Background on Ancient Greek Theater
Entrance to the Roman Theater of Dionysos
According to legend, late in the sixth century BCE a man named Thespis first had the idea to add speaking actors to the performances of choral song and dance that occurred on many occasions throughout Greece. (That is why actors are sometimes called 'thespians'.) Masked actors performed outdoors, in daylight, before audiences of 12,000 or more at festivals in honor of Dionysus, the god of festivals.
The comedy and tragedy that developed in Athens and flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (Before Common Era) have influenced nearly all subsequent Western drama, starting with that of the Romans. When the Romans conquered Greece, they took Greek literature back to Italy and set about making it their own. Most of the remains of the theater of Dionysus which we can see in Athens today date to Roman times and not the fifth century BCE.
Ancient Greek theater normally means Greek Theater in Athens during the 5th Century BCE. These early dramas did more that act a story. These were stylized dramas with meanings behind the obvious. Understanding a Greek play is only possible if the symbolic significance of the actions, actors, and stage is revealed.
Many words associated with theater have roots in Greek. Our word theater is derived from the Greek word theatron, which contains the stem of the verb theasthai 'to view as spectators.’ Drama is a Greek word meaning 'action', related to the verb dran 'to do'. Many dramas were presented in the theater in Athens, yet only 43 plays have been found intact. There were, however, many plays, comedies, and commentaries left in fragments. The theater of Dionysus that survives today holds the remains of an elaborate stone skene; its paved orchestra and marble seats were built in the last part of the fourth century BC. This stone theater had a capacity of approximately 15,000 spectators; the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were held in the earlier wooden theaters and viewed by audiences of comparable numbers.
Start of Ancient Greek Theater
Ancient Greek theater was a "... mixture of myth, legend, philosophy, social commentary, poetry, dance, music, public participation, and visual splendor." It began as a religious ceremony. The theater of Dionysus was, like all ancient Greek theaters, an open-air auditorium and, due to the lack of adequate artificial lighting, performances took place during the day. Scenes set at night had to be identified as such by the actors or the chorus; the audience, upon receiving these verbal cues, had to use its imagination. The action of a tragedy normally takes place in front of palaces, temples and other outdoor settings. This seemed natural to the ancient audience because Greek public affairs, whether civic or religious, were conducted out of doors as was much of Greek private life due to the relatively mild climate of the Aegean area.
The Athenian theater focused on Dionysus, the god of fertility, wine, agriculture and sexuality.
Athenians had an annual fertility festival in March with one week of public wine drinking and orgies. Their religious rite was performed as a dithyrambos, an ancient dance and chant to the fertility god, normally performed while drunk outside in bowl-like craters. This festival celebrated the birth of the wine god, Dionysus and the great grapes that made the wine. This festival was performed yearly at four tribal festivals, called an orgia. It was also called the "Festival of the Wine Jugs" and "Old Dionysia," as stated by Cohen. The religious rites for these ceremonies were eventually written down in verse form and later became plays.
Themes of the Ancient Greek Theater
The ancient Greek theater consisted of loud music, bright colors, and extensive dancing. Their plays showed:
Parts of a play
An ancient Greek play consisted of three major parts. The play began with a prologue, a simple speech. Then, there was the entrance (parodos) of the chorus. Finally, there were major episodes (notice “odes”) which were scenes or acts of the play.
Types of Ancient Greek Plays
Comedy and Tragedy were two major types of Greek plays and the playwrights did not mix them in the same play.
Chorus members dressed in goatskins because the goat was sacred to Dionysius, and goats were prizes awarded to the best drama. Later cash prizes were awarded to the winning playwrights and actors, but not enough for the dramatists to make a living doing only theater.
Greek tragedy is an expression of man realizing that his human standards have become questionable.
In a Greek tragedy, a character finds himself always in situations of extraordinary tension and conflict; he seems to be deprived of all outward help and is forced to rely entirely upon himself. Every tragic situation results in severest suffering for the protagonist. This suffering – though not necessarily leading to destruction – and death, always carries with it the serious danger of impending ruin.
Tragedy has a characteristic structure in which scenes of dialogue alternate with choral songs. This arrangement allows the chorus to comment in its song in a general way on what has been said and/or done in the preceding scene.
Most tragedies begin with an opening scene of expository dialogue or monologue called a prologue.
After the prologue the chorus marches into the orchestra chanting the parodos. Then follows a scene of dialogue called an episode, which in turn is followed by the first stasimon. The alternation of episode and stasimon continues until the last stasimon, after which there is a final scene of dialogue called an exodos 'exit' scene'. The exodos is in general a scene of dialogue, but, as in the case of episodes, sometimes songs are included, especially in the form of a kommos.
