Greek Theatre research

Greek Theatre 550BC-220BC

Greek theatre was the main art form in Greece at this time and it thrived within the city of Athens. Plays were performed at two different festivals in Athens, the City Dionysia and the Lenaia. These were religious festivities celebrated by the people in honour of the god Dionysis. 

Aeschylus 525BC-456BC

Sophocles 496BC-406BC

Euripides 484BC-407BC

Aristophanes 460BC-380BC

Phileman 368BC-263BC

Menander 342BC-291BC

Themes of Greek plays

Tragedy

Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles were the three main writers of tragedies. The word tragedy comes from the two words, tragos meaning goat and oide meaning song which is connected to the sacrifice of a goat to the god of Dionysus. Most tragedies follow the same plot line of a protagonist who is painted in a good light but commits a crime or does something bad but doesn't fully realise the consequences of their actions until it is to late. The protagonist has to conveyed in such a way so that when they commit their wrong doing the audience should feel pity and empathy towards them. A lot of Tragedies were based upon Greek mythology and

masks to represent gods

inspired by Greek mythology

sun=death

all before the sun goes down

catharsis, purged, emotionally drained, purified

tragic hero

Comedy

Old comedy- In this period of comedy (425BC-400BC) there was one clear master of the art and that was Aristophanes. We have 11 surviving comedy plays of his and so it is clear to see his style of writing. The basic plots of his plays are not so good but then again drama is better left to tragedies, people watched a comedy to laugh and he sure achieved that. He took a lot of his characters traits from political and intellectual figures and he mocked and attacked them. For example he wrote a play on the Peloponnesian Wars which the Athenian government was fighting in at them time. Aristophanes liked to use simple humour like sexual references to help make his plays light and enjoyable to watch.

Middle comedy- This period is after the death of Aristophanes and before the comedy of Menander covering 400BC-323BC, the Archanians, however no complete plays have survived. It is basically just a simpler form of old comedy keeping some factors but scraping the importance of many features Aristophanes used like the Chorus and the attacks on political/intellectual figures. The Archanians instead used exaggerated stock characters and so drew Comedy from this.

New comedy- This period of Comedy covers the time of 320BC-260BC and there was one clear leader, Menander. We know that other playwrights such as Philemon wrote the same kind of plays but no one as good as Menander. New comedy and middle comedy are very similar by both disregarding the chorus, attacks on high powered people and not using specific known people. However the way they differ is that new comedy focused around normal people living their everyday lives and playwrights drew their comedy from this. A way to imagine what this may look like is to think about the situation sit-coms we see on tv today.

Satyr 

A satyr is a mythical half goat, half human creature. 

Satyrs were performed short plays between the acts of tragedies and took the fun out of the characters. The actors would wear large phalluses for comedic effect. Not many of these plays have survived.