HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK THEATER/DRAMADrama:an action filled story, prose, composition or dialogue intended to be acted out on stage using actors.

The Greeks were the very first to have dramas. Between 600 and 200 BC (Twenty-five hundred years ago) was when the Western theatre was born inAthens, Greece. The ancient Athenians theatre culture is still around and used today. The Greek created plays that are still considers the worlds greatest works of drama. The Athenians thought that the ideas for the dramas came from one of their gods called Dionysus.

Beginnings of Greek Drama: Greek Drama began as a form of religious worship to the Greek God Dionysus. The earliest forms of drama included religious chants and songs performed by a chorus. New myths were added to introduced. Second and third actors added to the drama when acted out. Chorus reduced from as many as 50 people to 15 people. The dialogue of actors became gradually more important.

Types of Drama Comedy- a funny drama that often made fun of men who were high in power. Famous comedy writers include Aristophanes and later Menander. Tragedy- about a character who commits a crime. These played typically involved love, pride, power, loss. The plays were also God and man centered. Famous tragic writers include Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Satyr- a quick play that pokes fun at the main characters situation and that is performed in-between acts of the tragedy plays.

Who is Dionysus?

Dionysus is the God of wine and vegetation. He is kind and gentle-natured to the Maenads or Bacchantes. But, Dionysus is cold and cruel to those who don't believe in him.Dionysus is believed to die every Winter and rebirth in the Spring. This cycle is an embodied idea of resurrection by his believers.

Theatre and TraditionTheatres were built into natural hillsides. Greek actors were all men. These actors wore large masks to indicate emotion and the nature of the character being portrayed. Also, each mask had a megaphone so everyone in the audience could hear well. During the Dionysian Festival, an event, theGreater Dionysiawas held for 5 days during the spring. During these few days, each writer would present 3 tragedies and a satyr play. 15,000 people would sit through each play, intently watching. In the end, they would vote for their favorites by casting stone ballots.The winners would be awarded the Laurel Wreath.Sophocles won this award more than 20 times.Greek Drama Examples: Diskolos (The Grouch, 317 B.C.) A comedy by Meander Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles Antigone by Sophocles The Oresteia by Aeschylus Helena by Euripides

Timeline of Greek Theatre

543 B.C Tragedy introduced at City Dionysia Festival 525 B.C Aeschylus was born 496 B.C Sophocles was born 480 B.C Euripides was born 470 B.C Socrates was born 468 B.C Sophocles won first prize withTriptolemus 458 B.C Aeschylus won first prize withOresteia 456 B.C Aeschylus died 440 B.C Euripides producedRhesus, Sophocles exhibitsAntigone 430 B.C Sophocles createsOedipus the King 425 B.C Euripides createsElectra 423 B.C Aristophanes createsClouds 421 B.C Aristophanes createsPeace 415 B.C Euripides createsHeracles,Trojan Women, andIphigeneic; Aristophanes exhibitsBirds 411 B.C Aristophanes createsLyrsistrata 410 B.C Sophocles exhibitsElectra 408 B.C Euripides createsOrestes 405 B.C Euripides and Sophocles die, Aristophanes createsFrogs, EuripidesBacchewas produced 401 B.C SocratesOedipus at Colonuswas produced 399 B.C Socrates was executed 388 B.C Aristophanes died 384 B.C Aristotle was born 350 B.C Theater of Epidaurus was built 342 B.C Meander was born 336 B.C Aristotle createsPoetics 322 B.C Aristotle died 316 B.C Meander exhibitsThe Malcontat 305 B.C Meander createsThe Women From Samos 291 B.C Meander died 250 B.C Theatre at Syracuse was rebuilt, Theatre at Ephesus was built

WHO ARE THESE FOLLOWING PEOPLE

AeschylusAeschylus (525/524 BC c. 456/455 BC) was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict amongst them, whereas previously characters had interacted only with the chorus.

Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived into modern times, and there is a longstanding debate about his authorship of one of these plays, Prometheus Bound. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy; his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived.

At least one of his works was influenced by the Persian invasion of Greece, which took place during his lifetime. This play, The Persians, is the only extant classical Greek tragedy concerned with recent history (very few of that kind were ever written)[8] and it is a useful source of information about that period. So important was the war to Aeschylus and the Greeks that, upon his death, around 456 BC, his epitaph commemorated his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon rather than his success as a playwright.

