Exploring Ancient Greek Theater: History, Structure, and Significance

[Music] there are two main ways in which we know about um ancient Greek Theater from

classical Athens where all the plays were originally produced the first is the actual text themselves we're

incredibly lucky if you think about it that we've got no fewer than 30 uh texts of Greek tragedies and we've got 12 or

14 of Greek comedies that's a very great deal I mean that's almost equivalent to what we've got of really good

Renaissance Drama We also have ancient sources that tell us about drama about the funding and the politics and the

organization of theater there's also the archaeological remains um remains of theaters themselves there's also quite a

few good pots the ancient Greeks loved to paint theatrical scenes and scenes from their famous myths on vses and and

we think they probably actually sold them as so touristy shops near the theaters so you could take one home with

you after you've been to see the play the actual context is the Festival of dianis which happens annually in around

our March or April which is when the sailing season starts and people can come from all over the Greek world it is

a massive event it's like it's like the Olympics um plus um the obam gal mystery plays plus the Super Bowl all rolled

into one the Greeks loved competition in in every aspect of their life they competed um and in the Festival of diis

each of the three tragic playwrights would be competing against one another uh and each would be sponsored by a rich

man who would pay for the production uh simply for the the glory of the State uh and then a a jury specially selected

would vote on what they thought was the best play if your if your team won your name and the playright would be

inscribed on the wall in the theater and you remember forever there was no money it was about glory and that's why people

did it [Music] there were three types of drama in

ancient Greece tragedy comedy and SATA plays there's theater where the masks are quite ugly and the characters are

quite low class and and it's comedy it's funny then there's tragedy where the characters are very beautiful usually

The Masks as we see them on painted on vases are are exquisitely lovely to look at very often and that is tragedy after

each three tragedies on each day there would also be thing called a saer play a Satia was a mythical beast half man half

goat and these were very rude comedy plays Antiquity decided that there were four really classical Greek playwrights

there were three tragedians and one comic poet Aristophanes the three tragedians were called escolas Sophocles

and Ides they were all Athenian citizens they all worked and produced their great plag in the same Century the fifth

century before Jesus Christ traditional Greek Theater was open air and was built into the side of

a hill so the spectators sat in a semicircle up the Hillside and at the bottom of the hill was a flat area

called the orchestra which is Greek for dancing space where the chorus would have performed and behind that a raised

stage area and some buildings for the ACT some Modern theaters have been

deliberately built in order to imitate in some respects the ancient Greek Theater the Olivier theater at the

national for example was actually um modeled on epidor which is the best and earliest surviving Stone Theater on on a

big scale in ancient Greece this means that you have an approximately circular SP which is is open and extends to some

extent into the audience and you have teered seating in a in a semicircular or horseshoe shape around it that rises up

as an actor working on a stage like the Olivier uh because of the the wraparound nature of the audience uh it feels like

you are connected more strongly to the people you're trying to communicate with and tell the story

to masks are another aspect of the theater that students find puzzling why they did it and they are all kinds of

false stories you might hear about why they did them um they wore masks because it was a religious ritual and because

that was the way it had always happened if you've ever seen um certain kinds of African dancing which is actually

related to Greek Theater in some ways the mask is part of it you're worshiping diis part of worshiping diis is you wear

the mask of the r Where The Mask uh of the the celebrator of the theater in that way the mask was also really useful

because it enabled you to change character and only three performers performed all the speaking roles in

Greek Theater and so you come with a different mask with different hair and so

on the chorus is one of the hardest aspects of Greek drama for modern audiences to relate to it's important to

realize that Greek drama grew out of a long-standing tradition of coral song and dance the ancient Greek chorus

serves two fundamental uh roles for the whole theater experience the first is just um fun it's wonderfully exciting

the ancient Greeks always talk with great excitement about the moment when the chorus would start up you had 12 um

incredibly well-trained singing dancing uh young men dressed up in all sorts of exotic costumes and masks doing really

excellent performances pretty much like you see in a West End musical to be perfectly honest I mean it might be sad

but that's the sort of skill and excitement that you'd have liked so it's not a matter of a boring interlude

between the real action at all it's actually highlights the other thing that the Cor

did though was provide the perspective of the community on what was happening so we don't just get Creon and Antony

fighting about whether there's a burial we get the citizens of Thieves the whole city actually represented by those 12

citizens so Greek tragedy is fundamentally political because it's got this constant interaction between all of

us and the top guys and that is something that's very much missing for many later types of theater when you get

to be in involved in doing a a Greek play or or or something to do with the Greek Theater you're you're going right

to the very soulle and beginnings of all of drama that's a great feeling to be part of something that was and is still

very very important to traditional storytelling