Ancient Greek Theatre

A detailed Summary of Ancient Greek Theatre


Imagine this following scene: You are sitting in a dark, fairly crowded large room. There are hundreds of other people, in hundreds of other seats surrounding you. In front of you, there is a large stage, with people acting out a play. Lights, music, and different sound effects set the mood of the play for you to understand more clearly what is going on. With these certain conventions, viewer can get a real grasp of a story in which several actors are trying to portray. However, it hasn't always been this easy to enjoy a play in a theater. Theatre and plays go back as far as "b.c." times.

In the Greek theater, the conventions are very different. Unique Greek performances, which were performed hundreds of years ago, were put on to please the god Dionysos. In these performances, artificial light was impossible and there were no footlights to illuminate the faces of the actors. Spectators had to have a great imagination to create a mood themselves. The actors had to project their voices even more, and they used numerous masks, to reveal different characters. Plays were done in an amphitheater, which was a circular type theater, so that projection was very loud, and the actors could be heard all around. The actors were


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Aylen, Leo. The Greek Theater. New Jersey: Associated University Press, Inc., 1985.

Plays were performed to portray many daily events that happened in the Greek life. Such as political rises and downfalls, stories of hero's, stories that portrayed fears of the gods, or even success with the gods were just some events that were portrayed in the theater. Many plays were just stories that a "producer" created himself.

Plays were basically started in the time when aristocrats were taking over different city-states, and running dictatorships, or very unfair governments. There was a small majority of the aristocrats who were highly amused and into the theatre. It was these certain aristocrats who made it a point to have certain theatres built and shows put on.

The Construction of an Ancient Theatre. 14 Apr. 2001.



Some common words found in the essay are:
Sophocles' Antigone, Unique Greek, , Ancient Theatre, Francisco Chandler, Noble Inc, greek theater, Texas Press, Press Inc, Greek Theatre, 3 half, greek theatre, chorus actors, front stage, theatres built,

Approximate Word count = 878
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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