Ancient Greek Theater

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Ancient Greek Theater
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This is where it all began the Theatre of
Dionysos in Athens.
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• 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 which occurred on many occasions
  throughout Greece. (That's why actors are
  sometimes called 'thespians'.) Masked actors
  performed outdoors, in daylight, before audiences
  of 12,000 or more at festivals in honour of
  Dionysos, the god of theatre.

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The tragedies and comedies of the fifth and
fourth centuries BCE that remain to us today were
almost all written for performance in the Theatre
of Dionysos at Athens. The Theatre of Dionysos
was first dug out of the slope beneath the south
side of the Acropolis in the late 6th century
BCE, possibly while Athens was still under the
rule of the Peisistratid dynasty. It was rebuilt
and expanded many times, and so it is difficult
to tell exactly what its original shape was.
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The Precinct

• The Theatre of Dionysos was only one part of the
  precinct, or temenos, of Dionysos. Initially the
  precinct contained only the Older Temple of
  Dionysos and a sacrificial altar. Later a hall,
  or stoa, was added, incorporating or obliterating
  the Older Temple, and a second temple built
  further south. The highest row of seats in the
  Theatre of Dionysos was 125 feet above the lowest
  part of the precinct, and before the construction
  of the stoa and the stage building (skene), the
  audience could easily see the temples and the
  sacrificial altars from the theatre. More
  importantly, from the Athenian point of view,
  Dionysos himself (represented by his cult statue,
  which was seated in the front row) could observe
  not only the choral performances being given in
  his honour but the sacrifices which were made at
  his altar.

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The Precinct
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• In the mid-fifth century, after rebuilding the
  ruins of the Acropolis, Pericles built a
  recital-hall (odeion) to the east of the Theatre
  of Dionysos. This building was roughly square in
  shape with a roof described as pyramidal or
  conical. The Odeion of Pericles was used for many
  purposes, one being the proagon, a ceremony in
  which the dramatic poets announced the titles of
  their plays and introduced their actors. Members
  of the chorus would wait in the Odeion to make
  their entrance.

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• Pericles also introduced the Theoric Fund to
  subsidize the cost of theatre tickets for the
  poor. The price of a ticket to the Theatre of
  Dionysos was two obols, as much as a laborer
  earned in a day.

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The Players

• Because Greek tragedy and comedy originated with
  the chorus, the most important part of the
  performance space was the orchestra, which means
  'a place for dancing' (orchesis). A tragic chorus
  consisted of 12 or 15 dancers (choreuts), who may
  have been young men just about to enter military
  service after some years of training. Athenians
  were taught to sing and dance from a very early
  age. The effort of dancing and singing through
  three tragedies and a satyr play was likened to
  that of competing in the Olympic Games.

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• In contrast with the chorus of 12 or 15, there
  were only three actors in fifth-century Athenian
  tragedy. The original word for 'actor' was
  hypokrites, meaning 'answerer,' for the actor
  answered the chorus. Thespis is said to have
  introduced (and been) the first actor, later
  called protagonistes (literally 'first
  competitor'). The introduction of a second actor
  (deuteragonistes) is attributed to Aeschylus and
  the third (tritagonistes) to Sophocles.

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Masks

• The large size of the theatre (in its final form
  it seated 20,000 people) and the distance of even
  the nearest spectators from the performers (more
  than 10 meters) dictated a non-naturalistic
  approach to acting. All gestures had to be large
  and definite so as to 'read' from the back rows.
  Facial expression would have been invisible to
  all but the closest members of the audience the
  masks worn by the actors looked more 'natural'
  than bare faces in the Theatre of Dionysos. The
  masks of tragedy were of an ordinary,
  face-fitting size, with wigs attached, and open
  mouths to allow clear speech. Contrary to some
  later theories, there were no 'megaphones' in the
  masks, and their decoration and expression was
  quite subtle, as vase paintings from the 5th and
  4th centuries attest.

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• Each set of three tragedies was followed by the
  performance of a satyr play, a short spoof of a
  myth related to the theme of at least one of the
  tragedies. The ordinary human characters in these
  plays wore tragic masks and costumes, but the
  chorus of half-human satyrs wore pug-nosed,
  pointy-eared, bearded masks, furry shorts, and
  normal-sized erect phalluses (probably made of
  leather.) Satyrs danced a special kind of dance
  called the sikinnis, in which they pranced like
  horses.

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The masks of Greek Old Comedy were distorted
caricatures, sometimes of real people. They were
meant to be ugly and silly in keeping with the
ludicrous padded costumes worn by comic actors.
While tragic actors wore elaborate pattern-woven
garments which were similar to the robes of
priests and musicians, comic actors wore loose
body stockings padded at the breast, buttocks,
and stomach, with long floppy phalluses for the
male characters. (Except in the case of
Aristophanes' Lysistrata, where they were long
erect phalluses.) The chorus of Old Comedy was
often composed of non-human creatures, such as
wasps, frogs, birds, or even clouds. The 24
choreuts of Old Comedy were adult men, as were
the three speaking actors.
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• Theatrical masks were made of wood (like the
  masks of Japanese Noh drama), leather (like the
  masks of the Commedia dell' arte, or cloth and
  flour paste (like many of the masks used at the
  Carnevale of Venice, and many masks made for
  modern productions today). Various theories are
  advanced in favor of each material, but no
  originals remain, only stone carvings which may
  have been used as mask-molds and the paintings on
  pottery.

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• The Romans, with their love of spectacle, soon
  took over the existing theatres in Greece and
  began renovating and rebuilding them for their
  own spectacles, which included everything from
  pantomime (closer to ballet than to the
  children's 'panto') to mock naval battles. Most
  of the remains of the theatre of Dionysos which
  we can see in Athens today date to Roman times
  and not the fifth century BCE.

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• The comedy and tragedy that developed in Athens
  and flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries
  BCE have influenced nearly all subsequent Western
  drama, starting with that of the Romans. When the
  Romans conquered Greece they brought Greek
  literature back to Italy and set about making it
  their own. The New Comedy of fourth-century poets
  like Menander and Diphilus was particularly
  fertile material in the hands of the Roman
  playwrights Plautus and Terence.