2500 years ago, Athens gave birth to a culture whose form, technique and terminology has transcended time,

lasting over two millennia. It established a medium through which the Ancient Greeks were able to explore the world they lived in and the meaning of life itself. It granted a means of releasing strong emotions through its ritual power. 2500 years ago, between 600 and 200 BC, Western theatre was born. Good morning/afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Drama was a product of what was occurring in Athens at the time, wherein there was friction between the traditional ways of behaviour governed by religion and the new idea of free thought and intellectual inquiry. Essentially, they had begun to question how society and nature should work, and the purpose of mans role in the scheme of things. It was this freethinking culture that had catalysed the birth of theatre. Entertainment to the Ancient Greeks was taken very seriously. They created plays that are still considered among the greatest pieces of world drama today, although only 33 tragedies and 11 comedies remain from that period. There were three genres of drama: tragedy, comedy and satyr plays. Tragedy and comedy were viewed as completely separate genres, and no plays ever merged aspects of the two. The first comedies were primarily satirical and mocked men in power for their vanity and foolishness. It offers a kind of catharsis through laughter and amusement by reminding us of our frailties and helps keep us sane. As Aristotle explains: Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriouslyWho furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actorsremain unknown. All renowned comedies during this period are written by Aristophanes. This includes the most controversial piece of literature to come from Ancient Greece, Lysistrata, a humorous tale about a strong woman who leads a female coalition to end war in Greece. Thalia is the muse of comedy and is associated with the mask of comedy and thin-soled shoes called a sock, similar to the shoes worn by comedic characters, as seen in____ Meanwhile, tragedy dealt with more important themes of pride, love, loss and the abuse of power. Three well-known tragedy playwrights of the fifth century were Sophocles, Euripedes and Aeschylus. Some of their works include Antigone, Hercules and The Persians respectively. Melpomene is the muse of tragedy and is often depicted holding the tragic mask and wearing cothurni which were leather boots laced up to the knees, as worn by tragic characters wore in plays, seen in ___ Ruth Scodel, a Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan, sums up the speculations about the origins of this genre, saying that: First, somebody created a performance by combining a speaker with a chorusin disguise as characters in a storySecond, this performance was made part of the City Dionysa at Athens. Third, regulations defined how it was to be managed. He also suggests the possibility that all of these occurrences happened simultaneously, however claimed that it was not likely. Aristotles Poetics is the earliest account of dramatic theory. In it, he defines tragedy as: an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitudewith incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. Catharsis was a term coined by him, used to argue that tragedy cleansed people of petty frets by making them realise that good can come from suffering. Satyr plays are sometimes classified as tragicomic or comedy dramas because they were short and were performed between the acts of tragedies, making fun of the plight of the characters. Satyrs were mythical creatures, half-human and half-goat figures. Actors wore large phalluses for comic effect. Few of these plays survived.

Nearly every Greek city had an open-air theatre, the theatron or watching place arranged in wooden tiers with a clear view of the stage and surrounding landscape. The theatres were originally built on a very large scale to accommodate the large number of people on stage and in the audience, which could reach up to 14,000. The front seats were reserved for priests and a few most respected citizens. The performance space was a simple circular space, known as the orchestra, where the chorus danced and sang. It was situated on a flattened terrace at the foot of a hill, the slope of which would provide a natural watching area. Backdrops stood behind the orchestra, used to present the setting as well as offer an area where actors could change their costumes. It was known as the skene. The actors entered the stage from either side or from a central door in the skene. Characters were always killed behind it because it was considered inappropriate to show a murder in front of the audience.The parodos was a path by which the chorus and some actors made their entrances and exits. It was also used by the audience to enter and exit the theatre. A crane was located at the right side of the stage, used to lift gods and heroes through the air onto the stage. At the early Greek festivals, the actors and directors were all the same person. Later, this evolved to three actors being used in each play. Due to the limited number of actors allowed on-stage, the incorporation of a chorus became popular. Plays had a chorus of 12 to 15 people, who performed plays in verse accompanied by music. The chorus was given as much as half of the total lines of the play. Often, the dialogue between the actor and chorus served a didactic function. To this day, drama in all its forms still functions as a powerful medium of communication of ideas. An iconic feature of Greek theatre was the masks worn. Most of the evidence comes from only a few vase paintings of the 5th century BC, such as the Pronomos vase which depicts characters preparing for a satyr play. Illustrations of theatrical masks from the 5th century showcase helmet-like masks which cover the entire face and head, with holes for eyes and a small slit for the mouth, with an integrated wig. Performances didnt distinguish the masked actor from the theatrical character, as the actor essentially vanished into the role through wearing the mask. Masks were also made for members of the chorus, who played some part in the action and provided a commentary on the events. Their masks were all the same because they were considered to be united as representing one character. In a large open-air theatre, like the Theatre of Dionysus, the classical masks were able to bring the characters faces closer to the audience, as they had intensely exaggerated facial features and expressions. They allowed an actor to appear in several different roles, preventing the audience from identifying one actor to one specific character. The variations in the different masks also conveyed age, gender and social status to the audience. As only 2-3 actors were able to be on the stage at one time, and masks enabled fast transitions from one character to another. Also, as there were only male actors, masks allowed them to play female characters well. Plays were performed in the daytime, enabling the sun to provide lighting. Torches were used, but more for the purpose of heightening the power of the appearance of certain passages or characters. The actor was dwarfed by his surroundings. Gestures had to be large in order to be seen, and costumes had to be large and flowing in order to allow free, athletic movement, as well as make a strong visual impression on the audience. As the golden era of Greek drama waned, Athens was overrun by the Spartans in 404BC and was later torn apart by constant warring with other city states, eventually falling under the rule of Alexander the Great and his Macedonian armies. Theatre continued, however it would not return to the same creative heights until Elizabethan England two millennia later.