ABSTRACT
Introduction: Theatre Becomes Drama
We describe the shortcomings of the oral tradition, and how they probably corrupted human memory before the invention of writing. We outline the current chapter and its most important development, the invention of writing.
The Bronze Age
We pick up our story about 5000 years bce, when the first great civilizations arose around the world. We briefly visit each of these great civilizations—Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China—noting the explosive growth of both language and music that accompanied their rise. We outline the development of four classes of instruments—idiophones, aerophones, chordophones and membranophones. We continue the story of the close relationship between ritual, altered states of consciousness, sound and music, and spirituality we’ve followed throughout this book, describing unique characteristics of sound and religion in each of the four great civilizations.
The Emergence of Written Language
We trace the development of written language from its beginnings in the first four great civilizations through the development of an extraordinary number of languages spread all over the world, and we note the utilitarian roots of the first practical scripts that would have a profound impact on the future of theatre.
The Transition from Oral Tradition to Recorded History
We note the transition from oral tradition to recorded history coincides with the period in mythology in which the gods ceased to roam the earth. We discuss how the oral tradition could have contributed to a culture’s mythology, invoking a cultural version of “the telephone game” to describe how major events might develop into superhuman myths.
Conclusion: Lost in Translation?
I discuss the great paradox of the impact that the invention of writing had on theatre. On one hand, it allowed stories to be recorded in great detail, with much better precision, and ability for subsequent generations to accurately store and recall them. However, the simple fact that music is not stored as part of written language began a process that started to divorce the music of theatre from its ideas, resulting in the printed play as we now know it. We, of course, have argued throughout this book for the rejoining of music to theatre as an organic, inseparable component, rooted in its evolutionary past.