Here is the structure of a typical tragedy (some tragedies have one more or one less episode and stasimon):
Ancient Greek Stage
The ancient Greek theater had a distinctive setup. No other theater had the same design. Originally, the theater was made to hold religious ceremonies. There was an altar (thymeli) to the gods, a tithing house, and a tiring house (dressing room). The tithing house and tiring house were both made of wood. As the theater became more important, the setup began to change. The altar got smaller. The tithing house became a treasury. The tiring house joined with the skene, the setting where actors performed. The tiring house also became an entrance and exit.
The theater was constructed of three major parts: skene, orchestra, theatron.
Skene
The skene was originally a hut, tent, or booth; skene means “tent” and refers to a wooden wall having doors and painted to represent a palace, temple or whatever setting was required. The wall, which eventually became a full-fledged stage building, probably acquired this name because it replaced the original tent. In the beginning, the skene was a palace or a temple. In time, the skene was a stone building used as a changing room for the actors. Later, the play’s scenery was painted on the proskenion. In the foreground is the orchestra.
Mechane
This is a mechanical device – a 'theatrical machine' or crane—to which a cable with a harness for an actor was attached. This device allowed an actor portraying a god or goddess to arrive on scene in the most realistic way possible, from the sky. The mechane deposited the actor on top of the skene so that he as a deity could address the human characters from an appropriately higher level.
This device was not exclusively limited to use by divine characters, but was employed whenever the plot required any character to fly.
One machine, the Aeorema, was a crane that enabled the gods to appear on the orchestra. Another machine, the Periactoi, was placed inside pillars on the left and right side of the stage to change the background of the skene. The last machine, the Ekeclema, was a platform on wheels to bring the bodies of the dead out to show the audience.
This was necessary since murder and suicide never took place in front of the audience.
Deus Ex Machina
This means, “'the god from the machine.” Deus ex machina is often used to refer to the appearance of gods by means of the mechane in tragedy. This phrase also refers to an improbable character or event introduced by an author to resolve a difficult situation.
This secondary meaning of deus ex machina developed from the practice of inferior ancient dramatists who introduced a god at the end of a play in order to untangle a badly snarled plot
Orchestra
The orchestra was the main part of the stage where the chorus was located. The word orchestra was derived from the word orcheisthai. Literally translated, it means the dancing place. It was the place where the chorus danced and sang.
During the harvesting season, it was used for threshing (beating wheat to remove the grain). The orchestra was in front of the proskenion and at the center of the theater. It had the thymeli in it, which began as an altar, but later became the place for the chorus leader, the Coryphaeus (Choragos), to stand.
Stage
Some historians say that the stage was originally a rectangle, and then became a circle. Others say that the stage has always been a circle. The stage was against the back wall. It was a narrow, raised platform (like a dias). It was called the Logeion, and was designed so that the actors could be separated from the chorus.
Theatron
The theatron was the auditorium of the Greek theater. It was called theatron because of its shape. At first spectators were sitting around the orchestra. Later, the Greeks started building the (wooden at the beginning, from stone later) theatron. Its shape was semi-circular, built around the orchestra, and divided in two Diazoma, the upper and the lower. (Description).
Entrances
The way the actors entered the stage also told much about what is going on. For example, in most theaters there were normally two parodos, or entrances. If the hypocrits came in from the right parodi, then they had just come from a city or port. If they came in from the left parodi, then they had just come from the fields or abroad.
Outside of the Theater
The outside of the theater was made of stone. The seats were stone and carved into a hill. Unlike modern theater, the seats weren’t setup so that the better seats were all together, and the worse seats were all together. Instead, every Greek "tribe" sat in a different section.
The front rows, called Proedria, were reserved for the priests. The lay audiences were in the section for their tribe.
The most honorable person in the audience would have been the priest of Elefthereos Dionyssos.
Indoor Theaters
There were indoor theaters also; they were called Odeia and used for musical performances and tragedies.
Ancient Greek Actors
Actors
When Greek theater began in a dithyrambous, there were no actors. The poet Thespis was the first to use actors; Aeschylos was the second, and Sophocles was the third. Always men, the actors were originally called hypocrites and were the leading characters.
Female roles were played by males before they hit puberty and before their voices changed. Those in the orchestra were the followers, most commonly know as the chorus.
