4. Ancient Greece
• The City-States
– Athens
Ancient Greece wasn’t just one – Corinth
unified country. It was made
up of a bunch of independent
– Sparta
city-states… and they didn’t
always get along.
– Thebes
– And MANY others
• Greco-Persian Wars
• Peloponnesian War
5. Colchis –
Medea’s
Home
The pink dots on
the map are some
of the key Greek
city-states. And
way out in the
corner – not even
on the map – is
the land Medea
came from. She
would have been
looked on as an
outsider and a
barbarian.
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=1033&rendTypeId=4
6. Greek Theatre Was…
• Ritual
– Plays were performed as part of a festival
honoring the god Dionysus – plays were
ONLY performed as part of these festivals,
not simply for entertainment
• Competitive
– 3 Playwrights would submit 3 tragedies (a
triology) and a satyr play, competing for
prizes and honors
• Subsidized
– These theatre festivals were paid for by the
city-state
• Choral
– The plays included a chorus: a group of actors
who speak, move and think as a unit. We’ll
talk more about them later.
7. Origins of Greek Theatre
The Cult of Dionysus
• God of fertility and procreation (and wine)
• Rites of worship included alcoholic
intoxication, orgies, human and animal
sacrifice – ‘tragoidia’
• Controversial rites involved uninhibited
singing and dancing – ‘ecstasis’
• An essential part of the rites of Dionysus
was the dithyramb. The word means
'choric hymn'. This chant or hymn was
probably introduced into Greece early
accompanied by mimic gestures and,
probably, music.
8. Theatre Festivals
• Though there were many
festivals, the main one was the
City Dionysia, an annual theatre
If this festival was run for
about 350 years, and
festival honoring (you guessed it)
each year 3 playwrights Dionysus
submitted 3 plays
– Started 534 BCE
apiece, that makes about
3,150 plays. You know – Competition made up of
how many complete • 3 tragedies and a satyr play (brief
scripts we have from
comic pieces usually made up of
Greece?
raunchy jokes and slapstick humor) by
32 3 playwrights
That’s 1% • 5 comedies by 5 playwrights (added
later)
9. Component Parts of a Greek
Theatre
• Theatron: Greek word meaning
“Seeing Place” – the word for
the audience portion of the
theatre
• Orchestra: Greek word
meaning “Dancing Place” – the
word for the stage portion of
the theatre
• Thymele: the word for the altar
in the middle of the orchestra
• Parados: The two entrance
pathways leading to the stage
• Skene: The building that forms
the back wall of the theatre – it
would have been where the
actors could go to be off stage
10. Other Cool Greek Stuff
• Ekkyklema – violence did not happen on stage
in Greek theatre, so they used a wheeled cart
called the ekkyklema to bring on the “bodies”
of the dead characters – showing the evidence
of the violence
• Periaktoi – three-sided pieces of scenery with
different scenes on each side – they could
rotate to show different scenes
• Machina – a crane used to lift actors or even
chariots over the skene, generally to represent
the entrance of a god. This is where the term
Periaktoi
“Deus ex Machina” (God from the machine)
comes from – a term describing endings that
seem a little too easy, too “ta-da-nick-of-time.”
11. The Greek Theatre
This is a famous
theatre that’s still
standing. The
acoustics are so
good that if you
stand on the top
row, you can hear
someone light a
match in the center
of the stage.
12. Here’s a computer
reconstruction of what
the theatre might have
looked like when it was
new.
13. Masks and Costumes
Actors wore masks because it would • Masks and costumes could
have been a sin to pretend to be give the audience information
someone else. The mask shows that about the characters’
the actors do not believe that they are – Gender
the characters and are not trying to lie – Ethnicity
to the city.
– Social Class
• All characters were masked
• There were conventions for
what certain colors meant –
the audience would
automatically know something
about a character if they were
wearing a certain color – their
status, their occupation, etc.
• Masks were probably made
out of wood, so none have
survived, but pictures of them
have.
14. The Chorus
• 15 men
• Paid for by the CHOREGUS
– It was an honor for the
member of the city who was
selected to rehearse and
fund the chorus
• Rehearsed/Trained for up to
11 months
• Singing and Dancing crucial -
mostly in unison, sometimes
split in two groups
• Accompanied by a flute
player
15. Chorus
The chorus served a variety of purposes in
the plays
•Character – they could interact with other
characters
•Establish social/ethical framework – they
could give information about the rules of the
world of the play
•Ideal Spectator – they could react to the action
– showing the audience how they should react
•Establish mood – this sort of speaks for itself
•Spectacle – they danced and moved in unison,
creating something interesting and beautiful to
look at
•Rhythm – they sang, and they also broke up
the rhythm of the story, inserting choral odes
in between scenes to make sure the audience
was following along.
16. The Actors
• The Greek word for actors was
HYPOKRITĒS: it literally means “The
Answerer”
• All men – women were not allowed on
stage: since the plays were religious
rituals, it was not appropriate for those
“inferior” women to participate in that
way.
