What do you know about the Ancient
Greeks?
Greek Theater 500-400 BC
The Foundation of Modern Theater
Have you seen this God?
Greek Theater began to honor the God
Dionysus
Dionysus was the God of Wine, Fertility
and became the God of Theater
Greek Theaters
Theaters were carved out of the side
of a hill and could seat thousands
of people.
Theaters hosted Festivals like City
Dionysia that lasted for 5-6 days
Everyone attended the theater.
We get theater vocabulary from
these buildings:
• Orchestra (acting area)
• Proskenion/Proscenium (theater type)
• Skene/Scene
Actors
•Actors are all men.
•Actors use masks to show emotion and create character.
•Actors use large artificial gestures.
•Actors wear everyday type of clothes of the time.
•Chorus: a group of many men acting in unison as a narrator.
•Thespis: The first actor to stand away from the chorus.
We get theater vocabulary from the Greek actors:
•Thespis is the origin of our modern word “Thespian”
meaning someone who does theater.
Comedy
Plays
By Aristophanes and
others.
Tragedy
By Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and others.
•Greek plays were written to promote thinking, communicate with Gods, and to entertain.
•Plays were free from censorship.
• All the gore occurred offstage.
•We get Theater Vocabulary from the plays:
Drama: To do or to act.
Many Greek plays
survive and are
still performed
today.
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
What is the play about? What does it illustrate?