The Greek theatre began as part of a religious celebration of the god Dionysus. The theatrical stage on which these performances were held, therefore were meant to seat many hundreds (or thousands) of audience members, since all were eager to participate in religious celebrations. Actors played on a circular stone structure called the orchestra and used a rectangular building called the skene, situated just behind the orchestra for entrances and exits. The theatron (where the audience sat) was arranged in a semicircle facing the playing areas. The skene actually served as a multipurpose space. Actors used the top of this building as a playing space (when portraying the gods, for example, and the building itself served as a "set" piece, standing in for a palace or temple in performances.
The structure of ancient Roman outdoor theaters resembled the construct of the Greek theaters. The design employed the orchestra and skene, with a large audience located on raised seating in a semi-circle in front of these spaces. Ancient Romans, however, didn't derive their theatrical tradition from a religious celebration and were a bit more irreverent, preferring bawdy comedies to tragic plays. This spawned a more improvisational theatrical performance atop a simple wooden stage called pantomime. Characters in masks created impromptu comic plays on these simple street-side stages. These street performances may have led to the development of the famous Italian theatrical form called Commedia dell' Arte.
Connection to the natural world played a huge role in the earliest Noh plays, which began in the 8th century. Once performances moved indoors, the stage was carefully constructed (always of Japanese cypress) to recall an outdoor environment with a covered roof and open sides. The stage was accessed by the actors by means of a bridge (hashigakari), along which there were three pine trees. This bridge ended in a curtained area from which actors enter and exit. In front of the stage is a stairway (kizahashi) to the floor, where the audience was located. The back wall of the stage area (kagami-ita) had a painted image of a pine tree, which served as the "backdrop" for all Noh performances.
The medieval English theater performances were produced by the Catholic Church and intended to instruct the illiterate congregation in the stories and lessons of the Bible. These plays were staged on carts, in churches or in the courtyard of an inn. These English medieval performances did not rely on an elaborate or symbolic playing space, but rather the connection between the actors and the audience. As a result, medieval English performers used whatever space was handy, which allowed the actors to be in close proximity to (and move among) their audience. Once these playing spaces moved to actual "theaters," such as Shakespeare's Globe, the stage remained simple, jutting out into the audience to maintain the contact between actors and audience.