Osaka International School's
Theater and drama in Ancient Greece took form in about 5th century BCE, with the Sophocles, the great writer of tragedy. In his plays and those of the same genre, heroes and the ideals of life were depicted and glorified. It was believed that man should live for honor and fame, his action was courageous and glorious and his life would climax in a great and noble death. Originally, the hero's recognition was created by selfish behaviors and little thought of service to others. As the Greeks grew toward city-states and colonization, it became the destiny and ambition of the hero to gain honor by serving his city. The second major characteristic of the early Greek world was the supernatural. The two worlds were not separate, as the gods lived in the same world as the men, and they interfered in the men's lives as they chose to. It was the gods who sent suffering and evil to men. In the plays of Sophocles, the gods brought about the hero's downfall because of a tragic flaw in the character of the hero. In Greek tragedy, suffering brought knowledge of worldly matters and of the individual. Aristotle attempted to explain how an audience could observe tragic events and still have a pleasurable experience. Aristotle, by searching the works of writers of Greek tragedy, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles (whose Oedipus Rex he considered the finest of all Greek tragedies), arrived at his definition of tragedy. This explanation has a profound influence for more than twenty centuries on those writing tragedies, most significantly Shakespeare. Aristotle's analysis of tragedy began with a description of the effect such a work had on the audience as a catharsis or purging of the emotions. He decided that catharsis was the purging of two specific emotions, pity and fear. The hero has made a mistake due to ignorance, not because of wickedness or corruption. Aristotle used the word hamartia, which is the tragic flaw or offense committed in ignorance. For example, Oedipus is ignorant of his true parentage when he commits his fatal deed. Oedipus Rex is one of the stories in a three-part myth called the Theban cycle. The structure of most all Greek tragedies is similar to Oedipus Rex. Such plays are divided in to five parts, the prologue or introduction, the prados or entrance of the chorus, four episode or acts separates from one another by stasimons or choral odes, and exodos, the action after the last stasimon. These odes are lyric poetry, lines chanted or sung as the chorus moved rhythmically across the orchestra. The lines that accompanied the movement of the chorus in one direction were called strophe, the return movement was accompanied by lines called antistrophe. The choral ode might contain more than one strophe or antistrophe. Greek tragedy originated in honor of the god of wine, Dionysus, the patron god of tragedy. The performance took place in an open-air theater. The word tragedy is derived from the term tragedia or goat-song, named for the goat skins the chorus wore in the performance. The plots came from legends of the Heroic Age. Tragedy grew from a choral lyric, as Aristotle said, tragedy is largely based on life's pity and splendor. Plays were performed at dramatic festivals, the two main ones being the Feast of the Winepress in January and the City Dionysia at the end of March. The Proceeding began with the procession of choruses and actors of the three competing poets. A herald then announced the poet's names and the titles of their plays. On this day it was likely that the image of Dionysus was taken in a procession from his temple beside the theater to a point near the road he had once taken to reach Athens from the north, then it was brought back by torch light, amid a carnival celebration, to the theater itself, where his priest occupied the central seat of honor during the performances. On the first day of the festival there were contests between the choruses, five of men and five of boys. Each chorus consisted of fifty men or boys. On the next three days, a tragic tetralogy (group made up of four pieces, a trilogy followed by a satyric drama) was performed each morning. This is compared to the Elizabethan habit of following a tragedy with a jig. During the Peloponnesian Wars, this was followed by a comedy each afternoon. The Father of the drama was Thesis of
Athens, 535 BC, who created the first actor. The actor performed in
intervals between the dancing of the chorus and conversing at times with
the leader of the The Greek plays were performed in open-air theaters. Nocturnal scenes were performed even in sunlight. The area in front of the stages was called the orchestra, the area in which the chorus moved and danced. There was no curtain and the play was presented as a whole with no act or scene divisions. There was a building at the back of the stage called a skene, which represented the front of a palace or temple. It contained a central doorway and two other stage entrances, one at the left and the other at the right, representing the country and the city. Sacrifices were performed at the altar of Dionysus, and the chorus performed in the orchestra, which surrounded the altar. The theatron, from where the word theater is derived, is where the audience sat, built on a hollowed-out hillside. Seated of honor, found in the front and center of the theatron, were for public officials and priests. he seating capacity of the theater was about 17,000. The audience of about 14,000 was