Ancient Greek Theatre

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Ancient Greek Theatre

Ancient Greek Theater
Imagine this following scene: You are sitting in a dark, fairly crowded large room. There are hundreds of other people, in hundreds of other seats surrounding you. In front of you, there is a large stage, with people acting out a play. Lights, music, and different sound effects set the mood of the play for you to understand more clearly what is going on. With these certain conventions, viewer can get a real grasp of a story in which several actors are trying to portray. However, it hasnt always been this easy to enjoy a play in a theater. Theatre and plays go back as far as b.c. times.
In the Greek theater, the conventions are very different. Unique Greek performances, which were performed hundreds of years ago, were put on to please the god Dionysos. In these performances, artificial light was impossible and there were no footlights to illuminate the faces of the actors. Spectators had to have a great imagination to create a mood themselves. The actors had to project their voices even more, and they used numerous masks, to reveal different characters. Plays were done in an amphitheater, which was a circular type theater, so that projection was very loud, and the actors could be heard all around. The actors were less active and effected less emotionally but still with their costumes, masks and roles, they belonged to the characters rather than to the audience.
Today, we are accustomed to a sharp division between the dark world of the auditorium and the over bright world of the characters. On the contrary, the Greeks were familiar with audience, chorus, and characters, all united under a dazzling sun
(Webster 2). For the most part, the Greek dramatist had to rely far more on words and less on the limited technical means at his disposal. For example, in Sophocles Antigone (526) the chorus describes the tears running down Ismenes face and her cheeks as ugly red with weeping. The mask worn by the actor obviously could not reveal this effect.
There were three obvious limitations that the Greek producer had to deal with. First, lighting effects were impossible, so the play could not expose sunlight, dawn, dusk, or evening. Except if the play was shown early in the morning, or late in the evening. Secondly, changes in scenery were extremely limited. They usually had no more than four scenes, but even then it was scarce. Thirdly, the size of the Greek theater introduce...

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