11 Ancient Greek Drama Facts For All Theatre And Literature Lovers!

Ancient Greek theatres culture thrived around 700 B.C in ancient Athens.

There were Greek tragedies and comedy plays and also satires that originated in ancient Greece. These three genres were mainly dominant in the Mediterranean and Hellenistic cultures. In that era, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes laid the foundation of ancient Greek drama.

Ancient Greeks tended to link the origin of tragedy with the worship of God Dionysus (God of the theater), and the ritual used to conclude goat sacrifice. As per Greek mythology, trag-odia songs, wearing drama masks and costumes, and a dance routine were commonplace.

These tragic plays used to be open-air theatrical performances, based on Greek mythology, related to Greek religion.

In ancient Greek theaters, performances had one participant whose job was to imitate God, wearing a dress and a mask. This culture had lots of resemblance to religious rituals performed by priests.

Later, the main actors were allowed to speak to the audience, only one or two actors were allowed to do so, however, and all the actors were male actors in the Greek theater.

Then the rules evolved and the actors were required to change their dress, which started to segregate the whole play into episodes. Lack of participants used to make actors perform various roles.

The archon had to differentiate between plays, deciding which should be in competition, and which actors should perform as Choregoi to produce funds. In those days, states only used to sponsor playwrights and lead actors.

These plays used to get translated to Latin in the Roman world to depict moral lessons. Attic tragedy became famous during the fifth century B.C. The best three tragedies of Aeschylus are 'Agamemnon', 'Libation-Bearers', and 'Eumenides'.

Few scenes of mimicking, which gave rise to Greek comedy, were found depicted on pottery. In these scenes, actors used to mimic others by dressing up in overstated costumes in ancient theater. The playwrights worth remembering were Aristophanes and Menander. Ancient Greek plays used to comment on the socio-economic realities of the time.

Menander was the person who introduced a new Greek comedy and it was about average people and their daily life problems. Olympian gods, like Apollo, Zeus, Hera, Ares, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Artemis, Hermes, Demeter, Athena, Dionysus, Hestia, Eros, Hades, Hecate, Cronus, Persephone, Gaia, Pan, Eris, Asclepius, Helios, Nemesis were also involved.

Greek cities used to be on hills, and a tiered seating area for the audience of performances was constructed from semi-circular marble seats. The performance stage included the chorus of 12-15 candidates in costumes, the dimension of which was around 78 ft (23.77 m).

Some places used to have backdrops or scenic boundaries. Theatrical structures used to have an orchestra, and skene. Orchestra and chorus singing are some of the musical forms that emerged out of ancient Greek drama.

While studying and understanding the kind of plays that were staged in ancient Greece, the only challenge that scholars face is the paucity of surviving material from those times.

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Origins Of Ancient Greek Drama

Greek tragedies started in Athens in 532 B.C, where they used to conduct contests and Thespis became the first recorded participant and winner in the act, which made him the Exarchon.

He was named the ‘Father of Tragedy’ in ancient Greece. These contests played an important role to Athenians in the city of Dionysia, in Greek theatres under the dominance of the Greek god Dionysus. This event was created by the Attica dwellers in 508 B.C.

Participants were famous Greek playwrights including Choerilus, Pratinas, and Phrynichus. Phrynichus became the winner between 511-508 B.C. His works were based on the exploitations of fifth-century Athens, such as 'Danaids', 'Phoenician Women', and 'Alcestis'.

All ancient Greek tragic plays were written in the Hellenistic era. In this era, the genre of new comedy was also introduced, including the life of average dwellers by playwright Menander. Without losing importance, the old tragic plays left their footprints in Greek theater.

Development Of Ancient Greek Drama

The ancient Greek tragedy was developed from jovial folk hymns, dithyrambs, approximately from the fifth century. It was performed by a chorus of 12-50 candidates in Greek theaters.

Two to four religious holidays in ancient Greek culture were devoted to watching plays and contests were arranged to identify the unique tetralogy. These ancient theaters showing Greek plays used to get arranged by states and a certain population had to pay some tax due to lack of funding.

Everyone was obliged to attend these and anyone who was financially incompetent and couldn't afford the tax money had to get ticket money, provided by the state. These events used to attract 14,000-20,000 people.

Authors used to describe plays in a simple manner to their audience. Powerful Athenians were made fun of with inside jokes and a play's foundation was usually based on an Athenian’s average daily issues.

