Greek Drama

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Greek Drama
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Religious Festivals

• In honor of Dionysus god of wine, food,
  fertility
• Dionysia--city where festival was held in the
  spring
• Festival lasted for 4 days ended with awards
  given to best plays.
• Competitive dances, songs and choral hymns
  performed to honor the gods, esp. Dionysus
• Choric storytelling evolves into re-enactments of
  legends of Greek culture

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Greek Drama

• The Ancient Greeks took their entertainment
  very seriously and used drama as a way of
  investigating the world they lived in, and what
  it meant to be human.

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Greek Drama

• Wealthy citizens would sponsor plays by paying a
  tax called the choregia.
• Many hoped the success of the play they sponsored
  would provide them with a way into politics.

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Greek Drama

• The three genres of drama were comedy, satyr
  plays, and most important of all, tragedy.

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Comedy

• Mainly satirical and mocked men in power for
  their vanity and foolishness.

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Tragedy

• Themes -- love, loss, pride, the abuse of power
  and the fraught relationships between men and
  gods.
• Main protagonist commits some terrible crime
  without realizing how foolish and arrogant he has
  been. Then, as he slowly realizes his error, the
  world crumbles around him.
• The three great playwrights of tragedy were
  Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

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Tragedy

• Aristotle argued that tragedy cleansed the heart
  through pity and terror, purging us of our petty
  concerns and worries by making us aware that
  there can be nobility in suffering. He called
  this experience 'catharsis'.

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Satyr Plays

• Short plays performed between the acts of
  tragedies that made fun of the plight of the
  tragedy's characters. The satyrs were mythical
  half-human, half-goat figures and actors in these
  plays wore large phalluses for comic effect.

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Thespis

• Father of Drama/First Actor
• astounded audiences by leaping on to the back of
  a wooden cart and reciting poetry as if he was
  the characters whose lines he was reading
• Thespian

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First Playwrights

• Aeschylus introduced a second actor, creating
  DIALOGUE
• Sophocles introduced a third actor, as seen in
  Oedipus Rex, which allows for dramatic complexity.

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Structure of the Theater
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Classic Greek Theatre

• Theatron
• Seeing place where audience sat. Held up to
  20,000 people.
• Orchestra
• Circular dancing place where actors and chorus
  performed
• Thymele
• Altar to Dionysus, center of orchestra

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Classic Greek Theatre

• Skene
• Building used as dressing room
• Proskenion
• Façade of the skene building which served as
  backdrop
• Parados
• Entrance to the theatre used by chorus audience

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Actors Acting

• A play could have many characters but had to be
  divided among three actors
• Unlimited number of extras or mutes. Stage could
  have a dozen or more soldiers or village maidens
  without violating the rule of three
• All roles were played by men

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Costumes Masks

• Long flowing robes
• Symbolically colored
• High boots, often with raised soles
• Larger than life masks
• Made of linen, wood, and/or cork
• Exaggerated features

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MasksPersona

• Male vs. female
• Young vs. old
• Grief stricken vs. hopeful
• The open mouth on the mask increased the
  resonance of the actors voice

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Function of the Chorus

• Serve as a barometer of popular opinion
• Add beauty (theatrical effectiveness) through
  song dance
• Give background information
• Divide action offer reflections on events
• Questions, advises, expresses opinionsusually
  through chorus leader

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Conventions

• Unities
• Actionsimple plot
• Timea single day
• Placeone scene throughout the entire play

Temple at Delphi
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Conventions

• Messenger
• Tells news happening away from the scene
• Reports acts of violence not allowed to be seen

• Limitations
• Continuous presence of the chorus
• No intermissions continuous flow of action and
  choral odes
• No lighting or curtains

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Tragic Hero

• Tragic FlawHubris
• Excessive Pride arrogance
• Fatal errors in judgment which contributes to the
  downfall
• Tragic Realization
• Accepts responsibility for the outcome
• Perceives before the fall how he/she has
  contributed to his/her own destruction

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Irony

• The awarenessby the author, character, or
  readerof a contrast or an incongruity between
  appearance and reality
• Verbal Irony
• Words that appear to mean one thing really mean
  the opposite

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Irony

• Dramatic irony
• What appears true to a character is not what the
  audience or reader knows to be true
• Situational Irony
• What appears likely to happen is not what
  actually happens

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Paradox

• A statement or a situation that at first seems
  impossible or self-contradictory but that may
  actually be true, either in fact or in the
  figurative sense.

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Deus ex machina

• 'dA-s-"eks-'mä-ki-n
• Function noun
• Etymology New Latin, a god from a machine,
  translation of Greek theos ek mEchanEsDate 1697
• 1 a god introduced by means of a crane in
  ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final
  outcome
• 2 a person or thing (as in fiction or drama)
  that appears or is introduced suddenly and
  unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to
  an apparently insoluble difficulty

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Archetype

• A basic model from which copies are made a
  prototype
• An original pattern