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Ancient Greek Theater
This is where it all began:
the Theatre of Dionysos in
Athens.

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.
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.
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.
The Precinct

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.

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.
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.

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.
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 nonnaturalistic 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, facefitting 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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.