Why Do Theatres Have Intervals? The Surprisingly Strange History of the Theatre Interval

The history of the theatre interval in British theatre starts in Ancient Greek performance, through Shakespearean theatre, and now the modern 15-minute dash for the bar. Yet nobody appears to have actually invented it. No committee meeting declared that Act One should finish, the audience should immediately form a 40-person toilet queue, and tiny tubs of vanilla ice cream should suddenly cost the GDP of a Greek island. So how did a practical pause in performance become a theatre convention?

Its earliest form appears in Ancient Greek theatre. Greek drama used choral odes and interludes between sections of action. Although here, spectators were still watching something. The dramatic story temporarily stops, but some form of entertainment continued.

During the seventeenth-century in British Theatre, there was an incredibly glamorous piece of theatrical technology being developed... The Candle. Elizabethan theatres mostly performed using daylight, as Indoor playhouses required artificial lighting, and the flames of candles tended to burn down these wooden O's. Performances therefore needed brief breaks so candles could be trimmed or replaced before the flames licked the oak beams. Theatre historian Mark Hutchings argues that the five-act, four-interval structure of early modern indoor performance grew from candle technology rather than simply from classical dramatic convention.

This makes Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Theatre an important step towards the interval we recognise. When the King’s Men began using Blackfriars in the early seventeenth century, pauses between acts allowed the lighting to be maintained. They were short, and audiences did not immediately stampede towards a Sauvignon Blanc.

By the Restoration, those pauses had developed into part of the entertainment. Music written specifically for act breaks became common, while audiences socialised, moved around and bought refreshments. Seventeenth-century orange sellers circulated through theatres/ The interval was slowly becoming a social event on top of being a technical necessity.

Then Victorian productions commonly used several act breaks because increasingly elaborate scenery required time to change. We know exactly how long some of them lasted because programmes printed the timings. Henry Irving’s 1889 Macbeth advertised intervals of 14 minutes, 14 minutes, 8 minutes, 6 minutes and 5 minutes between its acts.

Technology eventually removed many of the practical reasons for so many breaks. Electric lighting meant nobody needed to maintain candles, while improved stage machinery allowed increasingly complicated transformations to happen faster. British theatre also began moving towards the structure audiences now recognise: two substantial halves separated by one main interval.

By the early twentieth century, intervals of around fifteen minutes were becoming familiar. The theatre gets enough time for costume changes and backstage adjustments; audiences can use the toilet or buy a drink; everyone returns before the dramatic momentum completely evaporates. But fifteen minutes is more convention than rule.

But one of the biggest reasons we've kept the interval is simple: It makes money.

Bars, programmes, merchandise and ice creams all benefit from several hundred people suddenly having nothing to do for fifteen minutes. In 1996, the West End hit Art ran for around 90 minutes without an interval, and bar and ice-cream revenue dipped massively; this led some venues to introduce contractual compensation when productions ran straight through.

Contemporary directors regularly remove intervals because a break can puncture tension. A tragedy can lose something when an emotional climax is followed by a discussion of whether the Malbec is worth £9.

The purpose of theatre intervals has changed, though the tradition survives. Ancient audiences received entertainment between sections. Jacobean theatres maintained candles. Restoration audiences heard music and bought oranges. Victorians waited for enormous sets to move. Modern theatres sell gin and ice cream while audiences queue for toilets.