The actors in tragedy were hired and paid by the state and assigned to the tragic poets, probably by lot. By the middle of the fifth century, three actors were required for the performance of a tragedy.
In descending order of importance of the roles they assumed, they were called
the protagonist 'first actor', deuteragonist 'second actor' and tritagonist 'third actor'.
The protagonist took the role of the most important character in the play while the other two actors played the lesser roles. Since most plays have more than two or three characters (although never more than three speaking actors in the same scene), all three actors played multiple roles.
The main duty of an actor was, of course, to speak the dialogue assigned to his characters. This, however, was not the only responsibility of the actor. He occasionally had to sing songs solo or with the chorus or with other actors (e.g., a song of lament called a kommos).
The combination of acting and singing ability must have been as rare in the ancient world as it is today.
Ancient Greek Costumes
The costumes in the ancient Greek theater also have a symbolic significance in the way the production is understood.
Since the hypocrits were all male, it was necessary to make them look female for female roles. "In order to have a female appearance, they were playing wearing the ‘prosterniad’ before the chest and the ‘progastrida’ before the belly.
In order to look taller and more impressive they were wearing ‘cothornous’ (wooden shoes with tall heels)" (Actors). The shoes that they wore had no left and right, but were the same for both sides.
They also wore long robes with vertical stripes. The female masks had bigger mouths and eyes.
Costumes did many things. They showed whether the actor was:
Male female rich poor priest or any other occupations
The costumes allowed the audience to know whom the actor was trying to portray.
The Actors’ Masks
The most essential part of the actors’ costumes was the mask. These masks had big holes for the mouth and the eyes. The chorus members also wore masks and all were similar to the other’s, but the hypocrits’ masks were different from each other hypocrit.
The masks are personalized for each character; specific emotions were expressed on the mask so the audience knew if a character was happy, upset, tired, or scared. The masks with subtle variations also helped the audience identify the sex, age, and social rank of the characters. It also amplified the hypocrit’s voice, making it possible to hear him everywhere in the theatron. Because the masks were pretty simple, the audience would be able to pay more attention to the hypocrit’s actions rather than his appearances.
The fact that the chorus remained in the orchestra throughout the play and sang and danced choral songs between the episodes allowed the actors to exit after an episode so as to change mask and costume and assume a new role in the next episode without any illusion-destroying interruption in the play.
The Chorus
The chorus was one of the most important components of the play. It narrates and reflects on the action. Without them, the audience would have no background information, and the play would be more confusing.
The first function of a tragic chorus was to chant an entrance song called a parodos as they marched into the orchestra. The entrance song took its name from the two ramps (parodoi) on either side of the orchestra that the chorus used as it made its way into the orchestra.
Once the chorus had taken its position in the orchestra, its duties were twofold. It engaged in dialogue with characters through its leader, the Coryphaeus (Choragos), who alone spoke the lines of dialogue assigned to the chorus.
The chorus' most important function was to sing and dance choral songs called stasima (singular = stasimon).
Originally, the chorus had 50 members. Then it was reduced to 15. The members dressed in goatskins because the goat was sacred to Dionysus and goats were prizes awarded to the best plays.
They danced in the orchestra to show what was going on in the scene. They were also like the extras in the play. If a large crowd was needed, they were the crowd.
The chorus entered from the two paradoi in three rows of five people. They formed little squares between them.
The chorus was called by different names for each kind of play, reflecting a different emotion.
Stage Directions for Ancient Greek Theater
Stage Directions
The stage directions, or how the actors move on the stage, reveal what is going on. For example, in reading a Greek play, a setting for the play is noted. In a production, the setting would have been orally transferred to the audience from the leader of the chorus, the Coryphaeus (Choragos).
The following is an example of what the Choragos would say to set the scene:
(SCENE:--Before the royal palace of Oedipus at Thebes. In front of the large central doors there is an altar; a smaller altar stands also near each of the two side-doors. Suppliants--old men, youths, and young children--are seated on the steps of the altars. They are dressed in white tunics and cloaks,--their hair bound with white fillets. On the altars they have laid down olive-branches wreathed with fillets of wool. The PRIEST OF ZEUS, a venerable man, is alone standing, facing the central doors of the palace. They are now thrown open. Followed by two attendants, who place themselves on either side of the doors, Oedipus enters, in the robes of a king. For a moment, he gazes silently on the groups at the altar, and then speaks.) (Sophocles 121)
This speech by the Choragos before a scene opens in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles shows where people are placed at the beginning of the play and allows those in the theatron to know what is happening.
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