Conventions+of+Greek+Theatre


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Conventions of the Theatre** We often hear of the ancient Greek theatre as being a theatre of convention rather than a theatre of illusion, and such truisms are true, but not true enough. Their conventions were different from ours, and the plays, in some ways, present reality, though not (often) everyday life. Think about some conventions we must accept even before we can take even the most realistic modern plays as a "slice of life": we sit in a darkened auditorium, with one end lighted, watching people in a room of which one wall has been removed. We accept them as people talking in loud (or at least carrying) voices about the most intimate details of their lives. We accept people giving speeches to themselves and call it soliloquy. We know that these people are paid (or get credit, or at least a line on the resume) to say what they are saying and that they said it last night and will say it tomorrow night, but are not bothered by that. In musicals we do not mind characters bursting into song and dance and then as if nothing had happened going back to their spoken lines. In short, we accept on the stage behavior which in real life we would consider quite mad. And we would be quite annoyed if a naive person in //our// audience took for real the actions on stage (though when watching TV we may ourselves be guilty of just such behavior). The conventions of the Greek theatre were different from ours. **First of all, all dramas took place in the //daytime// without artificial lighting.** Time of day can be indicated only by verbal reference to it or by torches which might be used to suggest that it is night. **The dramas were staged in large outdoor theatres and the action is represented as taking place //out of doors//**. **There was a building (probably temporary at first, but later of stone) in front of which the actors played their scenes. This building usually represents the palace of a king or a temple (although it may also be a military hut or even a cave or cliff face)**. The Greeks were an outdoor people more than we; much of their business was conducted out of doors. Dramas that concern the public as do many dramas concerning the fate of kings with a chorus of the citizens, elders, or counselors, are not unrealistically played out of doors. But intimate scenes of family life may need more explanation. In the //Antigone// for example, the pathos of the two small figures of the sisters, meeting before dawn to discuss their families, the deaths of their brothers, the brave decision of one of these girls to defy the law and bury her brother: this scene gains in pathos by the very fact of the two girls being dwarfed by the vast setting. In the //Hippolytus//, the entrance of Phaedra and of the chorus of women has to be explained, because women are less an outdoor people in classical Greece than men. Therefore the chorus has to explain why they have come and the Nurse has to explain why she is bringing her mistress outside. It helps in reading the plays to try to visualize them as they would have been seen and heard by the first audience. 2. **The chorus**: What are some of the things the chorus does? It may **comment on the action**. For example, in the //Agamemnon// the chorus is quite outspoken in its disapproval of the war led by Agamemnon for the sake of a woman who ran away with another man. But they are also outspoken in their disapproval of the actions taken against Agamemnon. In the second play of the //Oresteia// the chorus is part of the conspiracy to kill Clytemnestra. In the third play the chorus is at the very center of the action. In the //Antigone// the chorus of elders is there to give the play its political theme. It is interesting to note that for whatever reason this chorus remains for a very long time on the side of Creon. The chorus may also **provide background material** as in the //Agamemnon// again, the parodos reviews the beginning of the war, going back to the gathering at Aulis, making us share in the terrible decision Agamemnon made there. The chorus in //Antigone// enters singing of the victory over the attackers, showing us that this is more than a family drama, letting us know what the victory means to the citizens. In the //Hippolytus// the chorus tells us about Phaedra's sickness, increasing our sympathy for her. The chorus serves as both another **actor** and as **narrator**. If we look at the place of the chorus, we see another of its roles: it stands **between the audience and the actors**, showing how the doings of kings affects the people. At the end of the //Agamemnon// the chorus is threatened by Aegisthus for speaking its mind: we are shown the effect of the action on the political situation, the political chaos at the end of the drama and the rise of tyrannical government: we know that the action is not finished. If the affairs of princes and kings and heroes are removed from the lives of ordinary people, the chorus can make them a concern of the people. Of course in the //Oedipus//, the action starts out as one affecting the people very closely for there is a plague blighting the land. We learn that it is caused by the unsolved murder of the former king and his murderer's going unpunished. Imperceptibly the focus changes to the search for the origin of Oedipus himself and we watch the chorus move from admiration for their present king who saved them in ages past, to horror and withdrawal as they find out what he has done. The chorus provides what may be called **lyrical relief**: a song may relieve the tension of a highly emotional episode. For example after Phaedra (in //Hippolytus//) has gone into the house to hang herself after two overwrought episodes in which we have felt strongly for her pain, the chorus sings what is called the "escape ode" in which they wish they could be in lands far away or transformed into birds. What this does is emotionally write Phaedra out of the play. The play, after all, must get on without her, but we have been concentrating on her part for so long that it is hard to be nearly so involved with the other characters. Again in the //Oedipus//, just before he finds out the horrible truth, there is a moment when he has no idea who he is. He knows that he is not the son of the Corinthian couple who reared him, and he is delighted to think of himself as fortune's child, a man who came from nowhere and became king of two cities. At this point the chorus sings a short song in a joyous meter to match Oedipus' high spirits. This