There are a few things that people universally love and one of them is entertainment. We all love to be entertained, whether that’s to be amused, awestruck, scared, or romanced. Historically, entertainment was performed in the oral tradition, including the act of stories being told by a fire outdoors. This could’ve also been the school or academy, where teachers or philosophers told tales focused on learning and wisdom to students. You also have the oral tradition in a religious setting, where a mass or other type of gathering has the recounting of significant tales of understanding portrayed to the audience or community.
Later, it became more formalized in the tradition of plays and theater, which would be performed on some type of stage, amphitheater, and eventually an auditorium. As with many things, the ancient Greeks are credited with establishment of the earliest theater and drama performances. One of the hallmark types of this entertainment were the Greek tragedies. As you can guess, they were stories about terrible things that would occur and how the characters were impacted and would deal with the circumstances.
This theater tradition continued all along through the centuries, becoming more refined and developed. More recently, in the past few centuries, we become oriented to the works of William Shakespeare and his popular works. Interestingly enough, even to this day and beyond just a formal literary crowd, you have whole Shakespeare festivals and other gatherings that take place around the world. These events feature performances from “the great bard”, as he is known. This is also enjoyed by a broad demographic of both sexes and a wide variety of ages.
The last century has featured some big changes to entertainment, as we know. Namely, the biggest aspect of that change is likely the advent of electricity and technology. This change first manifested itself as movies in public theaters that would entertain dozens or hundreds at a time. Then, we had radio and television technology that brought entertainment to your home via wireless broadcasting. Progressively, a wide range of entertainment genres were made available to the mass audience from news, sports, comedy, and drama.
Later years brought even more far-ranging transformations of entertainment, which also included the pure entertainment play of electronic or video gaming. Now, the same dimensions of entertainment were contained in a defined electronic format for play by an individual or a group of players.
Today, there are so many choices of how one can get entertained and it’s even no longer about the living room or the bedroom. But, wherever someone cares to get comfortable, including outside of the home, they can have all of the entertainment they need at their fingertips of their smartphone. Streaming titles from sources like Netflix are now the norm of how many get their entertainment daily.