He was a deep, religious thinker. Few poets have ever presented evil in such stark and tragic terms, yet he had an exalted view of Zeus, whom he celebrated with a grand simplicity reminiscent of the Psalms, and a faith in progress or the healing power of time.

EuripidesEuripides was born in 480 BC and died in 406 BC. Euripides was the youngest of the three principal fifth-century tragic poets. His work, which was quite popular in his own time, exerted great influence on Roman drama. In more recent times he has influenced English and German drama, and most conspicuously such French dramatists as Pierre Corneille and Jean-Baptiste Racine.

His plays began to be performed in the Attic drama festivals in 454 BC, but it was not until 442 BC that he won first prize. This distinction, despite his prolific talent, fell to him again only four times. Aside from his writings, his chief interests were philosophy and science.

Euripides represented the new moral, social, and political movements that were taking place in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BC. It was a period of enormous intellectual discovery, in which "wisdom" ranked as the highest earthly accomplishment. Anaxagoras had just proven that air was an element, and that the sun was not a divinity but matter. New truths were being established in all departments of knowledge, and Euripides, reacting to them, brought a new kind of consciousness to the writing of tragedy. His interest lay in the thought and experience of the ordinary individual rather than in the experiences of legendary figures of the heroic past.

WHAT IS DRAMATURGY

the theory and practice of dramatic composition. Dramaturgyis the art ofdramaticcomposition and therepresentationof the main elements of drama on the stage. The worddramaturgywas coined byGotthold Ephraim Lessing. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three.Somedramatistscombine writing and dramaturgy when creating a drama. Others work with a specialist, called adramaturg, to adapt a work for the stage. Dramaturgy may also be defined, more broadly, as shaping a story into a form that may be acted. Dramaturgy gives the work or the performance astructure. From 1767-1770 Lessing wrote and published a series of criticisms entitled theHamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie).These works analyzed, criticized and theorized the German theatre, and made Lessing the father of modern Dramaturgy Another important work to the Western theatre tradition work is thePoeticsbyAristotle(written around 335BC). In this work Aristotle analyzestragedy. He considersOedipus Rex(c. 429 BC) as the quintessential dramatic work. He analyzes the relations amongcharacter, action, and speech, gives examples of what he considers to be good plots, and examines the reactions the plays provoke in the audience. Many of his "rules" are often associated with "Aristotelian drama", whereindeus ex machinais a weakness and the action is structured economically. InPoeticshe discusses many key concepts of drama, such asanagnorisisandcatharsis. In the last century Aristotle's analysis has formed the basis for numerous TV and film-writing guides. ThePoeticsis the earliest survivingWesternwork ofdramatic theory. Probably the earliest non-Western dramaturgic work is the IndianSanskrit"Natayasatra" ('The Art of Theatre') written aboutAD100, which describes the elements, forms and narrative elements of the ten major types of ancient Indian dramas.

WHAT IS AMPITHEATER(especially in Greek and Roman architecture) a round or oval building, typically unroofed, with a central space for the presentation of dramatic or sporting events. Tiers of seats for spectators surround the central space.

THEATER AND THEATREIn most contexts, there is no difference in meaning between theater and theatre. Neither has any special definitions in general usage. The main thing that most English speakers and learners need to know is that theater is the preferred spelling in American English, and theatre is preferred virtually everywhere else.

Some Americans do make distinctionsfor instance, that a theater is a venue while theatre is an art form, or that a theater is a movie theater while a theatre is a drama venue. There is nothing wrong with making these distinctions, but they are not consistently borne out in general usage. Even in 21st-century writing on the art of theater, the more American spelling now appears for all senses of the word.

The American preference for theater is a late-20th-century development (though the spelling itself is a centuries-old variant), so it is understandable that some people still resist it, and its newness means that exceptions are very easily found, but in this century the preference is entrenched. Searching a selection of 40 American news and cultural publications that put their content online, theaters appears 8,500 times from 2000 to the present, against just under 200 instances of theatres. This just suggests that theater is the preferred spelling for actual venues (the art form is a mass noun so would only rarely be pluralized), which no one seems to dispute. Whats more interesting is that the phrase theater critic appears 260 times against three instances of theatre critic, theater actor appears 43 times against zero instances of theatre actor, theater scene appears 60 times against two instances of theatre scene, and the phrase contemporary theater appears 27 times against two instances of contemporary theatre (and both of these are in names of buildings).

Meanwhile, ngrams meant to draw out any preference for theatre as the spelling for the art form in U.S. books shows theater ahead even in these uses over the last few decades (the links in this sentence point to some of the ngrams).