Transcript 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:
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)
Theatre Festivals
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 each contest
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
Theatre at Epidaurus
Curved seats may have aided acoustics
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
Greek Theatre
Masks
THE CHORUS:
the voice of the citizens
ORIGINS of TRAGEDY
 Tragedy, derived from the Greek words tragos (goat) and
ode (song), told a story that was intended to teach religious
lessons
 Tragedy 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.
 In the 6th c. bce Thespis of Attica added an actor who
interacted with the chorus. This actor was called the
protagonist.
 In 534 BC, the ruler of Athens, Pisistratus, changed the
Dionysian Festivals and instituted drama competitions.
Thespis won the first competition in 534 BC.
Dionysus
and Satyr
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
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.
ARISTOTLE’S
THREE 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
Melpomene,
the Muse
of Tragedy
AESCHYLUS 
525-456 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
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
 Antigone
 Oedipus at Colonnus
EURIPIDES c.480-406 bce
 The last of the thee great Greek
tragic dramatists -- 17 plays
survive including Medea, The
Trojan Women, The Bacchae
 Explored the theme of personal
conflict within the polis and the
depths of the individual
 Disgust with events of
Peloponnesian War brought about
disillusionment with Athens
 Men and women bring disaster on
themselves because their passions
overwhelm their reason
TRAGIC ACTION
ARETE, ARISTEIA: excellence
HUBRIS: arrogance
HAMARTIA: fatal mistake
PERIPETEIA: reversal of fortune
ANAGNORISIS: understanding
KATHARSIS
Roman mosaic of Aeschylus and Satyr play cast
Ancient
Comedy
Scene from Lenaian Festival
c. 490-480 bce
ORIGINS of GREEK
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
 Invention of comic chorus is attributed to
Susarion
 Dorian and Sicilian farces were precursors of Old
Comedy
CONVENTIONS of OLD COMEDY
 Scene set on Athenian street
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
“Events seldom occur – they are merely talked about”
Masks and fantastic costumes
Satiric of contemporary events and public figures
Bawdy
Scene from Aristophanes’
The Frogs
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
Episodeion
Stasimon
4-5 alternating scenes and choral
odes illustrating the outcome of
the agon
Komos: final choral song and exit in wild revelry
 30+ plays; 11 extant;
6 first prizes
 Plays include
Clouds
Wasps
Birds
Lysistrata
Frogs
 Critiques 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.”
ARISTOPHANES
c. 448 - 380 BCE
The Birds
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
Terracotta figurines of New Comedy actors
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.
MENANDER
342-292 bce
Mosaic of
Menander’s
Samia
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.
Roman Theatre
ROMAN THEATRE
 Drama flourished under the Republic but
declined into variety entertainment under the
Empire
 Roman festivals: Held in honor of the gods, but
much less religious than in Greece
Ludi Romani Became theatrical in 364 B.C.
Held in September (the autumn)and honored Jupiter.
By 240 B.C., both comedy and tragedy were
performed.
 Five others: Ludi Florales (April), Plebeii
(November), Apollinares (July), Megalenses (April),
Cereales (no particular season).
Under the Empire, these festivals afforded "bread
and circuses" to the masses – many performances.
—including a series of plays or events. Acting troupes
(perhaps several a day) put on theatre events.
ROMAN THEATRE
Encompassed more than drama :
acrobatics, gladiators, jugglers, athletics,
chariots races, naumachia (sea battles),
boxing, venationes (animal fights)
 Entertainment tended to be grandiose,
sentimental, diversionary
 Actors / performers were called
histriones
Fresco with theatre masks
Roman Theatre Design
First permanent Roman theatre built 54 ce
(100 years after the last surviving comedy)
So permanent structures came from periods
after significant writing
 More that 100 permanent theatre structures
by 550 ce.
 Built on level ground with stadium-style seating
(audience raised)
 Could seat 10-15,000 people
 Awning over the audience to protect them from
the sun
 During the Empire around 78 ce, cooling system
installed– air blowing over streams of water
Artist’s Impression of the Roman
Theatre of Verulamium : Britain
circa CE 180, excavated in 1847
by Alan Sorrell
ROMAN COMEDY
 Chorus was abandoned
 No act or scene divisions
 Songs
 Everyday domestic affairs: Boy meets girl,
complications, boy gets girl: marriage
 Action placed in the street
 Bawdy
 Stock characters
 Only two playwrights' material survives:
Plautus (c. 254-184 bce)
Terence (195 or 185-159 bce)
Thalia,
the Muse
Of
Comedy
STOCK CHARACTERS
 Senex: old man in authority
 Pappas: foolish old man
 Bucco: braggart, boisterous
 Miles gloriosus: braggart soldier
 Dossenus: swindler, drunk,
hunchback
 Shrew: sharp-tongued woman
 Courtesan
 Clever servant
 Young Lovers
 21 extant plays including
Pot of Gold, The
Menaechmi, Braggart
Warrior -- probably
between 205-184 B.C.
All based on Greek New
Comedies
 Added Roman allusions,
Latin dialog, varied poetic
meters, witty jokes
Some techniques:
Stychomythia – dialog with
short lines, like a tennis
match
Slapstick
Songs
PLAUTUS
Titus Maccius Plautus
c. 254-184 B.C.E.
 Born in Carthage, came to Rome as
a boy slave, educated and freed
 The Afer in his name may indicate
that he was an African, and
Publius Terenius Afer
therefore he may have been the
first major black playwright in (195 or 185-159 B.C.E.)
western theater.
 Six plays, all of which survive
including The Brothers, Mother-inLaw, etc.
 More complex plots – combined
stories from Greek originals.
 Character and double-plots were
his forte – contrasts in human
behavior
 Less boisterous than Plautus, less
episodic, more elegant language.
 Less popular than Plautus.
TERENCE
Roman Tragedy
None survive from the early
period, and only one playwright
from the later period: Seneca
 5 act structure – later adopted
by Elizabethans
 Elaborate speeches -rhetorical influence
 Interest in morality – expressed
in sententiae (short pithy
generalizations about the human
condition)
Medea, Herculaneum c. 70 bce
 Roman philosopher, orator,
dramatist and statesman
 Nine extant tragedies, five
adapted from
Euripides:The Trojan
Women, Medea, Oedipus,
Agamemnon
 Suicide in 65 A.D.– at the
orders of Nero
 Seneca had a strong
effect on later dramatists.
 Uncertain whether
Seneca's plays were
actually performed or
simply intended for
recitation before a small
private audience: closet
dramas
SENECA
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(5 or 4 B.C.E.– 65 C.E.)
Roman Spectacle
 Gladiatorial combats
 Chariot races
 Naumachia: Naval battles
in a flooded Coliseum
 “Real-life” theatricals
 Decadent, violent and
immoral
 All theatrical events banned
by Church when Rome
became Christianized
The
End