Greek Theatre and the Origin of Drama

In the deep, dark forests and in the lush green valleys, worshippers of Dionysus celebrate the eternal cycles of death and rebirth, symbolized in the sacred mask of the wild god. Drunk and intoxicated, wearing the mask of Dionysus, the actor is at once the shaman and the priest. Channeling the presence of the fearsome divinity, he drinks the sacred wine and eats the raw flesh of his prey. In this eternal moment, he becomes one with the god and the beast residing inside of him. Within Ancient Greek culture, the sacred rites of Dionysus have been appropriated and transformed to theatre performances. The shaman became the actor, the participants became the audience, the sacred altar became the stage. From myth as a ritual performance emerged the theatre of tragedy, in which the undying spirit of Dionysus, majestic and terrifying, speaks to us even today.

Sri Lankan Journal of Human Resource Management, 2013

In the ancient Greek world, drama was a part of their lives, something intimate, frequent and inseparable. It was not the individual choice that took the mass to the Greek theatre, but they were a part of this process of dramas as a nation, which came in the guise of rituals of festivals, held in honour of god Dionysus. Drama and drama festivals were facilitated with state recognition and were sponsored by the rulers of the city-states, encouraging the citizens to participate in them. Massive theatre structures were constructed, providing seating capacity for thousands. Within such appealing circumstances, Greek drama has evolved through time, gifting outstanding dramatists and drama compositions to the world of aesthetics. Greeks being a nation whose lives were embedded in a performance culture, drama was the most effective and intimate to be utilized as a mode of communication, during such an ancient period where there were no other modes of communication like in the world of today.

Introduction The word drama comes from the Greek meaning “to act, do or perform”, and it is in the several subtle and diverse meanings of “to perform” that drama can be said to have begun. All communities accept that their later drama has roots in pre-history. Anthropologists have shown that primitive societies used (and in certain cases still use) role-playing in teaching the codes and behaviour required to live and survive in that society; for example, to teach the skills needed in knowing what and how to hunt, the making and use of weapons and the rules of warfare. Performance could be involved in oral repetition to teach the laws and social customs, while enactment of mythical or historical episodes perpetuates and transmits what is thought important to maintain in the race-memory of the tribe.

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Drama always consisted of an invaluable "database" for the culture and education of the ancient Greek spectators, who used to watch it as a performance that derived from the already existing literary types and forms (epic and lyric poetry) on which it was based and which included up to a certain degree; namely, in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides' tragedies and Aristophanes' comedies, almost all the ideas, the messages, the moral values and the knowledge that constitute the so called "Ancient Greek Thought and Philosophy", coexist and consist of the values of the ancient Greek culture as a whole. However, these do not represent the accumulation of some valuable material, but the creative conjunction and composition of qualitative and quantitative data in an astonishing analogy and harmony that expresses the basic principles and virtues of the ancient Greek Thought such as Moderation, Harmony, Symmetry, Equilibrium and the correspondence between form and co...

Ephorate of Antiquities of the City of Athens, European Heritage Label (educational material for teenagers) 2018 http://theheartofancientathens.gr/en/dionysusehlstories

The Theatre of Dionysus as a landmark site for the birth of theatre Despite the fragmentarily preserved ruins of the Athenian theatre at the foot of the Acropolis ( ) the visitor can still discern its tripartite layout reflecting the organic relation and interaction of the participants in the great popular festival of the City Dionysia in which theatrical competitions that lasted several days took place: ) the semi-circular koilon that extended up to the rock accommodating an audience of almost 19.000 spectators; the orchestra, which during the Roman period turned from a circular space made of packed earth into a paved semi-circular structure; the oblong building of the skene to the south and the two broad passageways (parodoi) on either side that were usually decorated with statues of the great poets ( , symbols of drama, the most representative intellectual attainment of Hellenism, and the multidimensional theatrical conception brought forth in this place.

