Introduction
As an outstanding national monument, the Roman Theatre at Bosra is associated with important events that deliberate on the historical orientation of beliefs and ideas. Bosra is a city of extreme rarity, unique aesthetics, and universal appeal, in connection with the efforts to building a monument in different times. From a historical perspective, theatre was brought to Bosra just after it was named the capital city in the second century AD. Roman Theatre at Bosra is considered as the largest and the best preserved of Roman theatre monuments. The most captivating thing is that the theatre could fit a total number of fifteen thousand spectators.
The paper presents an in-depth analysis of the unusual and captivating architectural features of the Roman Theatre of Bosra. Believed to hold a turning point in the production of theatres, Roman Theatre at Bosra facilitates a detailed analysis on the aesthetic uniqueness of value and universal significance of the monument in the paper. Finally, there is a section in the paper where the relevance of the topic to professionals in the field and contemporary world has been presented.
Background Investigation
The Roman Theatre of Bosra, having buried in the sand for hundreds of years, took over twenty years of excavation to reveal the most well preserved Roman theatre to the whole world. With an architecture of amphitheatres that is marvelous and splendid to eyes, the Roman Theatre of Bosra offers a unique imagination to spectators and evidently must have been a place of great importance at its pinnacle giving the experiences of a lifetime to the audience of that era. Given the colossal size of the amphitheatres, the Roman Theatre of Bosra can be expected to accommodate thousands of viewers. With such an enormous size of people, the need to make the whole audience clearly hear performers is paramount and must have been a challenge (Barletta 56). If the audience cannot hear the performances on stage, it is immaterial and useless how good the actors are or how great the act is, and all will receive very poor reception and ratings. The architecture of an entire amphitheatre would have to be based on the need for the audience to engage actively with the performers. In a nut shell, that describes the strength of the Roman Theatre of Bosra, a freestanding amphitheatre, unlike others, that allows the architecture of the caveas to be steeper than the average amphitheatre (Barletta 23).
While walking up toward the main entrance, it is easy to comprehend why the theatre was under the radar, but intact for such a long time. There is a massive gateway and fortified walls, which clearly convey the message of a Roman kind of structure. The sheer size of the theatre may have contributed to its state of excellent preservation. The idea of having an informative structure that is created from local black basalt is another practical feature that makes the whole structure to be extraordinary and appropriately forbidding military stance. In analyzing the features of the theatre, it becomes evident that the secrets of the place have also been well preserved, as the zigzag passageway is still intact. It was created for the purpose of disorienting and slowing down the enemies that might have attacked the Bosra. It appears that the vast stone-flagged corridors provide a constructive lead-way into the gloom.
The ability of the audience to connect with performers on stage is imperative and determines how they react to the overall performance. For a long time, acting performance was considered a passive spectator form of art (White 76). However, present day researchers have shifted their thinking as the audience is becoming more and more interested in becoming actively engaged in actor performance. Research by behavioral scientist shows that the manner in which audience spaces are designed dictate the potential arousal of levels with the audience (Haddad, Jamhawi, and Akasheh 41). Today, spectators want, as much as possible, to be part of the act being performed on stage and as it was in the bygone early days. Contemporary theatre caveas today lack the kind of elevation that a few of the best amphitheatres boasted of in ancient times. In 2010, a survey conducted by Creative Trust’s Audience Management Survey audience engagement found that dance and drama audiences preferred to be allowed to participate with performers (Brown & Kelly 32).
The manner in which today’s theatres are designed allow neither the performers nor the spectators an opportunity to interact and immerse in engagement. It is a situation that everyone seem to know very well, including even Mr. Michael Kaiser, the President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In a respectable Huffington Post blog, Kaiser asks three very important questions related to theatre audiences, the most important one being ‘how an appropriate engagement strategy can be designed once a target audience has been found’ (Segal 24). An appropriate answer to such a query is in the transformative aspect associated with architecture of most conventional theatres. In a research carried out in 2005 on audiences, Randi Korn came up with different clusters of audiences that, although had different engagement levels, loved to see more engagement in theatres (Brown & Ratzkin 5).
Prior to attending a performance in a theatre, individuals create a level of anticipation and engagement in their mind. However, this anticipation varies for one individual to the other and is based on what the motivating factor is. A research study, carried out by Alan Brown and Rebecca Ratzkin and commissioned by the San Francisco Foundation, discovered that people go through five stages of engagement from the point they prepare to attend a performance to several days after attending the performance (Brown & Ratzkin 7). It is a measure that facilitated the development a model the researchers called the Arc of Engagement. As the name implies, the model suggests that a successful audience engagement will lead to the ‘impact echo’ where their theatrical experience will last months or even years.
Conclusions and Evaluations
What is critical to note is that theatre performances are social events. Although some critics point out that this phenomenon puts the theatre at risk of being overtaken by the ‘social’, highly social audience engagement enhances an individual’s response regarding the performances. Due to the design in most current day theatres, most performers engage with the audiences before the performance as a way of creating a leeway in making up for the short comes of the design of conventional theatres. The view of the theatre, particularly from the stage level, is equally dramatic as the seats are created in a way that rises up towards the silhouetted pillars and the skyline. Another significant aspect to theatre is perfect acoustics, which still have room for improvement in producing good quality sound. The relevance of this information lies in the fact that it adds value to the understanding of art and architecture. A practical example is in deriving the connection that exists between the audience and art, and what it takes for such value and belief system to be preserved and fascinating such experience for other audiences in the future.
Works cited
Barletta, Barbara. The origins of the Greek architectural orders. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Print.
Brown, Alan & Rebecca, Ratzkin. Making sense of audience engagement. San Francisco: San Francisco Foundation, 2011. Print.
Brown, Alan & Kelly Hill. Audience Engagement Survey Report. Ontario: Addison-Wesley Longman, 2010. Print.
Haddad, Naif, M. Jamhawi, and T. Akasheh. "Assessment of the relation between ancient theatres, landscape and society." Third International Conference on Science and Technology in archaeology and Conservation 2004. 2004.
Segal, Arthur. Theatres in Roman Palestine and Provincia Arabia. Boston: Brill Publishers, 1995. Print.
White, Gareth. Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.
