Ancient Greek Theatre Research Paper

Theatre flourished in Greece, particularly in Athens, between c. 550 BC and c. 220 BC. During its beginnings theatrical performances were part of Dionysia, a festival held in honour of the god Dionysus. The plot of the plays was always inspired by Greek mythology, a theme that is still common today. Many modern plays and movies have been directly based on or incorporated elements of Greek mythology or simply mythology in general. Every play had a chorus, though the size and importance of it varied. The

Located in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, the 5,870 Greek Theatre is one of the city's most recognized outdoor venues. The history of the Greek Theatre dates back to 1882, where South Wales settler Colonel Griffith J. Griffith came to America to seek fortune in gold mining. The settler purchased the three thousand acre plot of land and gifted it to the City of Los Angeles. As said by Colonel Griffith himself, the park was to " be made a place of recreation and rest for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people.

The theatrical genre of comedy was born through a development of the Athenian drama competitions held in honor of the wine god Dionysus. What initially was a religious procession of a singing and chanting chorus, changed into a festival after Thespis introduced a single actor to speak with the chorus. The man responsible for developing this into the new genre of Comedy was probably the last successful tyrant of the previous century, Peisistratos (Hall 10). It is believed that he introduced this new form of entertainment as a way of promoting the glory of Athenian

The dramatic presentations of ancient Greece developed out of religious rites performed to honor gods or to mark the coming of spring. Playwrights such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides composed plays to be performed and judged at competitions held during the yearly Dionysian festivals. Those plays were chosen by a selection board and evaluated by a panel of judges. To compete in the contest, Greek playwrights had to submit three tragedies, which could be either based on a common theme or unrelated, and one comedy. However, relatively few of these ancient Greek plays survive today. Known as the "father of tragedy", Aeschylus introduced a "second actor" on stage, allowing for action and interaction to take place and establishing a

The theatre that you are most familiar with today generally comes via the movie version of an originally staged play. But if we go back further, we find that most of the theatre that is written and performed today can be traced back to Greek origins through various

Referred to as ‘the mouthpiece of society and morality’, (E. Karayannakos, The Actors and The Chorus, 2007), the Ancient Greek chorus used a range of vocal techniques and elements, which have influenced and shaped western theatre as it is today (M. Mendenhall, Greek Theatre Influences on Modern Theatre, 2012). From 7th Century BC to 4th Century BC, Greek choruses are particularly renowned for their approach in engaging the audience with the context of a play. (B. Simpson, Development of Greek Theatre, 2007), Specifically, vocal techniques played a main role in this engagement (A. Thompson, The Ancient Greek Chorus and Elements of Choral Speaking, 2012) and are why this investigation is focused upon them. Primary data was collected through an

Another contemporary adaptation of the original Greek play is from The Gate theatre, adapted by Anna- Louise. I believe this production plays strongly on the subject of the killing of children as the production focussed around Medea's two children, where the audience get to view the play from the children's perspective as they are the main characters in the production. "Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sacks’s take on Medea shifts the focus sharply away from the engineers of these stories to the innocent victims, depicting Medea’s children in the last few hours of this particular tragic tale. Leon and Jasper are locked in their room while their parents “sort out marriage stuff”. They laugh, they cry, they joke, they fight – and they play dead.

Interact with the student more and make the class less boring. Also for any projects,instead of writing a 5-7 page paper on social roles in theater, maybe it would be better to have the students present it. Create PowerPoint's and present it maybe 5 minutes or less and that way everyone could find a topic under the same title like the Greek Vs. Roman Theater would be an great example.

I believe to understand performance you must first understand what it’s about and its history. One of the biggest ideas in performance art is breaking the rule. Theatre was first discovered by ancient Greece. The people of Greece first started doing performances to please the gods and to celebrate them. They started with just a chorus, but over time people started adding more and more people on stage. The first rule that came up from this is no more than three people on stage. The second was to change characters you either went off stage or by the chorus and changed your mask. The third and final rule was death accouris off stage, never on. As time went on more rules were slowly being added and each artist, director, performer and playwriter would think of ways they could break or bend the rule to make the performance more interesting to the public eye.

The main ordeal was religious theatre had a min focus of portraying higher figures who were worshiped by people involved. Secular theatre, which was medical theatre was not religious in any aspect. Secular plays portrayed more trivial plays such as mystery, drama, or immortality. Religious plays showed more faithful aspects that directly reflected upon the actors involved and the audience. For example, Elizabethan plays included various characters being portrayed multiple times in complicated events, continuously changing locations over a period of time. While Greek drama, in contrast, made specific endeavors to represent the human experience, portrayed by various characters in single location during a limited amount of time. Secular theatre

Actor; An actor who performs a situation and portrays a character through a series of movement, speech and body language to an audience. This is generally done by conveying the work of the writer with aid and instruction from the director. In some situations an actor may be asked to improvise or devise their character and react to a certain situation.

While some sources claim that Greek theatre began around the 6th century, other sources claim that the origins are vague and subject to debate. There is, however, evidence suggesting that the origins of Greek theatre can trace back to when Greek farmers would celebrate with feasts, music, and dancing after a bountiful harvest. Evidence also suggests that Greek theatre also originated as entertainment for the god Dionysos. There is also not much evidence of how early Greek theatres were built as they were constantly rebuilt. So far, the only evidence of the ambiance and environment surrounding Greek theatre is in vase paintings.

Ancient Greece created the foundation of theatre that has grown to what is known today. In the sixth century when theatre became popular, there was the discovery of the tragedy, comedy, and a satire play called a satyr play. The plays were put on in festivals to celebrate the god Dionysus, the god of wine. Elements such as costumes and masks that were used in worship rituals to the gods influenced their costuming for the shows. There were three innovative playwrights Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Sophocles who all had their own writing styles and contributed to the advancement of theatre in their own way.

Tragedy is a form of theatre with poetic elements, which was originated from Ancient Greece and it reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC. Although, the tragic plots presented in Greek tragedy were based on myths from the oral traditions of archaic epics, they were presented by actors. The most important authors or as they also called playwrights of Greek tragedies were Aeschylus, Sophocles and

Tragedy began with the Greeks and is often credited to Thespis as the innovator of this dramatic style. It is believed that the first dramatic play was performed at the City of Dionysia festival in honor of the Great Dionysia, god of wine and fertility. Tragedy is derived from the Greek term tragoidia which means goat song. Aristotle believes that tragedy was a result of improvisation by the dithyrambic leader. Another argument states that Arion of Corinth is the innovator of tragedy in his work that he referred to as tragikon, but the chorus called tragoidoi. It is because of this confusion, that the development of the dramatic form tragedy has remained a mystery. Scholars have based all their understanding of tragedy on the surviving plays and text on the fifth century playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Out of Sophocles 120 plays that he had written in his lifetime, only seven survived in which the Oedipus trilogy is believed to be a masterpiece of dramatic structure (Brockett & Hildy 2008).