Quick questions on Greek theatre: origins and conventions: HSC Drama elective

Greek theatre developed from religious ritual associated with the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility and theatrical madness. The earliest performances were probably choric songs (the dithyramb) performed in honour of Dionysus.

The two main Athenian theatrical festivals were:

The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, on the south slope of the Acropolis, held around 14,000 to 17,000 spectators by the fifth century BCE. Its key elements:

The chorus. Twelve to fifteen members in tragedy (Aeschylus used twelve; Sophocles raised the number to fifteen), twenty-four in comedy. The chorus sang, danced, and chanted. Choral songs (odes) were performed in strophic structure: the chorus moved one direction for the strophe, the other for the antistrophe.

Aristotle, writing in the Poetics (around 335 BCE, after the great tragedians), codified the elements of tragedy that he saw in the surviving plays:

Tragedy. The serious form, drawn from mythology and the heroic past. Three surviving tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Around thirty-three tragedies survive in full.

The audience was citizen-heavy but probably included women, slaves and foreigners (the evidence is debated). Estimates of capacity range from 14,000 to 17,000 in the fifth century BCE. The audience sat through six to nine hours of drama in a day during the City Dionysia.

Greek theatre's conventions have shaped Western theatre across two and a half millennia. The chorus, the unities (Aristotle's hint of unity of action, refined later into the three unities of time, place and action), the structural concepts (hamartia, peripeteia, catharsis), and the architecture (the amphitheatre form survives in the modern proscenium and thrust stages) all derive from the Athenian institution.

A circular dancing space, around 20 metres in diameter. The chorus's domain. The altar of Dionysus stood in the centre.

The seating area, semicircular, carved into the hillside. Originally wooden, later stone (built in stages from the late fifth century BCE through the fourth century BCE).

The wooden building behind the orchestra, originally a changing room, later a backdrop with a single door (and eventually three doors). The skene served as palace, temple, or city gate as the play required. Painted scenery (skenographia) developed in the late fifth century BCE.

Two side entrances between the theatron and the skene. The chorus entered down one parodos; characters from elsewhere entered the other.

A wheeled platform on which interior tableaux could be rolled out from the skene. Used to display bodies after off-stage violence (Greek tragedy did not stage violence directly).

A crane used to lift gods or heroes into the air. Source of the term deus ex machina (god from the machine).

Twelve to fifteen members in tragedy (Aeschylus used twelve; Sophocles raised the number to fifteen), twenty-four in comedy. The chorus sang, danced, and chanted. Choral songs (odes) were performed in strophic structure: the chorus moved one direction for the strophe, the other for the antistrophe.