Ancient Greek Theatre
Prologue
Western theatre was born in Athens
twenty-five hundred years ago.
 Theatre culture was first formed between
600 and 200 BC
 That form, technique, and terminology
have lasted two millennia
 Many of the plays from Ancient Greece are
still considered the greatest work in
theatre.

Five major playwrights still celebrated
 Only two other periods in theatre history
which approached the greatness of
ancient Athens

 Elizabethan
– produced Shakespeare
 Twentieth Century – produced thousands of
fine plays and films – the form and often
content were based on innovations of ancient
Athenians.
Cult of Dionysus
Theatre of Ancient Greece evolved from
religious rites which date to 1200 BC.
 Greece was populated by primitive tribes.
 In a northern tribe (Thrace) a cult arose
that worshipped Dionysus, the god of
human and agricultural fertility.
 Cult of Dionysus practiced ritual
celebrations which included intoxication,

orgies, human and animal sacrifices, and
hysterical rampages by women.
 Most controversial practice involved
uninhibited dancing and emotions displays
that created an altered mental state.
 This altered state was known as ecstasis,
from which the word ecstasy is derived.
 Ecstasy was an important concept to the
Greeks, who came to theatre as a way to
release powerful emotions.
New cult met some resistance, it spread
south through the tribes of Greece over
the next six centuries.
 By 600 BC the rites of Dionysus had
become mainstream and more civilized
and were practiced every Spring
throughout much of Greece.

The Dithyramb

Key part of the rite of Dionysus was the
dithyramb, an ode to Dionysus.
Usually performed by a chorus
of fifty men dressed as satyrs,
mythological half-human,
half-goat servants of Dionysus.


They played drums, lyres, and flutes, and
chanted as they danced around an effigy
of Dionysus.
Began as a purely religious ceremony, like
a hymn in a mass
 Over time the dithyramb would evolve into
stories, drama, and the play form we are
all familiar with.

The Main Act:
The Golden Age of Greek Theatre
By 600 BC Greece was divided in citystates, separate nations centered around
major cities and regions.
 Most prominent was Athens, were at least
150,000 people lived.
 Here the Rites of Dionysus evolved into
what we know today as theatre.

Thespis
In 600 BC, Arion of Mehtymna wrote down
formal lyrics for the dithyramb.
 During the next 75 years, Thespis of
Attica added an actor who interacted with
the chorus.
 The actor was called the protagonist,
meaning the main character.
 The word thespian, meaning actor,
comes from this writer.


Thespis is credited also credited with
inventing the touring acting troupe, since
he toured Greece with a group of actors in
a cart that doubled as a stage.
Athenian Drama Competitions
In 534 BC, Pisistratus, ruler of Athens,
changed the Dionysian Festivals and
instituted drama competitions.
 Thespis won the first competition in 534
BC.
 Over the next fifty years, the competitions
became very popular, annual events.

Amphitheatres
During this time, major theatres were
constructed.
 Theatre of Dionysus in Athens was one of
the largest and most popular.

 Built
at the foot of the Acropolis
 Could seat 17,000 people
 At height of popularity, competitions drew up
to 30,000 spectators.
The words theatre and amphitheatre
are derived from the Greek word
theatron, which referred to the wooden
spectator stands erected on the hillsides.
 The word orchestra is derived from the
Greek word for a platform between the
raised stage and the audience on which
the chorus was situated.

How Plays Were Performed
Daytime
 Competitions lasted all day for several
days.
 Little or no make-up, but carried
exaggerated masks and wore cothornos
(leather boots laced up to knee)
 Little or no scenery
 Action took place in the orchestra area
 Action moved to stage when focus moved
from chorus to single character

Tragedy
Between 600 and 500 BC the dityramb
evolved into new forms, most notable
being the tragedy and satyr play.
 Tragedy, derived from the Greek tragos
(goat) and ode (song) was intended to
teach a religious lesson.
 Much like Biblical parables – designed to
show right & wrong path in life

Tragedies were not simply plays with bad
endings, nor pathos ( meaning pitiable
people or events). They depicted the life
voyages of people who steered
themselves on collision courses with
society, life’s rules, or simple fate.
 Tragic protagonist is one who refuses to
acquiesce to fate or life’s rules, either out
of character weakness or strength.
 Main fault often is hubris – or arrogance.

Arrogance could be not accepting the
hand that life deals (i.e. fate, as in
Oedipus Rex), or
 Arrogance of assuming the right to kill
 Arrogance of assuming the right to seek
vengeance
 In all, the protagonist’s ultimate collision
with fate, reality, or society in inevitable
and irrevocable.

