Greek Theatre Research

Greek Theatre

Social and Historical Background:

Greek Theatre originates from ancient Greece between 550BC – 220BC. It was originally created when a famous festival “Dionsyia” was taking place in the city of Athens to honour the Greek god Dionysus. Tragedy, comedy and Satyr were the three genres which originated here. Plays were performed in large, wide open spaces called Amphitheatres. This gives the audience an opportunity to see the performance as a whole, and understand everything that is going on during the performance. The acoustics are also a priority during these times, as no sort of electric equipment could be used or microphones. The design of the performance space helps project and amplify the sound to all areas of the theatre and audience. Actors would often be seen to use masks with mouthpieces which would help amplify the noise even further, acting as a sort of megaphone to project voice and noise.

Tragedy and Comedy are not what we see them as today. A Tragedy meant that the play would end without a happy ending, whilst the Comedy would mean it would end with a happy ending, usually a marriage of some sort. A Satirical play is something that often mocks something serious, such as society or politics. They’d often be seen as a group of satyrs, acting with mock drunkenness, sexuality, and pranks which often mock something that is serious to society.

A piece of Greek theatre usually consisted of a few actors and a Greek chorus. The Greek chorus consists of a group of people who act in unison to tell the story or comment on a situation. The majority of the time they keep together, and every movement, speech, pitch, emotion etc have to be the same so that it keeps the chorus together. There are times when some actors may step forward from the chorus to explain the next part of the story or speak briefly.

It was known that the drama always involved only a chorus, until one man named Thespis left the chorus, jumped onto the alter and claimed he was “playing the role of god”. New inventions were further added so that each playwright would have to submit 3 tragedies and either 1 satyr or 1 comedy as part of a Greek contests. From these contests we gained some majorly successful playwrights of the Greek era. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the biggest names of Greek Theatre.

       Sophocles                                                     Euripedes                                            Aeschylus

Sophocles:

Sophocles wrote 123 plays in his lifetime. He was later than Aeschylus and earlier than Euripides, and only 7 of his plays in total have survived to the modern day; Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. The most famous of his work are the Theban plays, and these together are Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. He was one of the first to develop the actor as an individual rather than an ensemble. He took the idea of actors acting a plot, lowering the significance of the chorus, and he started to develop his characters much more than any other playwrights before him. This really influenced the Greek drama, and helped bring the industry forward. He introduced the third actor, which everyone started to adopt into their own plays.