In the medieval popular religious drama and the early Renaissance popular masque performance, has appeared in the complex stage organs, luxurious sets and gorgeous costumes, this kind of play is mostly performed in the palace or square, is an open-air type of theater, the stage to the audience is fully open to the audience, so as to facilitate the actors and the audience to communicate.
But with the rediscovery of classical theater works and performances, people feel that, whether indoors or outdoors, the medieval stage has been very difficult to adapt to the performance requirements.
Later, Italian architects discovered the book "Architecture" written by Vitruvius, an architect of the ancient Roman period, and regarded it as a treasure of theater architecture. The book, written in 16 to 13 BC, was accompanied by illustrations and was first published in 1486. Italian architects took the architectural principles described in the book as the basis for restoring the classical theater, and they tried to bring the performances of the time in line with the Roman era, and looked for a reasonable layout of the stage and auditorium from the book.
With the development of perspective, it was discovered that the use of perspective sets on stage produced the illusion of space with magical powers. Thus, every effort began to be made to extend perspective to the stage. Selio (A.D. 1475 ~ 1554) made great efforts in this regard, he in 1545 in accordance with Vitruvius's paragraph on the three-pronged set of words, respectively, for the tragedy, comedy and goat drama painted three sets of scenery, each set of scenery by the composition of the four sets of images, they are spliced together, it will form a complete stage scene, Selio that, the three sets of scenery can be adapted to all the performance of the drama.
The audience was happy to see a constantly changing set, so people recovered in the Roman period had been used in the three-pronged scene, each prism is painted with three sides of the set, the use of its rotation, the formation of the scene change. As this method of scene change is very limited, and later people invented new methods, such as behind the stage in front of the scene pieces installed grooves, with the sliding method of scene change, or the scene pieces stacked on the back of the stage after the need to turn like a flipbook to open. In the early 17th century, the three main elements of the set: side pieces, background and cornice, can be quickly changed according to the needs of the plot.
Italy still maintains a theater built in the 1680s, which resembles the ancient Roman theaters in that it has vistas at the rear of the stage, which give the audience a perspective view of the stage from the front of the stage and from the doorways on either side of the stage, but which have the disadvantage that they do not assist the actors in their performances. Later such vistas were moved forward and turned into areas available for acting.
In 1618, the Teatro Farnas in Parma was built, which was characterized by the presence of three walls and frames with curtains on the stage. This stage had a large main stage with a low ceiling, a frame that was close to square, and an attached stage behind the main stage to increase the depth of the set. This theater is considered the beginning of modern theater.
After the stage changes, the original Roman-style semi-circular auditorium, it is difficult to adapt to the audience's viewing requirements, and therefore must make the corresponding adjustment, so that the horseshoe-type auditorium came into being. To the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the European theater, has been the basic use of this architectural pattern.
With the increase of indoor performances, stage lighting problems are increasingly prominent, the lighting appliances are mainly oil lamps and candles, the stage entrance also appeared "foot light", people began to use light to create a stage atmosphere, such as letting the source of light hiding behind a crystal ball and slowly moving to form a moonrise scene; wrapped in tinfoil. Sawed into a lightning-like board, with the sound of light and shadow, the formation of lightning and thunder landscape. People also use the strength of the light to show the drama situation, such as tragedy that the light should be darker than the light of the comedy. The lights on the stage should be brighter than the lights under the stage. Because of the simplicity of the lighting facilities at that time, therefore, limiting the freedom of people to create boldly.