Theatre : Introduction to ancient Greek theatre
The theater in ancient Greece was ancient even to the ancient Greeks themselves. By the time the works of playwrights like Aeschylus were performed in the Hellenistic heyday, Aristotle was reduced to guessing as to how it all began. And likely, many of the specifics are lost irretrievably to history. But the tradition that was left in place has influenced the theatrical tradition for thousands of years, and reaches into modern-day expectations of how a story is to be told.
GREEK THEATER’S ORIGINS
The two main types of Greek plays, comedies and tragedies, are thought to have evolved separately. Comedy was thought to have come out of the festivals honoring Bacchus and Dionysus, gods associated with the baser aspects of humanity such as food and fertility. By the fifth century, there would be an annual spring Dionysus festival where three selected poets would perform tributes on a sloped hillside, perhaps one of the earliest existing outdoor theater sites.
Tragedies evolved out of perhaps a nobler tradition, the desire to educate the public about important parts of local and world history. Tributes would be paid to various gods and battle warriors in a pageant-style fashion. Strangely, far more plays of Greek legend and myth survive than works dedicated to actual history, perhaps because their timeless quality caused them to translate better to future generations.
