Ancient Greek Theater

1. Ancient Greek Theater Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez World Cultures Theme Mythology Unit ESL L5 and Art in Literature Class High School for World Cultures Bronx, NY

2. What are the main parts of a Greek Theatre?

3. What parts can you identify?

4. What have they done to make this ancient theatre work now?

5. What do you notice in this picture?

6. Greek Theatre: Main components • Theatron: literally, the “watching place” • Orchestra: literally, the “dancing place” • Skene: “scene,” or backdrop

7. Did you know? • The modern word “theater” comes from the Greek word theatron meaning "seeing place"

8. If you were sitting this high, you could still hear the actors’ voices.

9. What were some of the issues in the Theatron? • Daylight • Class issues • Women • Comfort • Sound effects

10. What were some of the challenges with the Orchestra? • Challenges: • Size • Distance from audience • Holding interest

11. Do you see the mountains?

12. What was the Skene? • Behind orchestra • Served as backdrop, house • Decorative in later years • Holds mechane

13. What were some other theatre components? • Parodos: passageways (pl.paradoi) • Ekkykleme: “the thing that rolls” • the small wagon platform, was wheeled in to show a corpse to the audience. • All killing had to occur off stage and be reported to the audience by the chorus or a messenger. • Mechane: crane used for special effect

14. What was the mechane?

15. What part did drama play in everyday culture in Ancient Greece? • The theater of ancient Greece, flourished between c. 550 and c. 220 BCE. • The city-state of Athens, was it’s centre. • It was part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honored the god Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry with altars generally on stage. • Banks would shut down for days, people would travel from all around to see the drama competitions—even prisoners

16. Greek Theatre and the Chorus

17. What is the function of a chorus? • The first function of the chorus was as narrator (telling stories, providing information). • to intensify the emotion and establish a lyric mood through rhythmic chanting and dance • to maintain a sense of ceremony and ritual • to reflect what the audience is thinking

18. How did the community Support drama? • The chorus was trained and costumed at state expense through a choregos(a wealthy citizen) who chose this job as his way of paying taxes and raising his standing in the community.

19. How were chorus members chosen? • Members of the chorus were chosen from the general population. • Chorus members were unpaid volunteers doing their civic duty. • The rehearsal period for a chorus was likely four months or more.

20. What was the size of the Chorus? • As the number of actors increased from one to three, the size of the chorus, which originally numbered 50, was reduced. • 12-15 men

21. Who were the actors in Greek Theatre? • 3 Actors, all men • Elaborate gestures, “over-acting” • Women were not allowed to participate.

22. What Costumes were worn in Greek theatre? • Consisted of standard Greek attire • elaborately embroidered patterns • Masks were used • If playing a female role, the male actor in want of a female appearance woretheprosternidabefore the chest and the progastridabefore the belly

23. What did Greek Masks look like?

24. What were the functions of the masks? • to masks make the characters' faces visible to the audience • to enable an actor to play in several different roles • to help the audience to distinguish sex, age, and social status, in addition to revealing a change in a particular character’s emotions and appearance. • Masks contained “megaphone” to amplify their voices

25. Sound Assistance

26. How did masks help visibility and characterization? Actors wore masks with exaggerated facial features and expressions to make it easy for all viewers to identify a particular character because theatres were very large.

27. What is the history of Greek Masks? • Greek actors originally started wearing masks that were very human like that just covered part of the face • Eventually with the increase in theatre size the mask changed as well • The mask then began to cover the whole head and resembled legends from Greek mythology not humans

28. What is Drama? • DRAMA: a literary composition written to be performed by actors • central character called a tragic protagonist or hero suffers some serious misfortune • the misfortune is logically connected with the hero's actions.

29. Did you know? • The modern word “drama” comes from the Greek word dranmeaning "to do”

30. Who were some important Playwrights of the age? • Aeschylus • Sophocles • Euripides • Aristophanes • Menander

31. What are the Types of Greek Drama? • Comedy • Tragedy • Satyr • Comedy and tragedy were the most popular types of plays in ancient Greece. Hence, the modern popularity of the comedy and tragedy masks to symbolize theatre.

32. The word “comedy” comes from the Greek word “komos” which means “band of revelers.” A comedy is a play with a happy ending • A tragedy is a play with a sad ending

33. What are Satyr Plays? • These were short plays performed between the acts of tragedies. They made fun of the plight of the tragedy's characters. • The satyrs were mythical half-human, half-goat servants of Dionysus. • They served the function of comic relief.

34. The Satyr and the Satyr plays spawned the modern word “satire” which is a literary work containing jokes about humans’ errors.