Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 127
Like many football players, New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey applies black grease stripes under his eyes. The
technique is often said to protect the player from the glare of the sun, but its real purpose—as with war paint—is to make
the player look more menacing, thereby demoralizing the opposition. © Nick Laham/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images
serious choices to make in this decision. In the final
analysis, makeup always combines the realistic and
symbolic functions of theatre. Even the most stylized
makeup is based on the human form, and even the most
realistic makeup conveys some theatricality. The theatre,
after all, is never so immersed in the ordinary that
it could—or should—be wholly mistaken as everyday
life. So when an American actor sitting at a makeup
table opens little bottles and tubes, moistens Chinese
brushes, and sharpens eyebrow pencils, more is going
on than simple, practical face-making. Primal forces
are at work in this moment that link the actor to the
primitive celebrants who in ages past painted their
faces to assure the world that they were leaving their
temporal bodies and boldly venturing into the exalted
domain of the gods.
Sound Design
Music and sound effects have been in use in the theatre
since ancient times. Aristotle considered music one of
the six essential components of tragedy, and offstage
thunder, trumpet “flourishes” and “tuckets,” and “the
noise of a sea-fight” are all called for in Shakespeare’s
original stage directions. Before the electronic age, theatres
were routinely equipped with such devices as rain
drums (barrels filled with pebbles or dried seeds that
made rain sounds when revolved), thundersheets (hanging
sheets of tin that rumbled ominously when rattled),
and thunder runs (sloping wooden troughs down which
cannonballs rolled and eventually crashed). Since 1900,
most theatres have also used an electric telephone ringer
(a battery-powered bell mounted on a piece of wood)