or Charlatan's Hall, passed from manicured hand to manicured hand over the years. Sometimes a venue is collectively owned. The Domes is run by its Board of Patrons who all contribute x amount a year. There are always ready takers because sitting on the Board is a mighty badge of status. Sunburst Theatre is owned by a collective which is effectively an alternative Board of Patrons, only composed of successful artists and the drop-out scions of wealthy families. Generally a theatre's owners and patrons are content to be sleeping partners. They sometimes appoint managers, control the aforementioned general direction or hold vetoes on key decisions. Certain financial aspects, like setting budgets and ticket prices, are also in their hands. Sometimes they try to push or censor certain plays; but there is such a troubled history of conflict between over-sensitive artists and bull-headed owners, it is generally not reckoned to be worth the effort.
Actors A very firm third on the theatrical profession; it is still largely the case that playwrights get the fame and artistic freedom, managers get the money and actors are lucky to get a living wage. They are essentially treated as automata to stand where they are told, recite what they have learned and get shouted at when they get it wrong. The disadvantage to theatre as a whole is that they are given little understanding into the art form as a whole, aren't free to pursue their own interpretations and are offered little rewards. Consequently, the most gifted leave (often to become playwrights themselves, though a worringly large number enter politics) and the rest simply churn out formulaic, cliched and often melodramatic performances which can undermine the subtler plays. Some playwrights or theatres realise this and work more closely with actors to develop their skills. Holin Callar, for example, only ever worked with a hand-selected group of actors, of which Aldi Docson was the star pupil. But Docson also shows these are still exceptions; these days she is reduced to playing pantomime baddy roles in Domes melodramas. Actors are almost all freelance who are hired by theatres for specific productions. Formerly independent operators, they began to organise into troops around fifty years ago in a half-successful attempt to gain more bargaining power, and the pattern is fairly universal now. Troops are fairly peripatetic, wandering the federation and beyond in search of productions, though the same ones tend to hang around the Cities. Of these, The Mosquitoes (Docson's troop), The Stride Wide Men (dominated by Madran Novisso, a particularly impressive thunderer and The Trick Of Fate (specialists in Cities Satires) are the most famous. The Pastoral Theatre has used the same troop for years and they are independent only in name, but other theatres tend to hire more selectively.