Masks and Festivals: The Birth of Greek Theatre

Every time we sit in a theatre, we take part in a tradition invented by the Greeks. The words theatre, drama, chorus, scene, tragedy and comedy all come from ancient Greek. But the original performances were very different from a night at the theatre today.

A festival for a god

Greek drama grew out of the worship of Dionysus, god of wine and transformation. Its origins are obscure, but by the sixth century BC choruses were performing songs called dithyrambs in his honour. Tradition says that around 534 BC a performer named Thespis stepped out of the chorus to play a character, becoming the first actor, which is why actors are still called thespians.

The great occasion was the City Dionysia, held in Athens each spring. Over several days, thousands of spectators gathered in the Theatre of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis. Three playwrights each presented three tragedies and a comic satyr play, and comedies were added to the festival too. A panel of judges chose the winners.

Masks, chorus and three actors

All the performers were men, wearing masks that showed their characters and helped their voices carry. A tragedy used at most three speaking actors, who changed masks to play several roles each, alongside a chorus of twelve or fifteen who sang and danced and commented on the action. Violent deaths usually happened offstage and were reported by a messenger, although a wheeled platform called the ekkyklema could roll out to reveal the bodies.

The great tragedians

Only the works of three tragic playwrights survive in any number. Aeschylus, a veteran of Marathon, wrote grand and solemn dramas such as the Oresteia. Sophocles, author of Oedipus the King and Antigone, was the master of tightly built plots. Euripides, the youngest, wrote psychologically daring plays such as Medea and The Bacchae, and was often criticised for showing gods and heroes in an unflattering light.

Laughter and satire

Comedy mattered just as much. Aristophanes, the master of Old Comedy, wrote outrageous fantasies full of jokes, songs and personal insults aimed at the leading men of Athens, from the politician Cleon to Socrates himself. In Lysistrata the women of Greece go on strike to force their husbands to make peace. Later, Menander’s New Comedy of mistaken identities and young lovers laid the foundations of the modern sitcom.

An enduring stage

Stone theatres spread across the Greek world. The theatre at Epidaurus, built in the fourth century BC, is famous for its acoustics: a coin dropped in the centre of the stage can be heard in the top rows. It still hosts performances every summer, and watching an ancient tragedy under the stars there is one of the great experiences of a trip to Greece, and proof that these plays still speak to us.