GREEK THEATRE

GREEK THEATRE AND MAJOR PLAYS

• Mainly took place in Ancient Greece (around 400-800 b.c) [1]
• Playwrights - Sophocles, Euripedes, Aeschylus [2]
• Sophocles plays - Antigone, Electra, Oedipus Rex [2]
• Euripedes plays - Medea, Hercules, The Trojan Women [2]
• Aeschylus plays - The Persians, Oresteia Trilogy [2]

GREEK STYLE

• Greek plays were very tragic
• Comedy was also very important
• Many tragedies and relationships happen between the same family members
• Something unique about Greek theatre is that they had Chorus', in addition to actors, made up of 12-15 people who performed in verse throughout the play [1]

GREEK GOVERNEMNT

• Alexander the Great was in charge of the Greek empire. This affected Greek theatre because Greeks took theatre very seriously. They had many beautifully sculpted theaters as well as interesting literature. Theatre was legal. The religious practices of the Greeks extended beyond mainland Greece. Greek religion was tempered by Etruscan cult and belief to form much of the later Ancient Roman religion. Greek theater grew out of a religious festival, and was often concerned with the deepest questions about morality and the relationship between mortals, the gods, and fate [3]

LIGHT ADVANCEMENTS

• To be able to see at night, the Greeks used torches. Other than that they used regular daylight to light up their plays [5].

SOUND ADVANCEMENTS

• Not much was changed in sense of sound, except that the audience wanted to hear more clearly so the idea of the Greek mask was brought in [5].

SET ADVANCEMENT

• The Greeks changed the way the stage was made. Instead of having a flat stage not allowing all audience members to see, they heightened the back part of the stage, creating the origin of upstage and downstage [5].

COSTUME ADVANCEMENT

• Lots of masks were used, costumes represented wealth and stature and many props were used to truly portray a character [4].

WORKS CITED

• http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_ancient_Greece
• http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Theatre_History/Theahis_2.htm...
• http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece
• http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/interactives/greece/theater/playersProps...
• http://dbruch.hypermart.net/engineer/pg004a_techcon.html

PROP EXPLANATION

• Our prop is a sad and happy mask becasue the Greeks were very big on masks. They were the first to utilize masks in plays to show emotions and other symbols that are not easily conveyed through just acting and a lot of times all of the actors were just men, so if you had a women role you needed a mask to show this.