In the Round - Theatre Etymology - Part 9

Theatre in the round is a style of theatre where the audience surrounds the stage where the actors perform on three or four sides. The stage is usually either lower than the audience or on the same level as the audience. In rare cases, the acting area is actually raised above the audience. Some theatres are purposely built in the style of in the round. At other times, a theatre may be a proscenium stage or a black box and the audience's sitting area is made by putting chairs around the acting area.

Theatre in the round was common in ancient Greek theatre. This is because of the landscape. The audience's seats would be on the rising area of hills and the acting area would be on the low parts between them. Theatre in the round grew out of fashion until the medieval era, but by the 17th century, it grew out of fashion again and a proscenium stage was preferred.

The etymology is fairly simple. It is literally theatre that is performed in a circle of audience members. The audience members are around the actors, thus the theatre is in the "round." The word theatre seems to come from the Latin word theātrum which seems to come from the Greek word théātron, meaning seeing place. Then round seems to come from the Old French stem ront or reont which seems to have come from the Latin rotundus.

Around the time of World War I, theatre in the round started becoming popular again. It was appearing in colleges in the United States. In 1924, Gilmore Brown founded the theatre company Fair-Oaks Playbox in Pasadena, California. Then in 1930, Nikolay Pavlovich Okhlopkov founded the Realistic Theater company. It started to work in the style of theatre in the round because the stage designers did not like the limitations of the proscenium stage. In 1940, the first purpose built theatre for theatre in the round appeared in Seattle Washington.

In 1955, the Studio Theatre company was the first known to work in the theatre in the round style in the United Kingdom. They first performed in the Library Theatre in Scarborough during the summers. During the winters, they would tour to towns without theatres. They had a temporary home in the Civic Hall of Newcastle-under-Lyme. However, the dream of a purpose built theatre for theatre in the round would not come to fruition until 1986, when the New Vic Theatre was built in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

There still are not many purpose built theatres for theatre in the round. However, the style if often chosen when a director or a theatre company wants to give a more intimate feel for a performance. This is because it will often result in a smaller audience around the actors, allowing them to address different audience members or different areas of the audience. However, sometimes, in a purpose built theatre for theatre in the round, the audience can often be bigger and more spread out than one that is found in a typical proscenium arch theatre. The difficulty for actors can be that they are trained in a proscenium arch theatre and taught not to turn their backs to the audience, but in theatre in the round, somebody is always going to be seeing the actors' backs.

Theatre in the round is also known as central stage, arena stage, or island stage. Theatre in the round is also seen hyphenated as theatre-in-the-round. In the round can also be used to describe an art form. This basically means a statue as it is not a flat painting or a relief, but a sculpture that can be seen from all 360 degree around it and is in the open air.

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