Culture That Created Tragedy
Outgrowth of what was happening in
Athens
 Greek religion had dictated how people
should think & behave for centuries.
 Birth of free thought & intellectual inquiry.
 Athens in the 4th & 5th centuries was
bustling with radical ideas like democracy,
philosophy, mathematics, & science.

Philosophers – Plato, Socrates, Aristotle,
Epicurus, Democritus
 Historians – Thucydides, Herodotus
 Scientists & mathematicians – Thales,
Hippocrates, Archimedes, Euclid (Euclidian
geometry), Pythagoras (the Pythagorean
theorem), & Eratosthenes, Hero (the
steam engine), Hipparchus, Ptolemy
 Clearing a time blossoming of free thought
after years of religious dicta

Ancient Athens resembled Renaissance
England, which not coincidentally spawned
the next great era in theatre.
 In essence, the ancient Athenians had
begun to question how nature worked,
how society should work, and what man’s
role was in the scheme of things.
 Tragedy was the poets’ answer to some of
these question.

How should one behave?
 How can one accept the injustice of life?
 What is the price of hubris (great pride)?
 When reading a soliloquy from a Greek
tragedy or one from Hamlet or Macbeth,
you will hear these questions being asked.

Tragedy Form
Prologue – describes situation and sets
the scene
 Parados – an ode sung by the chorus as it
made its entrance
 Five dramatic scenes – each followed by a
Komos (exchange of laments by the
chorus & protagonist)
 Exodus – climax & conclusion

Well-known Writers & Contributions
Aeschylus – Turned dithyramb into drama,
added second actor to interact with first,
introduced props & scenery, reduced the
role of the chorus
 Aeschylus death in 456 BC coincided with
Periclean Age – when government
embraced democracy (2/3 however, were
slaves), and art flourished

Socrates & Plato expounded their
philosophies, and Sophocles, Euripides, &
Aristophanes wrote some of the worlds
BEST plays.
 Sophocles – defeated Aeschylus in
competition in 468 BC. His contributions
included adding third actor & emphasis on
drama between humans rather than
humans & gods.

Sophocles plays are infused with irony. In
The Oedipus Trilogy, Oedipus seeks the
truth about his father’s murder. The truth
that awaits him however, is that he is the
murderer.
 Sophocles plays are about the folly of
arrogance and the wisdom of accepting
fate. He believed in the Greek gods, but
his plays are suffused with existential
insights that have been voiced since.

Sophocles won 20 competitions
 Euripides eclipsed both Sophocles &
Aeschylus in popularity. The modern
attraction to him stems largely from his
point of view, which resembles today’s
attitudes more than those of fifth-century
BC.
 His plays were not about gods or royalty,
but real people. He placed peasant
alongside princes and gave their feelings
equal weight.

Euripides showed the reality of war,
criticized religion, and portrayed society’s
forgotten – women, slaves, the old
 Euripides is credited with adding the
dramatic form of the prologue, which sets
the stage.
 His plays have a poignant realism

Comedy
Also thrived
 Komodos – meaning merry-making and
singing
 Produced many lasting comedies
 Cast the mold for Roman, Elizabethan, &
modern comedies
 Not was well preserved

The Final Curtain
By the time of Sophocles’ death in 406 BC,
128 years after Thespis’ victory in the first
Athenian drama competition, the golden
era of Greek drama was waning.
 Athens, whose free-thinking culture had
spawned the birth of theatre, would be
overrun in 404 BC by the Spartans, and
would later be torn apart by constant
warring with other city states.

Eventually falls under the dominion of
Alexander the Great and his Macedonian
armies.
 Theatre continued, but it would not return
to the same creative heights until
Elizabethan England two millennia later

Oedipus Trilogy
Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at
Colonus

Antigone –

Probably the first of the three plays that
Sophocles wrote, although the events
dramatized in it happen last. Antigone is one of
the first heroines in literature, woman who fight
against a male power structure, exhibiting
greater bravery than any of the men who scorn
her. Antigone is not only a feminist play but a
radical one as well, making rebellion against
authority appear splendid & noble.

If we think of Antigone as something
merely ancient, we make the same error
as the Nazi censors. It is not only
academic, but an extremely powerful text.
Oedipus Rex (the King)

The story of Oedipus was well known to
Sophocles’ audience. Odeipus arrives to
hear of his father’s murder and the play is
focused on the finding of that knowledge
and the destruction of Oedipus.
Oedipus at Colonus
Probably truly a prequel & written after
Antigone at the end of Sophocles’ life
 Not a tragedy in the normal sense of the
word, but a quiet, religious play. No
fireworks
 Not as well-known or performed as often
