The Greek's...

GREEK THEATRE PERFORMANCE- AN INRTODUCTION
By Davis Wiles

-The subject matter as well as themes and how the tragedies ended were not predictable.

-The physical sense of earth as home of the dead is constantly exploited. The actors performed on a floor of beaten earth, and their feet created dust and characteristic thud.

-The theatre was where the men came to question who they were and how they should live.


GODS

-Zezus was the head of all the Gods and he ruled the sky. His children ruled other things and were mostly involved in quarreling amongst themselves and creating chaos by dabbling into human affairs. His siblings were the gods of other elements like the sea, under world, indoor world and corn fields.

-Dionysos a child of Zezus is the WINE GOD and he dissolves boundaries, moving freely. Associated with darkness, nocturnal drinking bouts, and the loss of mental clarity in moments of collective emotion, with the loss of boundaries around the self experienced in a crowd, and the hiding of the self behind the theatrical mask. He also dissolves Identity, GEENDER in particular. His instrument is the haunting double oboe which can whip up wild dances. His worshippers tend to be women.

-Gods can be understood as social and psychological projections. Female experience like reproduction, the frustrations of the married state, the wildness of adolescence, etc; and Male experiences of travel, power, fighting, drinking, labour, etc.

-The Gods have no morality and represent irreconcilable opposites. Their fighting is mirrored in that of the humans.

-Statues were a symbol embodying a variable degree of divine presence.

THE FESTIVAL

Served the purpose of-
(i) Showing of the best of the city to foreigners
(ii) A place where men could question who they were and how they lived.
(iii) A place where political concerns were raised and possible real life situations and problems were presented to the men.
(iv) To celebrate the God of Theatre and Wine.

THE MATERIAL

-All Greek tragedies observed the same principle, refracting the past through the present to make old stories generate an infinite number of new meanings.

-They transferred immediate political hopes and fears to the world of myth, encouraging the audience to judge, feed and sympathize with the person that the author had picked.

-The same storied could be used over and over again and yet be different as writers wrote from different perspectives, new shifts in sympathy, new interpretations of motive, and new moral dilemmas.

-Dramatist constructed new myths to get rid of the gap between males and females in society, while others chose to explore deep tensions and contradictions within the democratic system.
Power and danger of women was a recurrent.

THE ORIGINS
-“Mythos” means “something spoken” and this was how the great tragedies were first formed and performed. By word of mouth.

-It started with the women, who were in-charge of the child’s education. They were to tell these myths to the children so as to educate them. Hence most choruses comprised of women. They used these stories as analogues for present events.

-Another form that it originated from was poetry – memorized by individuals for a competition—the poems were then recited by then and they had to start when the other one stopped – this helped to improve vocal skills as well as to help the with their tactic of building suspense. It also taught them how to fit a story into a short time frame.

-Playwrights looked at these epic poems and drew material from it. Changing the content, motives and the order of events.

-Messenger speeches also originated from here—They often described the climax of the play, forcing people to use their imaginations.

CONTEXT
Not all Greeks held the same political and religious views and beliefs. Some didn’t believe God existed while others thought they did, but not in the forms that humans portrayed them to be in.

GREEK TRAGEDIES

-They are very malleable. Made so, so that it can be changed as the political landscape changes, making it harder for the later generations to reverse.

-The REACTION of the characters to the same situations was what differed from each tragedy.

-It always had something to do with killings within the family and between generations. The reactions were based on the time period and its social and political situation.

-All tragedies are linked in one way or another, like a very long story situated in the same place, just from different peoples perspectives and with a progressive time period. This like rituals, rules, punishments, etc are all relatable. Hence, the audience knows the rules of the form, giving them more pleasure as well as making life easier for the playwrights.

-Tragedies derive part of their formal structure from the law court. Regularly we find two individuals pitted against each other, and each makes a long speech approximately equal length.

-Almost everything said is to please the chorus= the general public and the judges (in a law court)
They were NOT interested in the drive behind the words (What Stan follows) but in the effect of the words. Rational arguments were meant to stimulate emotions in support for the protagonists expressed ideals, so as to gain the support of the people.

RITUALS

-The Athenians were actively involved in a large num of rituals, which helped to breed a theatrical imagination in them.

-The line between ritual and theatre is fuzzy.

-Narrative ritual- Rituals opened up a vein of symbolism for the dramatist to exploit, drawing on language of symbols that was part of Greek culture.

-Tragedies were also used to EXPLAIN rituals.
(i) Supplication- Ensuring personal protection. Could be asked for from God’s or elders. One could not harm another if they had a protector.
(ii) Funeral practice- Burial rights are critical if the dead were to find peace.
(iii) Purification- Death was experienced as a source of pollution, a mind of filth which contaminated those who came close to it. Places were purified with Pigs blood as was the beginning of many ritual acts.
(iv) Prayer- Athenians prayed making noisy demands upon their Gods, reminding them of their obligations. Prayer was usually tied to other rituals, like sacrifice or pouring of wine into the earth, for a gift to the gods imposed an obligation to them to reciprocate.

POLITICS- A quick overview

-Democracy= rule by the people. Ironically, People= Male citizens of the city ONLY.

-They went to great lengths, leaving chance and the Gods to make up some of the decisions as to who gets voted into office. Cycles were adopted and everyone was given a chance at holding a position.

-Public speaking was of great importance, but it was not so much for the truth to be spoken as for the speech to evoke strong positive emotions from the audience and judges. It required great skill and power.

GENDER

Closely linked with politics
Democracy=
(i) the people have to be one large family- family units now invisible
(ii) All possible areas of conflict have to be gotten rid of- women and $ differences. The strength of the city state was a matter of life and death. The men had to fight side by side for the collective purpose of the city. (pg69)
(iii) Emotions took the backseat (because the actions are said to be taken on the basis of emotion and codes of honour rather than the calculation of the collective interest)- LAWS and RULES were what was important

THE MASK
(i) Ritual Interpretations- Characters social status, etc.

(ii) Neutrality- lack of expression of face forced the body to be more expressive.

(iii) Alientaing mask- The mask actually brought the audience closer to the performers since they were so far away. In addition giving the audience the freedom to imagine the expression of the character allowed the emotion to be even more powerful.

(iv) Acoustical Mask- Helps to focus the sound and make sure it does not get dispersed AND it increases the actor’s awareness of the architecture of his own body and sense the presence of the others acting.


SOPHOCLES
· His plays frequently portrayed powerful men choosing between the lesser of two evils, experiences from a position of personal knowledge.

· He was the model citizen and had wealth, fame, body and talent. He used his plays as a medium through which he could voice out his frustrations and problems that he could not in real life because he needed to appear good before the people. It was his escape.