Characteristics of Drama

Theater in ancient Greece was considered the climax of the days long cultural festival of The City Dionysia. At the festival, various types of plays were shown but one of the most popular was tragedy. These tragedies show the main character, usually a god or person of myth, going through human suffering and the terrible sequence of events that followed; and were produced in 472- 401 BCE. In order for a play to be performed at The City Dionysia festival; tragic playwrights would first have to appeal to the state official that was organizing the festival by submitting ideas to him and his committee. The ideas submitted were outlines of main themes and points of interest to be performed in the play. If a playwright was selected by the state official and his committee, then they received a financial backer and a chance to compete in the drama competition of the festival. The state official, or his committee, was likely pushing their own agenda and choose playwrights that matched their ideals. This is just one example of how theater in ancient Greece was used to influence the morality of Greek culture by using the stories of tragedies, like those of Euripides.

Greek drama was performed in the late 6th century BCE in ancient Greece. Tragedians like Euripides wrote very influential and popular plays such as the Bacchae. Greek tragedies lead to Greek comedies such as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Many of the Greek dramas have similar concepts, one of being duality. Without duality, the nature of our lives and the environment around us remains unbalanced.

In life we all act differently depending on who we are with and the situation at hand. In almost every situation we act in a different way, with our friends in public, with our family members at home, with coworkers, and most importantly our boss in a work environment. Depending on who we are with you could say our personality changes. As humans we know how to act in every situation, at work you would dress more formal, whereas going out with a group of friends you would dress more causal. Along with our looks changing, we also change our behaviors, the way we talk, sit, the tone of your voice, etc. At a doctor’s office, the receptionist must play a defined role. She has to act polite, caring, professional, and must remain discreet about

This last half term we’ve been looking at challenging stereotypes and misconceptions. To begin with we were given stimulus in the form of photographs; these prompted each of us to have thoughts on what was shown. The image showed a man or woman staring stone faced through the many legs of passers by. My feeling towards this photograph was partly sympathy; however I knew I would just be one of the many people who would walk past. Stereotypes can interfere; one of the first things that came into our minds was things like drugs and gambling. This makes you feel less sorry for the person and immediately ideas that could be entirely untrue come into your head.

The genre of tragedy originated in Ancient Greek theatre. The works of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles were the roots and foundation of the genre of tragedy. Oresteia and Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus are considered to be the first tragedies written. A close second are Medea and The Trojan Women by Euripides. Nonetheless, the most eminent

The exact origin of the Greek tragedy genre is not known, and is often debated amongst scholars. Some scholars ha e linked it to the earlier form of lyrical performances of poetry and others equate its arrival from rituals

The history of Greek drama began at about 700 B.C. This included festivals that that honored their Gods. The men would dress up and sing and play to welcome Dionysus. In these early times, the actor and director was all the same person. They had tragedy, comedy and satyr plays. Plays were either spoken or sung in rhyme. It was also illegal to poke fun at the Gods and this was punishable by death. (Robinson, Scott R. "Theatre and Drama in Ancient Greece." Theatre and Drama in Ancient Greece. N.p., 2010. Web. 04 May 2016)

Romanticism affected literature and music, as well as visual art. The German Sturm und Drang movement (late 1760s-early 1780s) was predominantly revenge-driven literary and minor-key musical, but led to a handful of visual artists painting terrifying scenes. Romantic art truly got underway at the turn of the century, and had its greatest number of practitioners for the next 40 years, between the 1800-1840.

Anyone who enjoys literature or movies has the Romantics of the 19th century to thank. The romantic ideals are now so engraved in this societies thinking that most don’t even realize that it is romantic thinking at all. Almost every movie or book nowadays has a trace of romanticism in it. Romanticism started around the 1800’s as a contradiction to rationalism. Rationalism was a thinking that attempted to use rational thinking and reason to solve the problems being faces at its time. Romanticism is basically the opposite of those thoughts. Romanticism is described as, "a revolt against Rationalism that affected literature and the other arts, beginning in the late eighteenth century."("Elements of Literature," Page 1179). Romanticism bases

Greek theatre had its beginnings with Dithyrambs, in which choral groups composed of 50 men and boys would sing or chant in unison. These groups told stories written by playwrights. As Greek drama evolved, actors were added separately although the large chorus remained. The poet Thespis, in 534 B.C., was the first known playwright to perform separately. In some plays, as many as half the lines of dialogue belong to the chorus. Dialogue between the actors and the chorus as the play progressed fulfilled a teaching function, providing lessons in morality as well as entertainment. Although the chorus lines weren't songs, music was often played while the chorus

Did you know that drama was invented in Ancient Greece? Drama and acting came about when members of the chorus (group of singers/ dances) performed skits before their performance. It also came from festivals in honour of God Dionysus.

Ancient Greek Theater is the first historical record of “drama,” which is the Greek term meaning “to do” or “to act.” Beginning in the 5th century BC, Greek Theater developed into an art that is still used today. During the golden age of the Athenians plays were created, plays that are considered among the greatest works of world drama. Today there are thousands of well-known plays and films based on the re-make of ancient drama.

Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Academics' knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in theater allowing conflict among them; characters had previously interacted only with the chorus. Only seven of Aeschylus’s estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived, and there is a longstanding debate regarding his authorship of one of these plays, Prometheus Bound, which some believe his son Euphorion wrote. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy; his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is the only surviving classical Greek tragedy concerned with contemporary events ,and a useful source of information about its period. The significance of war in Ancient Greek culture was so great that Aeschylus' epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright. Despite this, Aeschylus' work – particularly the Oresteia –is generally acclaimed by modern critics and scholars.

Despite the claim that Drama in Education ( DIE) as a pedagogy dimmed its popularity in the Western world since 1990 until 2016 (Gallagher, et al. , 2017), in the year of 2011, Morrow, et al. included it as one of the best practices in literacy instruction. Some of the teachers who had the experience of trying process drama in their classrooms found that the pedagogy improved students’ participations, pushed students to use their imaginations, performed deeper understanding of the topics being learned and made the students learn to have empathy ( Long, 1998). Do the voices from the classroom resemble to what researchers and theories have to say on process drama?

Theatre is an art that transcends time and builds a new world for the audience atop the stage. A play is defined as “a dramatic composition” or “the stage representation of an action or story” (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary). This refers to drama being performed live by actors on a stage. Ancient Greece is accredited to inventing theatre and drama. In Greece during that time, at the height of popularity, were the stories of the well known flawed heroes and their journeys.