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Greek Theatre

Greek Theatre. Greek Festivals. Festivals honored Olympian gods Ritual Competitions Olympics: Apollo Athletics Lyric Poetry Drama: Dionysos Dithyrambic Choruses Tragedy Comedy. Greek Theatre. 6th - 4th century bce Originated in festivals honoring Dionysos Tragedy:

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Greek Theatre

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  1. Greek Theatre

  2. Greek Festivals • Festivals honored Olympian gods • Ritual Competitions • Olympics: Apollo • Athletics • Lyric Poetry • Drama: Dionysos • Dithyrambic Choruses • Tragedy • Comedy

  3. Greek Theatre • 6th - 4th century bce • Originated in festivals honoring Dionysos • Tragedy: • Aeschylus (524-456 bce) • Sophocles (496-406 bce) • Euripides (480-406 bce) • Comedy: • Old Comedy: bawdy and satiric • Aristophanes (c. 485- c.385 bce) • New Comedy: social situations: • Menander (342-292 bce)

  4. Theatre Festivals • There were two festivals during which dramatic productions were staged. • The Greater Dionysia took place at the end of March or the beginning of April • Three days were given over to theatrical competition. • Three playwrights each took part in the contests: Each tragedian put on a trilogy in the morning and each comic writer put on one comedy in the afternoon. • The festival at Lenaes,staged at the end of January or the beginning of February, placed its emphasis on comedy

  5. Theatre at Epidaurus

  6. Curved seats may have aided acoustics.

  7. ACTORS • No tragedy used more than 3 actors • All actors were male • Costumes included character masks, and, in later years, raised boots • Acting must have more expressive than realistic

  8. Greek TheatreMasks

  9. THE CHORUS: the voice of the citizens

  10. ORIGINS of TRAGEDY • Tragedy, derived from the Greek words tragos (goat) and ode (song), told a story that was intended to teach religious lessons • Arose from dithyrambic choruses: The dithyramb was an ode to Dionysus. It was 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 a statue of Dionysus. • In the 6th c. bce Thespis of Attica added an actor who interacted with the chorus. This actor was called theprotagonist. • In 534 BC, the ruler of Athens, Pisistratus, changed the Dionysian Festivals and instituted drama competitions. Thespis won the first competition in 534 BC.

  11. Tragic Tetralogies • Each tragic dramatist had to present a trilogy of tragedies: connected narratively or dramatically • The entire trilogy was performed in one day. • The trilogy was followed by a satyr play - mocking and lightening the seriousness of the tragedies • A Tetralogy, then, is a series of 4 plays: 3 tragedies and one satyr play

  12. TRAGIC STRUCTURE PROLOGOS: Introductory scene PARADOS: Entry of chorus EPISODEION STASIMON 4-5 alternating scenes and choral odes, including the PAEAN: a hymn of praise to the gods EXODOS: final scene EPODE: final ode.

  13. ARISTOTLE’STHREE UNITIES • Aristotle’s On Tragedy is usually considered the first piece of Western dramatic criticism. In it, he proclaimed that tragedy must follow the 3 unities: • UNITY OF TIME: one day • UNITY OF PLACE: one setting • UNITY OF ACTION: one plot

  14. AESCHYLUS525-456 bce • General in Persian Wars -- fought at Marathon, Salamis, Platea • Fierce proponent of Athenian ideals • The first of the great Athenian dramatists, was also the first to express the agony of the individual caught in conflict. • Credited with adding the second actor • Only extant trilogy: The Oresteia • Agamemnon • The Libation Bearers • The Eumenides

  15. SOPHOCLES 496 - 406 bce • Wrote over 100 plays, but only seven survive • Credited with adding the third actor • Known as actor as well as dramatist • Most interested in human dynamics • THEBAN PLAYS: • Oedipus the King • Oedipus at Colonnus • Antigone

  16. EURIPIDES c.480-406 bce • The last of the three great Greek tragic dramatists -- 17 plays survive • Explored the theme of personal conflict within the polis and the depths of the individual • Disgust with events of Pelopennesian War brought about disillusionment with Athens • Men and women bring disaster on themselves because their passions overwhelm their reason

  17. TRAGIC ACTION ARETE, ARISTEIA: excellence HUBRIS: arrogance HAMARTIA: fatal mistake PERIPETEIA: reversal of fortune ANAGNORISIS: understanding KATHARSIS

  18. ORIGINS of OLD COMEDY • Arose from komos: songs of revelry, charms to avert evil, prayers for fertility sung to Dionysus • Chorus dressed ludicrously • Audience responded to choral komos and were gradually admitted into chorus • Chorus became two-part group with antiphonal song

  19. CONVENTIONS of OLD COMEDY • Scene set on Athenian street • “Events seldom occur – they are merely talked about” • Masks and fantastic costumes • Satiric of contemporary events and public figures • Bawdy

  20. COMIC STRUCTURE Prologos:introductory scene Parados: entry of 24 member chorus dressed in fantastic costume Agon:argument “just prior to the agon, the leader of the chorus always asks one contender to present his argument, and it is this contender who always loses” Parabasis:chorus’s great song 4-5 alternating scenes and choral odes illustrating the outcome of the agon Episodeion Stasimon Komos: final choral song and exit in wild revelry

  21. ARISTOPHANESc. 448 - 380 BCE • 30+ plays; 11 extant; 6 first prizes • Plays include • Clouds • Wasps • Birds • Lysistrata • Frogs (Lenaia 405) • Critique of Euripides & Socrates: reactionary conservative; social critic • Plato's epitaph for Aristophanes : “The Graces, seeking a shrine that could not fall, discovered the soul of Aristophanes.”

  22. New Comedy • By 317 BC, a new form had evolved that resembled modern farces: mistaken identities, ironic situations, ordinary characters and wit. • Basic plot: Boy meets girl, complications arise, boy gets girl – ends with betrothal or marriage. • 5 act structure: acts divided by interludes performed by the chorus • Stock characters: young lovers, parasite, lecherous old men, clever servants, etc. • Social rather than political satire

  23. MENANDER342-292 bce • 1905 a manuscript was discovered in Cairo that contained pieces of five Menander plays, and in 1957 a complete play, Diskolos(The Grouch, 317 BC), was unearthed in Egypt. • Menander’s comedy with its emphasis on mistaken identity, romance and situational humor, became the model for subsequent comedy, from the Romans to Shakespeare to Broadway.

  24. Parts of Menander’s comedies found their way into plays by • Roman playwrights: Plautus and Terence • Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors • Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

  25. The End

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