Greeks

GREEK DRAMA PAGES (mrs. d's classes)

Greece:

Athens: (compare to Shakespeare's London: )

The Acropolis:

The Theater of Dionysus:

check this out & this

Other Extant Theaters:

Reconstruciton & Fantasy: more

Festival of Dionysus:

Two of the major festivals in honor of the god Dionysus (Roman: Bacchus) were the rural and the city Dionysia. Though not the most important Athenian festival – which would be the Panathenaea (all-Athenian) festival in honor of Athena (the goddess of wisdom after whom the city of Athens was named), these were a big deal in the life of an Athenian. The rural Dionysia were in the winter and gave Athenians a chance to venture out of the city. The urban Dionysia, which occurred in what is now March or April, was very much a coming together of the city.

“According to tradition the festival was established after Eleutherae, a town on the border between Attica and Boeotia, chose to become part of Attica. The Eleuthereans brought a statue of Dionysus to Athens, which was initially rejected by the Athenians. Dionysus then punished the Athenians with a plague that was cured by a procession of citizens carrying phalloi.” (Wiki, 9/2007)

“According to tradition, the first performance of tragedy at the Dionysia was by the playwright and actor Thespis (from whom we have the word "thespian") in 534 BC. His prize was a goat, a common symbol of Dionysus, and possibly the origin of the word "tragedy" (which perhaps means "goat-song").” (WIKI)

Days of the festival

DAY 1

precontest
procession for Dionysus from outside of the city to the center
parade of the politicals / sacrifice of the bull / wine drunk – through marketplace
On the first day of the festival was the pompe or procession in which a statue of Dionysus was paraded into the city, along with phallic statues and bulls to be sacrificed, by citizens, alien residents, and representatives from the Athenian colonies. The choregoi also paraded in before leading their choruses in the dithyrambic competition. Then the bulls were sacrificed, everyone partied, and the komos (drunken parade, essentially) occurred.

DAY 2

5 comedies

DAY 3-5

3 tragedies
1 satyr play

Saw tons of choral contests and 17 plays in 5 days
15,000-20,000 in audience, but Plato said 30,000
100 meters to back of audience
Link between wine and theater has mythical beginning
Comedy as symbolizing/based on freedom of speech allowed by Democracy
Adult male population 40,000-50,000 down to 15,000-25,000 after war/plague (430

Note the basic structural elements of a standard Greek play as Aristotle noted it (the episode and stasimons repeat):

prologue          exposition and back-story, usually spoken by one character
parodos          entrance of the chorus as it dances
                        this sometimes begins the play
                        introduce the chorus
                        continue the exposition
                        sets tone
1st episode       when the characters and chorus talk in turns, develop the action
stasimon        choral songs, separating the episodes
                        usually reflects upon the action of the episode, 2nd episode and stasimon, etc.

Note: The plays developed out of the choral competitions and celebrations the Greeks had. Slowly, over time, they added one person speaking to the chorus, then two people speaking to each other, then three people speaking to each other, etc.

The Chorus shows the roots in choral competition:

As does the music: Found music from Ancient Greece

Masks:

LET'S CHECK OUT SOME PERFORMANCES!

National Theater of London (Peter Hall)

Modern Chorus at Epidarus

Andromache

Some key dates (many of which are approximate)

Persian War (499 BC - 479 BC)
Aeschylus (525-456 BC) (all rough/disputed dates; Oresteia = 458BC)

for all the talk of 2 actors, it is believed he used 3 for Oresteia

Sophocles (496-406 BC)
Euripides (485-406 BC)
- Born in Salamas (some say he was born on the day of the greatest naval battle of the Persian war), died in 406 (around 74 years old).
  - “Ancient biographers describe him as stern, strict and unsmiling” (New York Times (1857-Current file); Jan 13, 1997; ProQuest, pg. A6), and he is often the subject of jokes in Aristophanes’ plays (in The Frogs, Dionysus goes to Hades to save Euripides but chooses to save Aeschylus instead!).
  - He was often criticized in part for allowing noble figures to appear onstage in rags, and he left Athens to live in the court of the Macedonian king (where he wrote The Bacchae, which was performed after his death and won first prize).
  - He’s believed to have been reasonably well off as a youth, to have married twice, and to have had three sons and a daughter who was bitten by a rabid dog and died (although this may have been a "joke" made up by Aristophanies’).
  - 18 of his plays have survived in full (amazing! More than Aeschylus and Sophocles combined) – he’s believed to have written 90 or so. He first competed in 455 BC (the year after Aeschylus died), when he came in third (of three…). He didn’t win until 441 BC, and he only won 4 times during his lifetime (and once after he died). Aeschylus won 13 times, and Sophocles, 18; but later in the century, Euripides’ plays became the most popular. He won second place (out of 3) in 415 for The Trojan Women.
  - Very little is known of his life, but he’s believed to have written his tragedies in a cave in Salamis.
comic dramatist Aristophanes (448-380 BC)
rule of Pericles, who dominated Athenian political life from 461 to 429 BC (when he died of plague)
the Peloponnesian war (431 BC - 404 BC) - a Greek civil war with Athens fighting Sparta. Euripides is staging his play during this conflict. In 415, the Athenians had captured and recolonized the Aegean island of Melos, shifting its name to Milos (the Venus de Milo statue is from Milos); this could be a historical source for the action of Euripies’ play. It is impossible to say if the play is based on any single historical event – more likely, it is a response on Euripides to a pattern of warfare he’d seen in a variety of contexts.