ABSTRACT
As I stated in Chapter 3, poor theater has a long and illustrious history, beginning at least as far back as the earliest Greek drama, which occurred in the marketplace ("agora"), and reaching its heyday in the times of Shakespeare. The Elizabethan public theaters, such as Shakespeare's Globe, performed with a bare minimum of design support out of financial and artistic necessity. The companies performed a body of plays in repertory, with a different play every night, so as to attract a returning audience; each company might expect to perform over a hundred plays in a given season. Because of this, each company used stock costumes repeatedly. Rather than require unique scenery for each production, the Elizabethan playwrights wrote descriptions of the locations into their plays, so that the characters described the settings to the audience. This kept production costs low. In the Elizabethan era, elaborate spectacle could be found in the court masques, which were supported by royalty, but most productions during the period were performed as poor theater. Records indicate the plays did not suffer as a result, but flourished. Playwrights and companies did their best to overcome these limitations by being more creative with what they had. This is precisely the challenge that poor theatre presents; working on how to overcome the limitations of a low budget and minimal technical support will increase your ability to find creative solutions to the problems of bringing a whole dramatic world to the stage.