lively, noisy, emotional and unrestrained. They ate, applauded, cheered, hissed, and kicked their wooden seats in disgust. Small riots were known to break out if the audience was dissatisfied. Women were allowed to be spectators of tragedy, and probably even comedy. Admission was free or nominal, and the poor were paid for by the state. The Attic dramatists, like the Elizabethans, had a public of all classes. Because of the size of the audience, the actors must also have been physically remote. The sense of remoteness may have been heightened by masked, statuesque figures of the actors whose acting depended largely on voice gestures and grouping. Since there were only three actors, the same men in the same play had to play double parts. At first, the dramatists themselves acted, like Shakespeare. Gradually, acting became professionalized. Simple scenery began with Sophocles, but changes of scene were rare and stage properties were also rare, such as an occasional altar, a tomb or an image of gods. Machinery was used for lightning or thunder or for lifting celestial persons from heaven and back, or for revealing the interior of the stage building. This was called deus ex machina, which means god from the machine, and was a technical device that used a metal crane on top of the skene building, which contained the dressing rooms, from which a dummy was suspended to represent a god. This device was first employed by Euripides to give a miraculous conclusion to a tragedy. In later romantic literature, this device was no longer used and the miracles supplied by it were replace by the sudden appearance of a rich uncle, the discovery or new wills, or of infants changed at birth. Many proprieties of the Greek plays were attached to violence. Therefore, it was a rule that acts of violence must take place off stage. This carried through to the Elizabethan theater which avoided the horrors of men being flayed alive or Glouster's eyes being put out in full view of an audience (King Lear). When Medea went inside the house to murder her children, the chorus was left outside, chanting in anguish, to represent the feelings the chorus had and could not act upon, because of their metaphysical existence. The use of music in the theater began very simply consisting of a single flute player that accompanied the chorus. Toward the close of the century, more complicated solo singing was developed by Euripides. There could-then be large-scale spectacular events, with stage crowds and chariots, particularly in plays by Aeschylus. Greek comedy was derived from two different sources, the more known being the choral element which included ceremonies to stimulate fertility at the festival of Dionysus or in ribald drunken revel in his honor. The term comedy is actually drawn from komos, meaning song of revelry. The second source of Greek comedy was that from the Sicilian mimes, who put on very rude performances where they would make satirical allusions to audience members as they ad-libbed their performances. In the beginning, comedy was frank, indecent and sexual. The plots were loosely and carelessly structured and included broad farce and buffoonery. The performers were coarse and obscene while using satire to depict important contemporary moral, social and political issues of Athenian life. The comedy included broad satire of well known persons of that time. Throughout the comedic period in Greece, there were three distinctive eras of comedies as the genre progressed. Old comedy, which lasted from approximately 450 to 400 BCE, was performed at the festivals of Dionysus following the tragedies. There would be contests between three poets, each exhibiting one comedy. Each comedy troupe would consist of one or two actors and a chorus of twenty-four. The actors wore masks and soccus, or sandals, and the chorus often wore fantastic costumes. Comedies were constructed in five parts, the prologue, where the leading character conceived the happy idea, the parodos or entrance of the chorus, the agon, a dramatized debate between the proponent and opponent of the happy idea where the opposition was always defeated, the parabasis, the coming forth of the chorus where they directly addressed the audience and aired the poet's views on most any matter the poet felt like having expressed, and the episodes, where the happy idea was put in to practical application. Aristotle highly criticized comedy, saying that it was just a ridiculous imitation of lower types of man with eminent faults emphasized for the audience's pleasure, such as a mask worn to show deformity, or for the man to do something like slip and fall on a banana peel. Aristophanes, a comic poet of the old comedy period, wrote comedies which came to represent old comedy, as his style was widely copied by other poets. In his most famous works, he used dramatic satire on some of the most famous philosophers and poets of the era. In The Frogs he ridiculed Euripides, and in The Clouds he mocked Socrates. His works followed all the basic principles of old comedy, but he added a facet of cleverness and depth in feeling to his lyrics, in an attempt to appeal to both the emotions and intellect of the audience. Middle comedy, which dominated from 400 to 336 BCE, was very transitional, having aspects of both old comedy and new comedy. It was more timid than old comedy, having many less sexual gestures and innuendoes. It was concerned less with people and politics, and more with myths and tragedies. The chorus began its fade into the