Last year I visited Verulumium - capital of the Catuvellauni - at St. Albans. It was on my bucket list for quite a while, and it is only Roman theater visible in Britain today. This time, I took the train from Rotterdam to London and from London to St. Albans. Arriving in St. Albans it took a half hour walk through some the village and passing some Roman remains in a park to reach the remains of the theater.
Verulamium was among the first Romano-British towns to be built and by about AD 250 it was the third largest in the province, surpassed only by
London and Cirencester. It was not until about a hundred years after the Roman occupation that the first theatre in Verulamium was built. That might be around 140 AD, with serious alterations until the early fourth century. The stage and seatings were mainly of wood, while the arena and orchestra was covered by a flat cement floor at the fourth period (AD 300).
The total population of the town was probably never more than about 8000, and scientists are fairly certain that the audiences in the theatre - which could have held about 7000 spectators - included a large number of people drawn from the surrounding countryside.
Local dignitaries, rich villa owners and succesful merchants would have occupied the seats in the orchestra, while tiers of benches on the bank of the auditorium were provided for the poorer townspeople, families of peasants from the rural hinterland of the town and slaves.
What always fascinates me during a visit to a theater—and that's purely my imagination, of course—is how everyone treated, greeted, or even spied on each other. Who came with whom, who sat next to whom, and especially who sat where? Your position in the theater also partly betrayed your social status.
People came for the performance, of course, but also to exchange news, gossip, and do business. They came to find a good suitor, to flirt, or to pass on messages. And what was the latest fashion, and what jewelry did people wear? In many museums, you can still find hairpins, found between the joints of the stones. Often made of ivory with the most beautiful decorations. Can you imagine what it was like to lose one of those hairpins, often an important status symbol?
In short, a visit to the theater encompassed so much more than just the performance. Many of those present had traveled quite a distance; you didn't do it just for the entertainment.
The historians do not know specifically what performances were staged here. It is possible that they included plays by Latin and Greek authors that were popular in Rome. But Rome was far away. It is doubtful how much Latin or Greek a provincial and largely rural population would have understood, and perhaps at Verulamium another type of Roman entertainment was more popular. This was the pantomimus.
Unlike modern pantomimes, these were 'dumb shows' with actors dancing and miming the action, accompanied by music and a chorus of singing the words. Both play and pantomimes performers wore clay masks, with happy and sad faces.
You can find all kind of masks I have found during my trips over
here!
Sources: Dr. Rosalind Niblett and the brochure of the Verulamium Museum, and Frank Sear (Roman Theatres. An architectural study).