• The actors were not professional actors,
they were just normal members of the
city who were called up to serve their
community… kinda like jury duty
• All the actors wore masks – which
means they really had to project to be
heard in those giant theatres
17. Athenian Squares
Here’s a
little who’s
who of the
Euripides Plato Aristotle
most
important
names in
Greek
theatre
Lady Gaga Aeschylus Aristophanes
Thespis Sophocles Menander
18. Aristotle
384-322 BCE
Student of Plato
wrote Poetics
Plot
Character
Language
Thought/Idea
Music
You Spectacle
remember
him…
19. Aristotle
What makes good tragedy? didn’t stop
with the 6
elements of
drama…
Mimesis (imitation) – the greatest pleasure
and learning tool for humans is in imitating
what they see
Complete Action – plays should imitate a
plot from beginning to end in a logical and
complete sequence
Magnitude – the play should be of the
appropriate length for people to sit through
it comfortably and to hold it in their mind at
one time
Catharsis – by watching the suffering of
the characters, the audience experiences
a purging of unproductive emotions,
thereby making them better citizens
20. Character
Aristotle pointed out that
these superior
characters, these “Tragic
Heroes,” did what they
thought was right, but
because of some flaw or
fault, they missed the
mark. He referred to this
as “hamartia” – an
archery term meaning “to
aim for the target, but
miss”
21. Thespis
• 6th Century BCE
• “The First Actor” – the general belief is that
Thespis was the first person to step out of the
chorus and speak on his own
• Semi-legendary – we have no real way of
knowing this for sure, so he’s kind of a
legend, but we generally accept it to be true.
• He also wrote for one actor and a chorus
• None of his work has survived
• His name is where we get the term
“Thespian” to describe an actor
23. Aeschylus
• 525-455 BCE
• The earliest playwright whose plays have
survived
• Added the second actor (which means
dialogue… which means theatre as we know it)
• Wrote 70+ plays… we have 7
• Wrote The Oresteia: each playwright submitted
three tragedies that were meant to function as
a trilogy… but we only have pieces of most of
them. This is the only one that has survived in
its entirety: Agammemnon, The Choreophorae,
The Eumenides
24. Sophocles
• 496-406 BCE
• Praised by Aristotle as the
greatest tragedian
• Added the third actor (things are really
getting crazy now!)
• Reduced the role of the chorus
• Wrote 123+ plays… we have 7
• Wrote Antigone, Oedipus Rex
• Fragments of one of his plays (Inachos)
were found inside a mummified
crocodile in 2003… history is cool
25. Euripides Tot
favo
my
ally
Gre rite
• 480-406 BCE ek!
• Known for questioning societal norms
• Further reduced the role of the chorus
• Wrote about subjects that weren’t always
deemed good enough for tragedy – women,
slaves, etc.
• His tragedies are more “human” than Sophocles
and Aeschylus, and he was more loose with form
• Only won the City Dionysia 4 times – once after he
was dead – he was less popular with the judges, but
probably more popular with the people
• Wrote 92+ plays… we have 18
• Wrote Medea, The Trojan Women, The Bacchae
26. Yes… they believed that tragedy was the greatest form of drama… but
there are two masks in the theatre symbol… so we can’t forget about
comedy! Aristotle did briefly mention comedy in Poetics, but he said he
was going to talk about it in another book. If he did, it didn’t survive.
Sadness.
28. Aristophanes
• 446-386 BCE
• The only example of Old Comedy that
we have – we have 11 of his plays
• Subjects included – domestic
disputes, politics, sex, bodily
functions and stupid people… sound
familiar? You don’t think any of us
• Known for political satire – he loved to
point out what was ridiculous about
Greek society
• Wrote The Frogs, The Birds, The Wasps,
Lysistrata, The Clouds, etc.
29. Menander
• 342-291 BCE
• The only writer of New Comedy
that we have left – we have ONE
complete play
• His plays were more about
domestic issues than about satire
– it turns out that emperors didn’t
have much of a sense of humor
• Wrote The Grouch
30. Medea’s Myth
• Medea was the daughter of King Aeetes of
Chochis, the granddaughter of the sun god
Helios, and a pretty powerful sorceress
• Jason was sent from Iolchus where his father
had been unseated by his uncle Pelias– he was
supposed to bring back the golden fleece
• Medea and Jason fell in love, so she betrayed
her father by helping Jason, then she murdered
her brother and tossed the pieces of his bodies
behind their getaway ship so that her father
would have to stop to pick them up for burial
• When they get back, Jason’s uncle won’t turn
over the throne to Jason, so Medea bewitched
Pelias’s daughters so they would murder their
father.
31. Medea’s Myth
• So… Jason married Medea and had kids…
and knowing all the things she did to his family
and her own family… he dumps her for
someone else. Smart.
• After the action of the play, Medea leaves on
her flying chariot, marries King Aegeus and
bears him a son – Medus
• Later, Aegeus’s long lost son Thesus returns,
so Medea tries to kill him in order to ensure her
own son’s claim on the throne. Her plan
doesn’t work, so she has to flee
• One story says that then she went back to
Colchis where her father had been deposed,
so she kissed the new king
• Another story says that she and Medus fled to
some other kingdom where he became king
32. This is a cloud of the 150
most-used words in Medea.
The larger the word, the more
it is used. There is clearly a
concern with family, eh?
33. Medea Performed
On the next few slides, you’ll
see images from different
performances of Medea. This
is a play from a LOOOOOONG
time ago… why are we still so
interested in it? What does this
play have to say to us today?
42. Medea on Broadway 2002
The actress who
played Medea in this
2002 production may
look a little familiar…
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/01/01/theater/20080102_SHAW_SLIDESHOW_5.html