background, becoming more of an interlude than the important component it used to be. Aristophanes wrote a few works in middle comedy, but the most famous writers of the time were Antiphanes of Athens and Alexis of Thurii, whose compositions have mostly been lost and only very few of their found works have been full extant plays. In new comedy which lasted from 336 to 250 BCE, satire is almost entirely replaced by social comedy involving the family and individual character development, and the themes of romantic love. A closely knit plot in new comedy was based on intrigue, identities, relationships or a combination of these. A subplot was often utilized as well. The characters in new comedy are very similar in each work, possibly including a father who is very miser like, a son who is mistreated but deserving, and other people with stereotypical personas. The chief writer of new comedy was Menander, and as with the prominent writers of the middle comedic era, most of his works have been lost, but other dramatists of the time period, like Terence and Platus, had imitated and adapted his methods. Menander's The Curmudgeon is the only complete extant play known by him to date, and it served as the basis for the later Latin writers to adapt. Adventure, brilliance, invention, romance and scenic effect, together with delightful lyrics and wisdom, were the gifts of the Greek theater. These conventions strongly affected subsequent plays and playwrights, having put forth influence on theater throughout the centuries. Bibliography
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The History of Greek Theater Captured from the Web on 09/01/02. |
The organization of the tragic contests
Tragic contests were being organized during the Lenea and the Great Dionyssia (sometimes also during the Anthesteria). During the Small Dionyssia some old plays were plated again. New tragedies were presented during the Great Dionyssia,the biggest celebration after Panathenea.This celebration was lasting for six days. The first day was the day of the sacred parade (foreigners were allowed to participate). The next two days were the days, when dithyrambic dancing contests were being held. During the last three days drama contests were being organized. Οnly three poets were allowed to participate. The Honorable Archon had the right to make the choice of the three final participants. If a poet wished to participate, he had to submit to the Honorable Archon three tragedies and one satyric drama, in other words, a tetralogy. The Archon was choosing the three poets, who were paid from the State, as also the hypocrits, three for every poet. The expenses for the chorus were covered by Sponsors, wealthy Athenians.The Sponsors were deeply respected in athenian society. A few days before the contest the list of the judges was being formed ( 500 Athenians - 50 from each line ). Their names were written in little spheres and kept closed in ten urns in Parthenon. The presentation was beginning with the sunrise. Each of the three last days participated one poet with his tetralogy. The Athenians who were attending the presentation did not pay any ticket, because this was paid to the producer by the State (Theorica), so that even the poor could participate to the celebration. At the end of the presentation ten judges were elected one out of every urn, five of which, chosen by lottery, were deciding for the winner. The herald was announcing the name of the winner and the Honorable Archon was putting on the winner's head a crown of ivy, the holy plant of Dionyssos. The State was keeping official records of the contests, on boards made of marble with the names of the poets, the sponsors and the hypocrits.
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Introduction to Greek Stagecraft
The Theater of Dionysus in Athens The tragedies and comedies of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE which remain to us today were all written for performance in the Theater of Dionysus at Athens. The TDA was first dug out of the slope beneath the south side of the Acropolis in the late 6th century BCE, possibly while Athens was still under Peisistratid rule. It was rebuilt and expanded many times, and so it is difficult to tell exactly what its original shape was. The illustrations here are reconstructions based on existing evidence and the opinions of the editors.
The Precinct
The Players
In contrast with the chorus of twelve or fifteen, there were only three actors in fifth-century Athenian tragedy. The original word for 'actor' was hypokrites, meaning 'answerer,' for the actor answered the chorus. Thespis is said to have introduce d (and been) the first actor, later called protagonistes (literally 'first competitor'). The introduction of a second actor (deuteragonistes) is attributed to Aeschylus and the third (tritagonistes) to Sophocles. There are no one-acto r plays remaining to us, though Aeschylus' earliest play, Persians, requires only two actors. Ordinarily each actor would undertake to play several different roles, and it is possible to divide the speaking parts in a Greek tragedy up by determining which characters were in the same scene. Often the division of roles had some thematic significance relevant to the play. (We know that the audience could tell one actor from another because a prize for the best actor was introduced in 449 BCE.) Very occasionally a single role would be divided between two or more actors, as in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus.
