Greek theatre: tragedy, comedy and masks

Greek theatre began in Athens in the 6th century BC. Plays were not shown every day. They were part of big religious festivals for Dionysus, the god of wine and of the theatre. The most important one was the City Dionysia, held every spring. By 534 BC plays were part of this festival, and an old tradition says that a poet called Thespis won the first prize for tragedy.

Going to the theatre was a bit like going to a big final today. Thousands of people came and sat outdoors from morning on, watching one play after another. Poets competed with new plays, and judges chose the winners. There were two main kinds of play: tragedy (τραγῳδία), a serious story about heroes and gods that often ends in suffering, and comedy (κωμῳδία), a funny play that made fun of politicians, poets and ordinary Athenians.

A Greek theatre was built into a hillside, open to the sky. It had three main parts, and their names are still Greek words today:

• The θέατρον (theatron), “the place for watching”, was the curved slope where the audience sat.
• The ὀρχήστρα (orchestra), “the dancing place”, was the flat floor at the bottom, where the chorus sang and danced.
• The σκηνή (skene) was the building behind the orchestra. The word first meant “tent”. Actors changed masks and costumes inside it, and its door and flat roof could become part of the play.

The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens lies on the south slope of the Acropolis. In the 5th century BC its audience sat on earth banks and wooden seats. Between about 338 and 326 BC, when the politician Lycurgus ran the city’s finances, it received a stone auditorium and a stone stage building; most of what visitors see today dates from then. The theatre of Epidaurus, built in the 4th century BC, held about 12,000 people (some estimates say 14,000). Its curved rows send the actors’ voices back towards the audience, which is why it is famous for its sound.

Every performer wore a mask, called a πρόσωπον, the same word as “face”. Masks were made of light materials (one comic poet mentions a linen mask), so our picture of them comes mostly from vase paintings and small clay figures. A mask showed at once who a character was: a king, an old man, a young woman, a god. Aristotle notes that the comic mask was ugly and twisted, but did not show pain.

Only men acted, and they played the women’s parts as well. Aristotle (Poetics 1449a) says that Aeschylus raised the number of actors from one to two, and Sophocles to three. With masks, three actors could share all the speaking roles of a play. The actor was called ὑποκριτής, “the one who answers” or “interprets”. In Modern Greek a υποκριτής is above all a hypocrite, someone who pretends; the everyday word for an actor is ηθοποιός.

Next to the actors stood the χορός, the chorus: a group who sang and danced together in the orchestra and commented on the story. In tragedy it had twelve to fifteen members; Sophocles is said to have fixed the number at fifteen.

The three great tragic poets whose plays survive are Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Their plays retold myths, such as the return of Agamemnon from Troy or the fate of Oedipus, and asked hard questions about justice, power and the gods. A contest for comedy began at the City Dionysia in 486 BC. The best-known comic poet is Aristophanes, who mocked the leaders of Athens by name while the city was at war. Later, in the time of Menander, comedy turned to everyday family stories, the ancestors of today’s sitcoms.

Greek theatre is still alive. In 1938 Sophocles’ Electra became the first modern performance in the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, and since 1955 the Athens and Epidaurus Festival has staged ancient plays there in summer. Greeks who have never studied Ancient Greek know the words of the theatre: they buy a ticket for the θέατρο, watch the σκηνή, hear an ορχήστρα, and talk about a τραγωδία or a κωμωδία.