Theatre of Ancient Greece

Greek theatre or Greek drama is a theatrical tradition that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 600 and c. 200 BC. The political and military power in Greece during this period, was the center of ancient Greek theatre. Athenian tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays were some of the earliest theatrical forms to emerge in the world. Greek theatre and plays have had a lasting impact on Western drama and culture. Greeks also used an early form of the cowbell in many satyrs. Often times the cowbell represented insanity, or hyperactivity in the scene.

The Origin

The specific origins of Greek drama are obscure. Early tradition holds that drama and comedy evolved from the dithyramb, the songs, folk tales and dances offered to Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility and wine. Our oldest source for this tradition is Aristotle's Poetics, in which Aristotle states:

"In any case tragedy did grow out of an improvisational beginning, both it and comedy, the former from those who led off the dithyramb the other from those who led off the phallic performances."

The word tragoidia, from where our word tragedy comes from, is variously translated as "songs sung by goat-men", "he-goat sacrifice song", and is interpreted with as much latitude. At the least, it indicates a link with the practices of the ancient Dionysian cults. It is impossible, however, to know with certainty how these fertility rituals became the basis for tragedy and comedy.

According to legend, Greek tragedy as we know it was created in Athens, ca. 530 BCE by a man known as Thespis. He was the exarchon, or leader, of the dithyrambs performed in and around Attica, especially at the rural Dionysia. By Thespis' time the dithyramb had evolved far away from its cult roots. Under the influence of heroic epic, Doric choral lyric and the innovations of the poet Arion, it had become a narrative, ballad-like genre. Thespis took the next step in the evolution by separating himself from the chorus and speaking, not singing, his part in character, i.e. as a particular heroic figure. He was inspired to this by the unique environment existent in the Athens of his time. The city-state was on the cusp of its rise to domination of Greek art, literature, religion, politics and economics. The legendary statesman Solon had recently brought constitutional order to the class-conflicted population of Athens. His main organ of public persuasion was poetry he wrote and, possibly, performed himself. Using the dynamic, iambic, and trochaic meters, he presented himself in the round, in tese political struggles. These literary elements form two of the cornerstones of tragedy that we see in the earliest plays of Aeschylus and could only have come to him from Solon through Thespis, who most likely experienced the great man's innovations firsthand.

The third cornerstone is the great inspiration of the Homeric epics. Under Solon's successor, Pisistratus, the texts of the Iliad and Odyssey were written down for the first time and made canonical. At the revitalized Attic festival of the Panathenaea there were contests in the recitation, the performance, of both epics by rhapsodes using these texts. This material provided ready inspiration for Thespis to become any of these great heroes in his new literary classical tragedy.

That Thespis' literary form was something new and important is evidenced by Pisistratus' making a competition in the performance of tragedy the centerpiece of his new City (or Great) Dionysia, a festival organized and calculated to increase Pisistratus' political power and prestige. The existence of a competition proves there were more poets working and from an inscription listing the winners of this prize for the last part of the sixth and beginning of the fifth centuries we learn some names of these poets. The most important of these is Phrynichus. While we possess none his works ancient sources attest to his importance.

He won his first victory between 511 and 508. He produced tragedies on themes and subjects later exploited in the golden age such as the Danaids, Phoenician Women and Alcestis. He was the first poet we know of to use a historical subject. His Fall of Miletus, produced in 493-2, chronicled the fate of the town of Miletus after it was conquered by the Persians. Herodotus reports that Phrynichus succeeded so well in potraying the suffering of the Miletians, and upsetting the audience, that the authorities made him pay a fine and prohibited him from ever producing the work again, "for he perpetuated the memory of a familiar plight" . This proves the powerful effect and hold tragedy had on the Athenians, which bore the fruit of the legendary symbiosis of the golden age.

Golden age

By the 5th century BC, theatre had become formalized and was a major part of Athenian culture and civic pride, and this century is normally regarded as the Golden Age of Greek drama. The centerpiece of the annual Dionysia, which took place once in Winter and Once in Spring, was a competition between three playwrights at the Theatre of Dionysus. Each submitted three tragedies, plus a satyr play (a comic, burlesque version of a mythological subject). In the 430s BC, each Playwright also submitted a comedy.

Playwrights never put more than 2 actors on stage. Only a few playwrights, such as Sophocles, ever put 2 or 3 actors on the stage at once. Violence was also never shown on stage. When somebody was about to die, they would take that person to the back to "kill" them and bring them back "dead." The other people near the stage were the chorus which consisted of about 4-8 people who would stand in the back wearing black.

Although there were many playwrights in this era, only the work of four playwrights has survived in the form of complete plays. All are from Athens. These playwrights are the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comic writer Aristophanes. Their plays, along with some secondary sources such as Aristotle, are the basis of what is known about Greek theatre. Because of this, there is much that remains unknown.

