A History of Theatre Quiz

Question: Which American actress established herself as a major star in the Broadway musical Funny Girl (1964)?

Answer: Barbra Streisand established herself as a major Broadway star in the career-making role of Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl (1964). She made her movie debut in 1968 in an Academy Award-winning reprise of her role as Fanny Brice.

Question: What is the oldest theatre still in use in England?

Answer: Drury Lane Theatre in London is the oldest English theatre still in use. It opened May 7, 1663. It was destroyed by fire in 1672 and then rebuilt on its present site in Drury Lane in 1674.

Question: What was the first permanent theatre in Paris?

Answer: The Théâtre de l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, built in 1548 on the ruins of the palace of the dukes of Burgundy, was the first permanent theatre in Paris.

Question: Who was the first actor to be elevated to a life peerage?

Answer: A towering figure of the British stage and screen, Laurence Olivier was acclaimed in his lifetime as the greatest English-speaking actor of the 20th century. He was knighted in 1947 and in 1970 became the first member of his profession to be elevated to a life peerage.

Question: Which of these Greek tragedies was the first to be presented on the English stage?

Answer: George Gascoigne was an English poet and a major literary innovator. His Jocasta (performed in 1566) was the first Greek tragedy to be presented on the English stage. Translated into blank verse, with the collaboration of Francis Kinwelmersh, from Lodovico Dolce’s Giocasta, the work derives ultimately from Euripides’ Phoenician Women.

Question: Who is considered the first of the Angry Young Men of the British stage?

Answer: John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (performed 1956) ushered in a new movement in British drama and made him known as the first of the Angry Young Men. He reoriented British drama from well-made plays depicting upper-class life to vigorously realistic drama of contemporary life.

Question: What modern art movement is Tristan Tzara mainly associated with?

Answer: Tristan Tzara, a Romanian-born French poet and essayist, is known mainly as the founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts, the purpose of which was the demolition of all the values of modern civilization.

Question: By what name is shadow theatre known in Indonesia?

Answer: It is uncertain whether the shadow theatre is indigenous to Java or was brought from India, but the wayang kulit technique of having a single seated puppeteer who manipulates puppets, sings, chants narration, and speaks dialogue seems to be an Indonesian invention.

Question: Who was the founder of the Old Vic as a centre of Shakespearean productions?

Answer: Lilian Baylis moved to England in 1898 to assist her aunt, Emma Cons, who had turned the Victoria Theatre into a temperance hall under the name of the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern (1880–1912). Upon Cons’s death in 1912, Baylis became sole manager and converted the hall into the Old Vic, which became world famous as the home of Shakespearean productions. Between 1914 and 1923 the theatre staged all of William Shakespeare’s plays, a feat no other playhouse had attempted.