Aristotle identifies the origin of the Greek theatre as religious, citing performances of dithyrambs, or irregular poetry, which led to comedy, and phallic songs, having institutional and civic significance, which led to tragedy (Aristotle 36-7). Herodotus (149) cites the "choric dance" and veneration of the phallus as a feature of the Greek festival of Dionysus. The dithyrambs were entirely choral; however, there emerged a coryphaeus, or choral leader. From here "it was only a step" toward character differentiation, first with the choryphaeus standing for Dionysus, "and then to set him off by himself as an actor in contradistinction to the choreutae and their (new) coryphaeus" (Flickinger 162).
In describing the action of Greek plays, Aristotle hints at the religious links to drama. He is specific about the sequence of performance of tragedy: the prologue, the parode (first entry of chorus), the episodes that follow, interspersed with choral songs, the commos (interaction between actor(s) and chorus), and the exode, "which is not followed by a song of the Chorus" (Aristotle 47).
The formal designations of tragedy's constituent parts implies a ritual aspect of presentation, ritual being a constituent of community religious observance. Mielziner (23) uses the term religiocivic to describe the interpenetration of theatre and religion in ancient Greece.
The physical theatre plan of ancient Greece absorbed and transformed the religious origins of the festivals of Dionysis into aesthetic conventions. Of the theatres of ancient Greece Schlegel says that the Greeks' dramas "were always acted in day, and beneath the canopy of heaven." That the Athenian theatre was known as the theatre of Dionysus, even though the content of drama evolved into a secular mode, is consistent with the idea that the dramatic festivals were quasi-religious in nature. As Mielziner explains, the liturgy of the outdoor religious festivals in Greece "influenced...