Even during these long events people, never used to lack appetites for the next day. For playwrights, it became very easy to explain the political and socio-economic problems to their audience. Playwrights were believed to be educators of the nation with humongous responsibility. If anyone tried to disrupt the play, they used to get punished by execution.

Ancient Greek Actors

When it comes to famous playwrights and actors amongst the Ancient Greeks, there were six of them; Araros, Archias of Thurii, Hegelochus, Metrobius, Polus of Aegina, and Thespis.

Araros, whose father was Aristophanes, arrived in 387 BC. Aristophanes became a principal actor after Cocalus and Aeolosikon. Araros was identified as a comedy playwright along with his brothers Philippus and Nicostratus. Some of his work includes 'Adonis', 'Kaineus', 'Kampylion', 'Panos Gonai', 'Parthenidion', and 'Hymenaios'.

Archias of Thurii, named after a hunter of the exiles, became a mentor to Polus of Aegina. He captivated Lenaia in 330 B.C. Despite not having any affiliation with the ancient Greek political genre, he became a military mercenary and was sent to the Battle of Crannon under general Antipater, probably for financial needs.

Hegelochus was mocked by Sannyrion for using a rising-falling tone, where he was supposed to use an ancient Greek rising tone. He got satirized in Strattis’s 'Kinesias', 'Psychastae', and Aristophanes’ 'Gerytades'.

Metrobius, was an excellent actor and a singer as well. He got mentioned in Plutarch’s 'Parallel Lives'. There was some pinch of dogma about his relationship with Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix.

Polus of Aegina, a tragic actor, performed in a total of eight tragic plays before his demise.

Thespis, the inventor of Greek tragedy, was identified as the first actor. He used to endorse dithyrambs. He made an impact with a new style and art form and left footprints in ancient Greek theatrical tutoring. Some of his works include 'Contest of Pelias and Phorbas', 'Hiereis', 'Hemitheoi', and 'Pentheus'. He received no recognition, even in the western world.

Masks And Drama Contests In Ancient Greece

Masks used to get made with linen in the ancient Greek era, so examples of these don't survive in a pristine state today. Still, we can get to know about elaborate masks' appearance because replicas were made from terracotta, stone, and bronze, and depictions were also engraved in paintings, and featured in mosaics.

Masks were used to make actors identifiable from a certain distance and help them accommodate various roles and individual characters. Somehow their voice used to get amplified by wearing a mask, according to the audience.

The most important role for a mask was to create a metamorphosis of a character, an average actor could perform beyond his limitations and his disguise made him a mythological hero, old man, or character in the satyr genre, amongst many more characters. This mask could omit certain emotions from them and let them perform in spontaneous circumstances.

There were tragedy competitions and later, comedy competitions as well. These used to get funded by the state and rich individuals.

Famous ancient Greek playwrights used to get arranged for these events beforehand, sometimes even a year and a half in advance. These competitions were great places to explore new ideas. Initially, the genre was started with suspense and empathy, but later more genres were added by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles who were pioneers.

Politics And Drama In Ancient Greece

We can establish a link between the ancient Greek tragedy and democratic perspectives in 'Ajax' by Sophocles.

It was hard to decipher ancient Greek plays but it was good enough for the revelations of what was happening in Athens by Greek playwrights. Ajax, the character was not coping well with the idea of who should be given the armor of Achilles.

So, the character made a fuss about how the system could be designed but he couldn't take the pressure and he lost his mind.

This reflects how democracy functioned in Athens and how decision-making was tough for the ancient Greeks. It also taught a moral lesson.

There was a political aspect of tragedy as well. The war groups used to participate in these plays which were funded by rich individuals in the anticipation of being lauded by the audience.

The homage was given by the military generals and the city’s war orphans also paraded to show off the benevolence of the rich.

The state of Athens used to contribute 10% of the GDP and they used to cut them slack during these events. Although in the Golden Age there was a tough democratic and political system, later, in the fourth century BC, the political part started to dissipate.

Unlike Greek tragedies, old comedy used to work on mitigating the city’s political events. Aristophanes became the artist in this genre who dominated it.

The Greek word ‘komodoumenoi’, was used for the people they made fun of, and these plays were used to remind the people of socio-political obligations. Later, Athenians arranged a separate event for comedy in January that made it hard for non-Athenians to participate. Once Aristophanes was summoned to court for using miscellaneous comedy in a competition organized for tragedy.

Aristophanes’ works were alarming for Athenians. Although a very little proportion of Menander’s new comedy can be found, he was more famous than Aristophanes in those periods.

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