is typical of Sophoclean irony: the fate of a man at the very height of his success and happiness: the chorus gives him the added boost to make the fall greater. The songs, the music of the chorus also provides a **guide to our emotions**. For example, in the //Antigone// after a chilly scene between Creon and his son Haemon who is also Antigone's fiancé in which Haemon tries to persuade Creon not to kill Antigone on political grounds (the people are against it, a ruler should be flexible, a ruler owes something to his citizens), the chorus sings of the power of //love//. Haemon had not said a word about his love for Antigone and his father had referred to it only in the crudest (but typically male, typically Greek) of terms. But we need to know for the subsequent action that Haemon does love Antigone and the choral ode fills in that gap. In the //Agamemnon// the chorus seems to be constantly carried back to earlier crimes of the house of Atreus, because we need to see the pattern of crime and kindred bloodshed in order to understand the crime that is being committed in the play. You might think of the chorus as being something like the sound track in a movie: it tells us how to feel, scared, sentimental, angry. If we were not familiar with the convention of a sound track in movies which the characters do not hear it could seem very odd indeed. And sometimes it does. 3. **Acting and masks** The use of masks means that detailed facial expressions cannot be shown. In fact the huge distances between actors and audience effect the same result. On the other hand the clear outlines of the masks make the features of the character more easily discernible. And different expressions can be shown by shifting the tilt of the head. Of course emotions can be shown equally well by body movements and postures and of course by the sounds of sorrow or joy or anger. Certain postures and gestures are associated with certain feelings and attitudes (as we know from vase paintings). An actor needed versatility in voice and gesture, especially since actors very often had to play several roles in the same play. **We speak of the rule of three actors, meaning that only three actors were available to each playwright for his trilogy. To put this another way all the plays we have have been written in such a way that they can be performed by a maximum of three actors. The use of masks makes the swift change of roles practicable.** A change of head and face is a change of person. Both mask and character have the same name in Greek (//prosopon//, as they do in Latin, //persona//). Some scholars would connect the limitation in the number of actors to **the Greek preference for violence offstage rather than in front of the audience**: for example, in the //Oresteia// all the murders (there are four altogether) take place in the palace. We hear their cries but do not see them (pretend to) die. In the //Oedipus, Antigone, Hippolytus// the scenes of violence all take place offstage, although the death of Hippolytus is in view of all and the result of the action is displayed for us. It has been suggested that no one could die on stage early in a play because the actor was needed for another role later. (For example it is likely that the actor who played Agamemnon also played Aegisthus, a possibility that I find very appealing: the two are closely related, first cousins; they are defined by their relationship to the more potent Clytemnestra; both are caught, by their own choice, in the pattern of kindred bloodshed that is their heritage). Another reason for the lack of too much violence is that they were technically incapable of the necessary special effects, although there was an actor nicknamed "the leaper" because of his ability to commit suicide on stage in Sophocles' //Aias// (= //Ajax//). It is possible also that they believed that violence was more effective unseen, with the screams heard behind the scenes, and the results shown in the bloodied mask of Oedipus for example, or the mask, representing the head of Pentheus after he is torn apart, and his pieces brought back under a cloth: these are more deeply moving than the grotesque doings that we are told about. The offstage violence is necessarily connected to the messenger speech. In //Oedipus, Antigone, Hippolytus// we have a messenger who reports what happened offstage, deaths and self-mutilation, and mangling. In //Agamemnon// we have Cassandra whose role is in part to be a messenger before the action: as a prophet she knows what is going to happen to her, and after her speeches, we do not need any detailed messenger speech. Now the truth is that these messenger speeches often contain some of the most brilliant and exciting writing in their plays. Could it be that as poets, the tragedians preferred to write these messenger parts to simply staging some piece of stage business? If, as some scholars believe, tragedy developed not only from choral songs but also from the epic recitations, there is an added reason for the messenger's speeches which are the closest thing in tragedy to epic narrative. 4. **Stage, devices, levels of the acting area** The plays were performed outdoors in the daytime. They probably started in the morning. Each day of the festival included ceremonies. On every day of the three days devoted to plays the audience had to sit through four or five plays with only short intervals for the chorus to change costumes. This may seem like a Heraclean labor for the audience, but individual Greek plays are much shorter than modern plays and it has been estimated that the five plays could have been performed in about six hours.
 * 1. Verse: all the Greek dramas are poetic dramas**. The characters speak in verse; this is true of both dialogue and choral song. The dialogue parts are mostly in **iambics** (iambic trimeter in dipodic units = 6 iambs), which is the meter closest to conversational speech. In fact we are told by one of the ancient critics that "many people speak in iambics without realizing it."
 * The choral passages were sung and accompanied by dance.** The presence of a chorus is certainly a feature that is uncommon in modern plays. But we know that it was a constant feature in Greek plays and if you wonder sometimes what it is doing there, remember that it may be the original feature of the plays. Besides, **the theatre is built around the dance floor, called the orchestra**. This circular area is believed to be the origin of the theatre and the only necessary part: seats for the audience, a stage building are later developments.