The DramatistsThe tragic poets of the 5th century BCE, most notably Phrynicus and Aeschylus, not only composed the plays but acted in them, directed them, and choreographed them. Because they were said to have 'taught' (edidaksen) the chorus, the inscriptions recording the winners of the dramatic contests were called didaskaliai. At first there was only one actor, then two, and finally three, to divide among them the roles of the plays. Like the poets themselves, these actors were men of leisure with a passion for theater. Although a substantial cash prize was offered to the winning playwright, and later to the winning actor, playwrights and actors in the 5th century did not earn their living in the theater.
The Stage
Orchestra of the
Theater of Dionysus with skene in background MachineryDivinities could appear suddenly on the roof via a trap door. Characters which were specifically stated to be flying (such as Bellerophon on Pegasus) could be swung into the air above the stage space by means of a simple crane, called the mechane or geranos. The earliest known use of the mechane was in the year 431, when Euripides used it at the end of his Medea. Because the mechane had to support considerable weights (and counterweights) it was probably supported by the projection of stone which extended into the orchestra from the terrace wall, and affi xed to one of the posts which supported the skene.
Interior scenes could be brought outside by means of a low rolling platform called the ekkyklema ('thing which rolls out'). Because performances took place in daylight, and because of the angle at which the productions were seen (at a considerable distance, and usually from above the playing area), it was not possible to see the interior of the skene. (This is just as well, because the actors needed to change masks, attributes, and possibly costumes inside the skene.) The ekkyklema was used to display the bodies of those who had been killed indoors and to wheel out characters who were ill. The Old Comedy of Aristophanes frequently made fun of the stage machinery and drew deliberate attention to it, but it was an accepted convention in performances of tragedy.
Masks
Theatrical masks were made of wood (like the masks of Japanese Noh drama), leather (like the masks of the Commedia dell' arte, or cloth and flour paste (like many of the masks used at the Carnevale of Venice, and many masks made for modern productions today). Various theories are advanced in favor of each material, but no originals remain, only stone carvings which may have been used as mask-molds and the paintings on pottery.
Each set of three tragedies was followed by the performance of a satyr play, a short spoof of a myth related to the theme of at least one of the tragedies. The ordinary human characters in these plays wore tragic masks and costumes, but the chorus of half-human satyrs wore pug-nosed, pointy- eared, bearded masks, furry shorts, and normal-sized erect phalluses (probably made of leather.) Satyrs danced a special kind of dance called the sikinnis, in which they pranced like horses. The illustration is taken from the Pronomos Vase, which shows the entire cast of a satyr-play. The masks of Greek Old Comedy were distorted caricatures, sometimes of real people. They were meant to be ugly and silly in keeping with the ludicrous padded costumes worn by comic actors. While tragic actors wore elaborate pattern-woven garments which were similar to the robes of priests and musicians, comic actors wore loose body stockings padded at the breast, buttocks, and stomach, with long floppy phalluses for the male characters. (Except in the case of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, where they were long erect phalluses.) The chorus of Old Comedy was often composed of non-human creatures, such as wasps, frogs, birds, or even clouds. The 24 choreuts of Old Comedy were adult men, as were the three speaking actors. Greek New Comedy, which was first performed in the 4th century BCE, was in many ways more similar to Euripidean tragedy than to Greek Old Comedy. The masks were fairly naturalistic, the costumes devoid of padding. The plots went from the fantastical to the domestic. The TDA had been rebuilt in stone by the time Menander began producing New Comedies. The skene was more elaborate than before, and how had two or three doors instead of just one. The chorus was divorced from the action of the play and no longer the concern of the playwright at all. During the Hellenistic era the TDA was again rebuilt, with a skene several storeys high. Actors formed a professional union called the Artists of Dionysus, and were used as diplomatic couriers. By this time theaters had been built in many parts of Greece, including Epidaurus/Epidavros. After their conquest of Greece in the late second century BCE, the Romans also built or redesigned theaters and other performance spaces in Greece. Many of the theaters which you can see in Greece today are actually Roman.
View of the Theater of Dionysus from the back of the
theatron
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The
TDA was only one part of the precinct, or temenos of Dionysus. Initially
the precinct contained only the Older Temple of Dionysus and a sacrificial
altar. Later a hall, or stoa, was added, incorporating or obliterating the
Older Temple, and a second temple built further south. The highest row of
seats in the T DA was 125 feet above the lowest part of the precinct, and
before the construction of the stoa and the skene the audience could
easily see the temples and the sacrificial altars from the theater. More
importantly, from the Athenian point of view, Dionysus himself
(represented by his cult statue, which was seated in the front row) could
observe not only the choral performances being given in his honor but the
sacrifices which were made at his altar. 
