Hey, everyone! This play will help you learn about the history of art. For those who like art will probably be interested in the history of art. You can use this play for school and other educational uses if you want to.

Narrator: Welcome to History of Art! Let the play begin.

(Princess enters from Stage A).

Princess (dancing): Nobody knew exactly when the first people started producing art but it is believed that art has been created far back as 100, 000 years ago.

(Strawberry enters from Stage B; Princess exits to Stage B).

Strawberry (smiling bravely): The earliest art work came from Africa in form of stone carvings. There are many examples of cave paintings and carvings from Africa and Europe dating back to 32,000 B.C.

(Princess enters: Strawberry moves to the right of the stage to listen).

Princess: About 9, 000 B.C., people began to change from being traveling nomads to settling down in villages. At this time the art began to evolve into larger pieces. In West Asia and Egypt, the first stone and clay statues were created and that is how artists began to create decorated pottery.

Strawberry: About 3, 000 B.C., people learned how to work with metals and began to create small pieces of art from bronze which was often small statuettes. This was the era when people in Greece and India began to create art and in Egypt, sculptors were large, lifelike stone statues which were painted realistically and were life-size.

Princess: The Dark Age which was around 1, 000 B.C. in East Asia and the Mediterranean Sea led to most people not being able to afford art. Artists stopped making their pieces for several hundred years.

Strawberry: After the Dark Age, it was in Greece that the Archaic and the Classical sculpture was started, along with the black-figure and red-figure vase paintings.

Princess: The Etruscans in Italy started to create large stone and clay statues as well as painted pottery they created.

Strawberry: Things changed when Alexander the Great conquered West Asia in 325 B.C. and people were able to travel throughout the empire. Ideas about art were exchanged and this lead to the first Greek stone statues reaching India with Indian sculptors following Greek methods to carve large statues of Buddha.

Princess: The rise of the Roman Empire spread Greek art to the West as well with artists in North Africa and  North Europe creating pieces of art in the Roman style.

Strawberry: This Roman time was when blown glass became a form of art. It was invented by Phoenician artists  and sold both to England and China.

Princess: In 200 A.D., artists began to experiment and moved away from realistic painting and sculptures to a more abstract form. Statues with larger eyes were to indicate that the subject has a strong soul.

Strawberry: There was a second Dark Age in 459 A.D. after the autumn in Rome. Sadly, not very much art was made for several hundred years.

Princess: In China during this time, they began to make new kinds of painting using a new invention that we use today called paper.

(Princess exited to Stage A). 

Strawberry: In Medieval times, art was evolving and showing the world differently. Christianity became a big theme like Islam did.

Narrator: I hope you enjoyed our play about the History of Art.

(Princess re enters through Stage B). 

(The narrator, Princess, and Strawberry all bow/ curtsy at the same time). 

The End.