Greek Theatre

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

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mplex to be accommodated strictly by churches. Performance conventions that arose while plays were still sited in churches persisted when they moved outside. In the churches, the convention arose of setting up different scenes (e.g., the manger, heaven, hell) simultaneously. The action (and/or actors and/or audience) would move from scene to scene, or more exactly, mansion to mansion, which can be likened to the movement from station to station in the Stations of the Cross. Actors would use various mansions simultaneously or go from one to the next, as the action required. Besides the mansions, there was a single-site performance area called the platea, a platform or a space of ground in front of the mansions for transitional or unlocalized action (Nicoll passim). There was country-to-country variation in the use of mansions, plateae, and staging devices. In England and Spain, wheeled pageant wagons or carriages, i.e., portable mansions, could show a succession of scenes in various places. These appear to have been somewhat elaborate in design and function, a consequence of competition between guilds (Salter 56). Also in England were round permanent "structures," usually earthen. For the Castle of Perseverance, first staged in 1

Category: Arts - G