The Theatre of Ancient Greece

Background to Greek Theatre

What is Greek Theatre?                                                                                                                        

In Greece, there were many religious festivals which were in need of theatres. In result, in almost every Greek City, many theatres were built in order to support these festivals.

What is the Theatre of Ancient Greece?
The theatre of Ancient Greece was built in 700BC and is located in the City of Athens. It is a significant cultural, political and military powered theatre at this period of time an dis part of a festival called Dionsysus.

What is the structure of the Theatre?

The Theatre of Ancient Greece consists of a number of buildings which are called theatrons and they were very large with open air structures on the slopes of hills. The structure of the Theatre is mainly structured in to three parts. One part is the orchestra, a large circular or rectangular area at the centre part of the theatre where plays, dancing, religious rites and acting take place. Another part of the theatre is the skene, which is used as backstage. Finally, the audience is considered to be the most important part of the theatre due to the fact that they may represent an actor as well.

Elements of Theatre of Ancient Greece

The Ancient Greek term for a mask is prosopon, in other words 'face' which was seen as a significant element in the belief of Dionsysus at Athens, which is mostly used in ceremonies and celebrations. Masks are often used when they are only a few actors in the performance. The actors are usually more than one character and are needed to use masks to portray another character. The actors in these plays that had tragic roles wore boots called cothurni that elevated them above other actors. Actors with comedic roles only wore a thin soled shoe called a sock. 

Playwrights
The Theatre of Ancient Greece had many playwrights which had provided the numerous theatres with life, such as Aeschylus. Aeschylus was born in 525 BC and died in 456 BC. The plays written consisted of The Persians (472 BC), Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), The Suppliants (463 BC), The Oresteia (458 BC) and Prometheus Bound. Within these performances consisted of different actors; one of them which were considered to be an actor was called a Chorus.

What is the Greek Chorus?

The Greek Chorus acts as thoughts aloud, fears and hidden secret, which can be portrayed through singing, dance and acting. A chorus can range in size from as little as 12 people to a mass of 50. They can be argued to be an actor in itself as it normally voices on dramatic action. In addition, they can be also be considered as the audience of the play due to the fact that there are reacting to anything significant event that occurs within the performance.

Masks

In Greek performances, masks are often use for particular purposes. One is that actors may have had to learn more than one character role, masks would have been a beneficial factor and in result we knew that we had to portray each of our characters well as some of us played the same characters. Furthermore we did not have masks so we had to ensure that the people in our class with the same characters had to portray the characters consistently to make their character more convincing to the audience that although it was a different person being the character, the personality of that character must be the same.

Themes in Greek Theatre

With the play we had been given to explore and perform, during the process of rehearsal, we had to make our interpretations on the type of performances that may have taken part back in Ancient Greek. For example, due to the monologue I had to learn as the chorus myself, the main theme of it was love and relationship, especially between Haemon and Creon. Throughout the scene I had taken part in was a feud between them and it revealed how rigid the relationship was  between father and son. In addition, this may also suggest that the closest people that take care of you may also be the ones that hurt you the most; this is shown in the scene where there is an argument between Oedipus and Creon where Oedipus calls him a traitor. Another clear theme of Greek plays which is shown in this scene as well is death and tragedy due to the fact that someone had been murdered at three cross roads.

Additional themes that can be suggested is identity as Oedipus did not know who he really was as he was told that he was found as a baby in Kithairon by shepherds and was raised by King Polybus and Queen Merope in the city of Corinth.