Hellenistic period

The power of Athens declined following its defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Although its theatrical traditions seem to have lost their vitality, Greek theatre continued into the Hellenistic period (the period following Alexander the Great's conquests in the fourth century BC). However, the primary Hellenistic theatrical form was not tragedy but 'New Comedy', comic farces about the lives of ordinary citizens. The only extant playwright from the period is Menander. One of New Comedy's most important contributions was its influence on Roman comedy, an influence that can be seen in the surviving works of Plautus and Terence.

Characteristics

The plays had a chorus of up to 50 people, who performed the plays in verse accompanied by music. The performance space was a simple circular space, or orchestra, where the chorus danced and sang. The orchestra, which had an average diameter of 78 feet, was situated on a flattened terrace at the foot of a hill, the slope of which produced a natural theatron, or "watching place". Later, the term "theater" came to be applied to the whole area, including the theatron, the orchestra, and the skene, or scenery.The theaters were originally built on a very large scale to accommodate the large number of people on stage, as well as the large number of people in the audience, up to fourteen thousand. Mathematics played a large role in the construction of these theaters, as their designers had to able to create acoustics in them such that the actors' voices could be heard throughout the theater, including the very top row of seats. Many people believe that the ancient Greeks had a better understanding of the science behind acoustics then we do today, as even with the invention of microphones, there are very few modern large theaters that have truly good acoustics. The first seats in Greek theaters (other than just sitting on the ground) were wooden, but around 499 BC the practice of inlaying stone blocks into the side of the hill to create permanent, stable seating became more common. In 465 BC, the playwrights began using a backdrop or scenic wall, which hung or stood behind the orchestra, which also served as an area where actors could change their costumes. It was known as the skene. In 425 BC a stone scene wall, called a paraskenia, became a common supplement to skenes in the theaters. A paraskenia was a long wall with projecting sides, which may have had doorways for entrances and exits. Just behind the paraskenia was the proskenion. The proskenion was columned, and was similar to the modern day proscenium. Today's proscenium is the what separates the audience from the stage. It is the frame around the stage that makes it look like the action is taking place in a picture frame. Greek theaters also had entrances for the audience called parodoi. The paradoi (plural of parados) were tall arches that came out from the sides of the stage, through which the audience entered. By the end of the 5th century BC, around the time of the Peloponnesian War, the skene, the back wall, was two stories high. The upper story was called the episkenion. Some theaters also had a raised speaking place on the orchestra called the logeion.

Writing

Tragedy and comedy were viewed as completely separate genres, and no plays ever merged aspects of the two. Satyr plays dealt with the mythological subject matter of the tragedies, but in a purely comedic manner. But as he was writing over a century after the Athenian Golden Age, it is not known whether dramatists such as Sophocles and Euripides would have thought about their plays in the same terms.

Theatre Structure and Layout

The Theatron (theatre) was built around the orchestra(dancing circle) 3rd and 4th centuries BC. The floor became paved in the middle of the orchestra, and there was an altar for sacrificing in honor of Dionysus. The theatron seats were carved out of hillside. The front row was reserved for special visitors such as the Priest of Dionysus and other important people.

Paradoi - Side entrance, in which dancers and actors went through.
Logeion - A small stage for actors.
Skene - a timber building located behind the stage, for dressing rooms with a flat roof for staging scenes.

The theatron had 3 levels for actors, orchestra, stage or platform and the roof of the skene.

Stage machinery was: Mechane (or stage crane) and the Ekkyklema (wheeled trolley). No lighting was used, other than fire.

Relevant quotes

"The existence of writing changed the nature of memory" - Jennifer Wise, in Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece, 1998, p.25
"The language of the Homeric epic exhibits a 'formulaic' linguistic style aid the memory" - Jennifer Wise, ibid, p.27

Notes

Aristotle, Poetics, line 1449a. ^*
William Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy with Special Reference to the Greek Tragedians, p.83

References

Buckham, Philip Wentworth
- Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
Davidson, J.A.
- Literature and Literacy in Ancient Greece, Part 1, Phoenix, 16, 1962, 141-56.
- Peisistratus and Homer, TAPA, 86, 1955 1-21.
Easterling, Pat and Hall, Edith (eds.), Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession, 2002. [http://cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=
Else, Gerald P.
- Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument, Cambridge, MA 1967.
- The Origins and Early Forms of Greek Tragedy, Cambridge, MA 1965.
- The Origins of ΤΡΑΓΩΙΔΙΑ, Hermes, 85, 1957 17-46.
Haigh, A.E., The Attic Theatre, 1907.
Lesky, A. Greek Tragedy, trans. H.A. Frankfort, London and New York, 1965.
Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur Wallace
- Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy , 1927.
- The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, 1946.
- The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 1953.
Ridgeway, William, Origin of Tragedy with Special Reference to the Greek Tragedians, 1910.
Riu, Xavier, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. ^*
Schlegel, Literature'', 1809. ^*
Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Wiles, David, The Masked Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, 1991.
Wise, Jennifer, Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece, Ithaca, 1998. review
Zimmerman, B., Greek Tragedy: An Introduction, trans. T. Marier, Baltimore, 1991.

External links

Ancient Greek theatre

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