Choice Reviews Online, 2011

The Art of Ancient Greek Theater considers the vibrant imprint that ancient Greek tragedy and comedy left on the visual arts of classical Greece. Theatrical performance as we know it originated in the mid-sixth century B.C. with choral dances held in honor of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and patron of the theater. The great tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander are preserved as some of the world's most renowned literature and have formed the basis for theater performance as it is still practiced. Beyond being popular in their day, these plays inspired an array of lively paintings and sculpture, and those works represent, in some cases, the only evidence we have of some of the plays from ancient Greece. Over ninety of these objects-pottery vases, sculpture, reliefs, and masks-from museums across Europe and the United States are featured in this book. The nine insightful essays and over 130 illustrations reveal the Greek origins of theater and their multifaceted expression in the visual arts.

Theatre or Ritual: the role of theatre in folk traditions of Greece It is difficult to think of theatre in any form without considering the contributions of Greece. Indeed the very word " theatre " is from the ancient Greek (θέατρο), as well as several other words associated with the theatre: (σκηνή) scene, (δράμα) drama, (τραγωδία) tragedy, (κωμωδία) comedy, etc. While the ancient Greeks staged elaborate professional theatrical productions, several of which are still presented today, another type of theater evolved among the village populations. There, theatre was incorporated into folk traditions as well as folk traditions into the theatre.

Western civilisation is said to have begun in Ancient Greece. The fifth century BCE was the golden age of the city of Athens, with art, the economy and the new notion of democracy thriving. The Ancient Greeks developed words to describe the world around them, such as anarchy, astronomy, comedy, diplomacy, drama, economics, mathematics, music, philosophy, poetry, theatre, tyranny and even zoology. Their alphabet was taken from the Phoenicians, but unlike the Phoenicians, they used it to write history, philosophy, poetry and plays. These plays and the theatrical conventions invented alongside them reveal the lives, values and relationships of Athenian citizens; and the impact of Ancient Greek theatre can still be seen over two and a half thousand years later.

Maske und Kothurn, 1989

Greek tragedy was fashioned and instated in Athens a single act when Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant, invited the poet-actor Thespis, to perform for the Athenians in the Dionysia festival of 534 B.C. 1 This political act integrated tragedy irreversibly into the religious/social/cultural context of the Athenian Polis. The origin of tragedy as well as the mode of its initial representation are obscure to us, and we cannot know for certain the changes that took place during the first generations of its poets, between Thespis and Aeschylus 2. Nevertheless, the information that we do have of its first performances helps us define the essential characteristics of the primary form of Greek tragic performance: a plot played out through dialogue between the actors and a chorus, performed in a defined place, in front of a live audience on a special occasion-the Dionysia festival 3. It is clear that from its first civic production, tragedy has been associated with its "performance", and the location of that performance-a theatre. It is Aristotle's removal of tragedy from this context for the purposes of his discussion, in the Poetics, that poses the problem area of this article. Theatre by its very nature, comes to fruition through three stages: the drafting of the plot (the text), the rehearsal process, and the enactment in front of an audience within the framework of a particular event. Each of these stages incorporates unique components, yet all three function towards one goal: the theatrical event, the total performance in front of an audience. This is the raison d'être for which they work simultaneously. Two irrefutable/irreversible conditions are needed for a theatrical event to take place: the first is the special combination of play, rehearsal and performance 4. The 1 For a collection of the important passages of evidence in regard to Thespis Cf. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy, 2 nd ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 69-89. 2 Walter Burkcrt, in his important article on the ritual origins of Greek tragedy, summarizes the complexity of the question: "We may collect exact information or formulate precise hypotheses as to the external organization of the Dionysia in the Polis Athens in the sixth century B.C.: temple and theatre, chorus of citizens and choregos, poietes, didaskalos, upokrites, masks and actors' dress, musical instruments, figures of dancing, musical and literary techniques in the tradition of choral lyric and the iambos. But whoever tries to grasp the unique kairos in the history of the human mind which brought forth tragedy, to understand the intellectual, psychological, and social motives involved, enters a field of basic ambiguity."