Assignment:
You are required to view and critique one live performance. Please use a live recording of a performance you find online and include the link used in your assignment.
Performance reviews should be 1-2 pages. Use the module entitled "Chapter 11 for Performance Reviews" as a guide for what elements to critique. Need Assignment Help?
Chapter 11: The Ancients
Learning Objectives
This chapter discusses the origins of theatre, the genesis and features of ancient traditional drama, the predominant qualities of Greek plays, and the traits of ancient Roman theatre.
I. You should understand how theatre may have emerged from ritual, storytelling, and shamanism.
II. You should appreciate the general traits and components of traditional African and ancient Egyptian drama.
III. You should be familiar with the traditions and impulses from which ancient Greek theatre originated, as well as how it developed from this origin to its role in the classical period.
IV. You need to know the qualities of Greek theatre during the classical period.
V. You should be familiar with the configuration and features of Greek theatres and the elements of spectacle in the plays performed there.
VI. You need to know the three major Greek writers of tragedy and be familiar with the qualities and issues of Greek plays.
VII. You should be acquainted with the components of and ideas surrounding Prometheus Bound and Oedipus Tyrannos.
VIII. You should have a general idea of the nature of Roman theatre, the qualities of its major playwrights, and the kinds of theatre structures it constructed.
Overview and Outline:
No one knows how drama began, but the two ancient traditions, ritual and storytelling, merged to create a new kind of theatre which can still be seen today. Performers in ancient rituals engaged with the stories and beliefs common to their collective lives. Storytelling, in contrast, is more an individual than collective practice and generates elements of character impersonation. In seeking to entertain, it provides a structured narrative that is personal and affecting. The Shaman, acting as a gatekeeper, mediates between spirit and earthly realities, combines ritual and storytelling in performances that utilize trance and magic, masks, dancing, and striking acts of physical endurance to transform himself into a spirit presence
The introduction of spoken dialogue into shamanistic rites served as the initiation of traditional drama. Sub-Saharan Africa contains a vast array of traditional drama combining ritual and storytelling. Emblematic of sub-Saharan drama is the mmonwu (masquerade) of the Igbo people in Nigeria, which provides a still-living example of a musical dance-drama that combines the collective significance of ritualistic performance with elements like masks, designated performance space, and spectacle commonly seen as theatrical. Written records exist of a springtime resurrection drama, known as the Abydos Passion Play, performed in Egypt at least as early as 2500 B.C.E. This boat procession along the Nile demonstrates a link between tragic death and rejuvenation, a theme derived from even more ancient ritualized reenactments of coming of spring. Most drama in the Middle East had disappeared by the third century B.C.E., and Islam, originating in the seventh century C.E., viewed the depictions of humans as irreligious and eliminated theatre.
The artistic achievement of the ancient Greek theatre in the fifth century B.C.E. was tremendous. Greek theatre was full of blasphemous images rooted in the violence of life; and of persistent examination of the social and ethical aspects of war, murder, lust, and betrayal as well as a window into man's relationship with the supernatural. The dithyramb was a ritualistic drunken, orgiastic fertility festival celebrating the god of wine, Dionysus.
Written versions of the dithyramb appeared about 600 B.C.E. and the need for "safer," less ecstatic entertainments acceptable to trading partners led to the regularization of Attic rites into what we recognize as drama, giving rise to the Classic period of Greek theatre in the fifth century B.C.E.
During the Classic period, tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays gained definition as separate dramatic forms. These forms differed from the dithyramb due to the appearance of the actor. This addition of impersonation to performance, along with the invention of the theatrical mask, allowed for the portrayal of multiple characters. During the fifth century, plays began incorporating a second actor, and finally a third. By the middle of the century, the popular form of the tetralogy included a limited number of masked characters, along with a singing and dancing chorus. The tetralogy was a sequence of four plays: three tragedies followed by a satyr play. Comedies developed separately from tragedies, and in contrast, reflected little religious origin in their audacity, sexiness, scatological references, and political commentary.
The Greek theatre, or theatron, was situated in a large, cleared threshing area at the base of a hillside for spectators. Plays were performed on a flat staging area (orchestra) with a wooden changing room (skene) behind it. During the classic period, these structures were made of wood; only in later periods were the stone structures that survive today created. Spectacle in the Greek theatre consisted of costuming and masks, of which physical evidence remains, but also dances, music, and acting-aspects whose exact technical execution in ancient times we can only guess at. Nonetheless, the combination of these elements seemed to have been designed to create a richly sensual experience.
Plays were presented in competition during sprawling, spectacular festivals such as the City Dionysia. Although Greek plays contained identifiable, recurring elements (such as a prologue, parados, episode, stasimon, exodus, and parabasis), the themes, styles, conclusions and manners of the four known playwrights show a remarkable diversity, dispelling the notion that there was any kind of formula or controlling concept uniting the plays. Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus, and Oedipus Tyrannos by Sophocles, illustrate some of these differences, similarities, and developments.
Roman drama is significant in part because it was the first ancient drama known to poets and scholars of the Renaissance. These dramas, however, were not unique, as they usually adapted earlier Greek models. Comedies predominate, with those of Plautus and Terence providing inspiration for artists as diverse as Moliere, Shakespeare, and Stephen Sondheim. Seneca's closet dramas, with their charged scenes of passion, violence, and horror, would influence Renaissance tragedies such as Shakespeare's Hamlet. Roman theatres, which were freestanding structures with high facades behind the stage area and three stage doorways, were initially built as ornate but temporary wooden structures for festivals and games. After Pompey the Great built the first stone theatre in Rome in 55 BC, the construction of hundreds of such structures proliferated throughout the Mediterranean; however, the collapse of the Roman Empire and early Christian Church's condemnation of actors and theatre-going would end written drama for five hundred years.
The Ancients
A. Ritual
B. Storytelling
C. Shamanism, Trance, and Magic
D. The Beginnings of Traditional Drama
E. Traditional Drama in Sub-Saharan Africa
F. Egyptian Drama
G. The Greek Theatre
- Origins and Evolution
- The Birth of the Dithyramb
- The Classical Period
- The Theatron
- The Spectacle
- The City Dionysia
H. The Greek Plays
- The Three Greek Tragedians
- Prometheus Bound
- Oedipus Tyrannos
I. The Roman Theatre
Suggested Plays and Films
These plays represent some of the most acclaimed examples of ancient Greek and Roman theatre, while the films show ritual practices or illustrate how modern theatre artists have approached the production of Greek plays by preserving, adapting, or rejecting (sometimes all in a single performance) the original form and style of their production.
Plays
- The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides) thought to be by Aeschylus
- Prometheus Bound, thought to be by Aeschylus
- Oedipus Rex, thought to be by Sophocles
- The Trojan Women and The Bacchae by Euripides
- The Birds by Aristophanes
- The Pot of Gold and The Menaechmi Twins (sometimes called The Brothers Menaechmus) by Plautus
- The Girl from Andros by Terence
- Medea by Seneca
Films/Videos:
Les Maitres Fous. Dir. Jean Rouch, Documentary Educational Resources, (English subtitled French film from 1953-54, re-released in 1977 and the 1990s).
The Theban Plays. (Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus) Dir. Don Taylor BBC/Bioscope productions.
Oedipus Rex. Dir. Sir Tyrone Guthrie.
The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides). Dir. Peter Hall, National Theatre of Great Britain, 1983.