In
the mid-fifth century, after rebuilding the ruins of the Acropolis,
Pericles built a recital-hall or odeion to the east of the TDA. This
building was roughly square in shape with a roof described as pyramidal or
conical. The Odeion of Pericles w as used for many purposes, one being the
proagon, a ceremony in which the dramatic poets announced the titles of
their plays and introduced their actors. Members of the chorus would wait
in the Odeion to make their entrance. 
Pericles also introduced the theoric fund to subsidize the cost of theater
tickets for the poor. The price of a ticket to the Theatre of Dionysus was
two obols, as much as a laborer earned in a day. 
Because Greek tragedy and comedy originated with the chorus, the most
important part of the performance space was the orchestra, which means 'a
place for dancing' (orchesis). A tragic chorus consisted of 12 or 15
choreuts (dancers), who were young men just about to enter military
service after some years of training. (Athenians were taught to sing and
dance from a very early age.) The effort of dancing and singing through
three tragedies and a satyr play was likened to that of competing in the
Olympic Games. 
The only remains of this first theater, used by Phrynicus, Aeschylus, and
possibly Sophocles, are six of the stones which made up the wall of the
orchestra. According to the original excavator, Dörpfeld, they once formed
part of a circle some 85-88 feet (24-27 meters) in diameter. The stonework
is in a rough style known as 'polygonal' which was used in early Greek
times. The initial theatron may not have required much excavation of the
hillside, but it was still necessary to shore up t he orchestra with
retaining walls and to move considerable quantities of earth to make an
appropriately level place for the choruses (dithyrambic, tragic, comic,
etc) to dance. 
There was no stage building until roughly 460 BCE. Aeschylus' Oresteia is
the earliest extant drama which uses the skene, or scene-building. His
other four plays (Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus
Bound) were meant to be performed in the orchestra, with the actors and
chorus on the same level. Previous to the invention of the skene,
entrances could only be made through the two eisodoi, or ramps, which led
onto the orchestra. 
The
archaeological evidence suggests that between 460 and 431 BCE (and
probably at the time the Odeion was built) the orchestra was shifted north
and west of its original position, and the hillside excavated further to
make a more secure foundatio n for the wooden seats. (By this point it is
likely that the seats were divided into at least ten different wedges, for
the ten 'tribes' which made up the citizens of Attica. By the fourth
century BCE, and possibly during the fifth, there were 13 of these wedges,
called kekrides in Greek.) In front of the new terrace wall, which became
the rear wall of the stoa, was a projecting rectangle of stone 26 feet
long and 23 feet 3 inches wide. The wooden posts which supported the
temporary skene fit into grooves in the terrace wall. 
The
fifth-century skene was not a permanent building, but a temporary
construction of wood, placed across the rear of the orchestral circle for
the dramatic performances at each year's festival. Nevertheless its
invention brought about a massive ch ange in theatrical practice and in
the semiotics of space. The interior of this flat-roofed building was the
'backstage' area, but in visual terms it was not so much 'behind' as
'within', an enclosed space which, like a real house, was the dominion of
female characters. As a rule, actors could and did step out of the skene
and join the chorus in the orchestra, but the chorus did not enter the
skene. 
The
fifth-century skene was a single-storey building with one central door,
which could take on the identity of a palace, a temple, a hut, or indeed a
cave if necessary. It is probable that some form of perspective painting
was used on the front o f the building (or on removable flats placed
before it) to suggest the type of building required for a particular play,
but such properties and scenery as existed were three-dimensional and more
symbolic than illusionistic. 
The
large size of the theater (in its final form it seated 20,000 people) and
the distance of even the nearest spectators from the performers (more than
10 meters) dictated a non-naturalistic approach to acting. All gestures
had to be large and definite so as to 'read' from the back rows. Facial
expression would have been invisible to all but the closest members of the
audience; the masks worn by the actors looked more 'natural' than bare
faces in the TDA. The masks of tragedy were of an ordinary, face-fitting
size, with wigs attach and open mouths to allow clear speech. Contrary to
some later theories, there were no 'megaphones' in the masks, and their
decoration and expression was quite subtle, as vase paintings from the 5th
and 4th centuries demonstrate. 
