Roman theatre (structure)

• 1. Introduction

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  Roman theatres endured for well over a thousand years, yet the Romans themselves were once legally forbidden from building them permanently. That ban held for centuries, until 55 BC, when the Theatre of Pompey was finally raised inside the city. Its builder circumvented the moratorium by placing a temple above the structure, making the complex technically part of a religious site.

  Before that solution, wooden theatres went up for a single festival and came down once the performances ended. These structures eventually spread from Spain to the Middle East, rising in stone and Roman concrete across the entire empire. What made them distinct from the Greek models they descended from is one thread. How they differed from the amphitheatres in those same cities is another. Both answers lie in the geometry of every wall and seat.

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• 2. The Anatomy of a Stage

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  Behind every Roman stage rose the scaenae frons, a towering rear wall supported by columns that defined the back face of the performance space. At the stage's front edge, the proscaenium wall provided structural support, with ornately decorated niches along its sides. The proscenium itself reflected a clear Hellenistic influence, carrying the Greek theatrical tradition forward into Roman design.

  The orchestra and the cavea were the theatre's two primary zones. The orchestra was the stage floor; the cavea was the curved seating section that swept around it. A podium sometimes rose to support the scaenae frons columns, adding further vertical mass to the structure.

  Unlike Greek theatres, which could be carved into hillsides, Roman theatres were built on their own foundations. They were also completely enclosed on all sides. Where a hillside was available, builders could hollow out the cavea's center and use the slope for outer seating rows. In Rome itself, every theatre was entirely man-made, relying on structural support and solid retaining walls. The cavea was left open to the sky, though awnings called velarium could be stretched overhead to shield audiences from rain or sun. Passages known as vomitoria ran below or behind each tier of seats, allowing crowds to move in and out.

  The semicircular geometry of the cavea was more than an aesthetic choice. What that shape accomplished for the sound inside the building most sharply distinguished the Roman theatre from other public venues of its time.

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• 3. Design for Sound

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  Commerce, oratory, choral performances, theatrical plays, and pantomimes all unfolded inside a Roman theatre. These events shared a requirement that chariot races and gladiatorial combat in Roman amphitheatres did not: the audience had to hear.

  Amphitheatres were constructed in the round, a design suited to visual spectacle from every angle but poorly matched to spoken or sung performance. They did not need superior acoustics, and their construction reflects that. Roman theatres, hosting spoken performance and choral song, faced a different engineering problem entirely.

  Both types of venue were built from Roman concrete and gave Roman citizens a shared destination. The difference lay in what those citizens gathered to experience. A theatre's programming, rooted in voice and music, required that the architecture serve the ear as much as the eye.

  The walls that answered that demand still stand in parts of the world that were once under Roman rule. They are the clearest evidence of what a Roman theatre was built to do.

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• 4. What Survives

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  Inside Rome itself, few theatres survived the centuries following their construction. The evidence about any specific theatre within Rome's ancient walls is thin. Gaps remain in what can be known about the structures that once stood there. Elsewhere in the former empire, the picture is fuller.

  The Roman Theatre of Orange, in modern-day Orange, France, preserves a Roman theatre's classic form more fully than most surviving structures. Its indented scaenae frons is reminiscent of western Roman theatre design. The ornamental stone columns and statues that once adorned it are long gone, but the underlying structure remains. Across the former empire, theatres built under Roman influence carry uniquely Roman attributes. Minor regional differences exist, but the underlying plan held wherever Rome built.

  At the other end of the spectrum from the Theatre of Orange are theatres that show signs of never having been completed. Their unfinished stonework is sometimes the only record that the project ever began.

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