 * Every tragedy has a chorus**, although in some of the later plays its part is curtailed. Even though the chorus is a necessary part of the plays, it is legitimate to ask what it does, what it adds to the plays. **The chorus sings and dances between episodes. The terms strophe and** **antistrophe simply mean stanza and matching stanza, that is, each has the same metrical pattern and perhaps the chorus did the same steps or dance pattern twice, now on one side, now on the other**. Usually there is a short scene between two actors, or a monologue before the entrance of the chorus, although some plays begin with the chorus filing on stage. Any part before the entrance of the chorus is called the **prologue**; the entrance song of the chorus is called the **parodos**. The passages on the sides of the orchestra between the dance floor and the skene or stage building are also called the **parodoi**, leading us to suppose that the chorus entered by these routes.
 * The use of masks for both actors and chorus was a constant feature of the classical theatre**. Thespis is reported to have whitened his face and Aeschylus to have been the first to add color and to have used frightening masks. But grotesque masks are much older than either figure. Terra cotta masks from the seventh century have been found at Corinth and Sparta from sanctuaries of Hera and Ortheia. These are life sized masks believed to have been used in ceremonies to the goddess in which the goddess and her attendants were personified. Actually the terra cotta examples were probably the moulds on which the masks used by the celebrants or performers were formed (probably of linen). The moulds were later painted and dedicated to the goddess. One theory of the purpose of frightening masks is to chase away evil spirits who could spoil the work of fertility. Or possibly they could have represented the evil spirits being beaten back by the forces of good (like RAID chasing out the dirty forces of vermin). The masks used in the tragic theatre covered the entire face and had a wig attached. They were made of linen soaked in plaster and then sewn to a cap for the wig. The mouth was slightly open: the distortions we see in representations of tragedy and comedy do not come until later, with the high peak of hair in front and the wide open mouth.
 * The original theatre consisted of a round, smooth area, called the orchestra in which the chorus sang and danced. Nearly all the theatres have been altered and the orchestra cut down to a semi-circle, because the chorus had lost its central role. The theatre at Epidaurus is the only one I have seen with the full circle left intact for the chorus. There was an** **altar somewhere in this area** (it plays a role in the //Oedipus// at the beginning and later in the play when Jocasta comes out to make sacrifice, in all the suppliant plays, in //Persians// for calling up Darius, in the //Electra// plays for the tomb of Agamemnon, though it may be an off-stage memory in the later plays). This may have been all that was necessary before Aeschylus. But as tragedy became more dramatic some kind of building was necessary. At the back of the orchestra, facing across the orchestra to the audience was a building, called the **skene** (or hut, tent, whence comes our word //scene//). Here the actors dressed. To and from this the actors made their exits and entrances and here too they changed their masks to become other characters. It is possible that there was also a slightly raised stage in front of the building separating the actors from the chorus, but not raised so much as to prevent interaction between the two. **It is not certain but likely that there was also moveable painted scenery**. In the //Poetics//, Aristotle says that Sophocles ‘invented" scene painting. This sounds clear enough, but the word for scene-painting (//skenographia//) is also the word for painting in perspective. In any case a moveable painted scene could have been placed in front of the stage-building. There may also have been **pinakes** or plaques to suggest details of scenery which could have been turned for changes in scene (which are rare in Greek plays). There was a third level of action (besides stage and orchestra) and this is the **top of the scene building**. The //Agamemnon// opens dramatically with a watchman on the top of the roof. Probably he was hidden from view and we would naturally be watching the door of the stage building when— all of a sudden— a voice from the roof cries //o theoi// ("o gods!") and gets our attention. In this play the building is a center of attention. Reread Cassandra's speech, watch Clytemnestra's movements if you have any doubts. From the top of the stage building the gods also made their appearances: certainly Artemis appears there at the end of the //Hippolytus//. She is unseen by Hippolytus and his father and would not be likely to come down from the roof. There was a device for lifting actors playing gods from the roof to the stage. This was the famous **mechane** or flying machine (as in the expression //deus ex machina//, which is a Latin translation of //theos apo mechanes//, "the god from the machine"). This was apparently a crane with counterweight that could be used to fly in gods at the ends of the plays. It is not needed in many of the plays, but would be effective in Euripides' //Medea// for the heroine's exit on a chariot drawn by flying serpents. It would have been used in the //Herakles// when the spirit of madness appears on the roof of the hero's house, but then descends to enter the house and drive him mad. It must have been used more extensively in comedy. There was also another device, of greater usefulness, the **eccyclema**, or thing rolled out. This was used for showing the result of action that had taken place in the house and could simply have been a platform on wheels rolled out through the central door. The bodies of Cassandra and Agamemnon were probably wheeled out on it. Clytemnestra speaks of her husband as if he were there when she says:

this is Agamemnon, my husband, but a corpse...

The bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus were probably shown on it in the //Libation Bearers// after Orestes has killed them, when he holds up the cloth used as a net to snare his father. In the //Eumenides//, the //eccyclema// could have been used for the entrance of a few members of the chorus, who are sleeping in the stage building which in that play represents the temple of Apollo at Delphi. It may have been used in the //Hippolytus// to wheel out Phaedra who is lying sick in bed and is or pretends to be unable to walk on her own.

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