First…
• Theater is the foundation art of all drama
• Theater creates a relationship between performer and audience
• Live
• Personal
• Immediate (unmediated)
• Theater teaches “timeless observations about the human condition”
• Commonalities & Differences
•Theatre approximates experiential knowledge to elicit empathy.
•Elements of Theater: Audience, Dramatic Action Embodied in a
Script, Performers, Director, Theater Space, & Design Elements.
Theatre is
collaborative
Theatre’s Origins
Children’s Play
Storytelling
Ritual
Ancient Greece – 5th Century BCE
 Polytheistic
 Artistic
 Increasingly
commercial & literate
 Democratic
– Demes
– Tribes
 Misogyny
Greek Theaters - Ephesus
Delphi
City Dionysia – Early 5th C. BCE
 Celebration of Dionysus
 Three Trilogies produced, each with a Satyr
play afterward
 Actors wore masks – played several parts
 Chorus (audience’s representative on stage)
danced in orchestra
 Aulis was a double reeded flute that was
played
 Audience knew stories
Know the difference between Story and Plot
City Dionysia & Comdey
 Comedy came later – Late 5th Century BCE
 Old Comedy was satirical in nature –
Aristophanes - added parabasis
 New Comedy (Late 4th Century BCE)
romantic and domestic farce - slapstick
 Aristotle’s poetics 335 BCE - 6 elements
– Plot, Character, Theme, Language, Music,
Spectacle
Aristotle’s Elements
 Aristotle’s poetics 335 BCE - identified 6
elements of theater. They are, in order:
–Plot (NOT Story)
–Character
–Theme
–Language
–Music
–Spectacle
Aristotle’s Elements
– Plot
– Character
– Theme
– Language
– Music
– Spectacle
These are great analytical tools. We are going to use them
in many ways in this course.
Do NOT, however, confuse them with production elements,
which are a more modern notion. (More later.)
Other Aristotle Terms to know
 Tragedy
– Tragedy imitates “‘elevated’ actions and the ‘elevated’
characters who performed them.” Characters undergo a
change of fortune.
 Comedy
– Comedy imitates ridiculous actions “of people ‘worse’
than the average.”
 Mimesis
– Innate to humans
– “The chief purpose of all composition . . . is the imitation
(mimesis) of reality.”
– In Drama, imitations are of actions.
Other Aristotle Terms to know II
 Hamartia
– Heroes are “of high degree and reputation,” but they “are not
saints… their sufferings are caused less by innate wickedness than
because of hamartia (error).” (Brockett, History of Theater)
 Catharsis
– “The katharsis of pity and fear is a complex but finally
irrational pleasure of the quintessentially democratic art form.
It is in a sense dismissive: public theaters seem to be good for
a city in a way more like a system of sewers than like
museums.” (Ford, ‘Katharsis: The Ancient Problem)
Roman Theatres
When Rome conquered
Greece it borrowed a lot
from Greek culture,
including Theater.
Roman Theater thrived
from the 3rd century
BCE to the first century
CE.
This Roman theater is in Libya.
Roman Theatre
Roman Theatre took
place at the Ludi –
games or festivals, which
were religious & political
Audience Focus is completely different. This theater is indoor,
subsidized, political. Comedy is all like Greek New Comedy –
situation comedies rather than satire. Entertainment to accompany
‘bread and circuses.’
Other Roman Entertainments
•Chariot Races
•Gladatorial Combat
•Bloodsports
This is why Roman
Theatre was FREE
Naumachia
Roman Actors





More than three
Cloth masks
No chorus
Prologues and Epilogues
Black wigs for young characters, white
wigs for older characters, red wigs for
slaves and servants
In Rome, theater was done for different reasons it was
practiced differently in differently shaped buildings.
Using Aristotle’s Elements, how had theater changed?
Plots, Characters & Themes
• Greek Tragedy & Old Comedy concerned Kings, Heroes & Gods
fighting for order in the universe.
• Greek New Comedy concerned the wealthy and political figures fighting
for their own political and social gain.
• Roman Comedy concerned middle and lower class figures slapping
each other around.
Language – Apart from Seneca, Roman plays were written in a much
more vernacular style. Greek plays were highly stylized – rhyming
trochaic hexameter.
Music – the simple aulis was replaced by more elaborate music to
entertain.
Spectacle – Giant masks replaced by cloth masks, scenery more
elaborate in Ancient Rome.
Concepts to keep in mind
throughout the course
Performance
There are two meanings for the word ‘perform’
To pretend and to do
These are not mutually exclusive
Representation
Political
Artistic
These are not mutually exclusive
Two types of knowledge
•Intellectual
•Experiential
Theatre approximates experiential
knowledge to elicit empathy.
These are not mutually exclusive