We've all studied it and we know the story of Oedipus. But JUST in case you were interested, here's a bit of cultural and historical context.
The emergence of Greek theatre was really fucking important. "Duh," you say. But I'll tell you why...
The act of telling these stories -- stories which the Greeks were already familiar with -- had an immeasurable effect on future cultures. So much so that 2,500 years later, the Greeks are not only performed but constantly incorporated into contemporary theatre.
The birth of ancient Greek theatre is incredibly specific: we're talking 5th century B.C.E. in Athens, Greece. Athens was particularly idiosyncratic; it was a collection of city-states with boundaries enforced, the citizens were obsessed with theatre, and before the year 500 B.C.E. there are no examples of theatre.
Greek Culture: Who were they?
Athens was an incredibly active city. With a population of about 100,000 people, Athens was the center of power, ideas, history, politics, and soon playwriting and theatre. There was an explosion of writing with the development of their alphabet. Written language was only meant to be read aloud largely for the purpose of political correspondence. Frankly, the idea of even reading to yourself didn't exist before 5th century B.C.E. The Greeks also had very specific ideas about gender and status and how such classifications defined identity. The Greeks kept slaves, confined women indoors (flashback to Medea the barbarian), and were overwhelmingly militaristic (beginning at age fifteen). The Athenians were unique in that they established a democracy. The Acropolis was the most important religious and political building in the city, the center point of the economy and market. Immediately adjacent to the Acropolis came to be the Theatre of Dionysus. The importance of theatre was literally built into the architecture of the city. That too, in every respect, was central. The Theatre of Dionysus will be the focus another post.
And now, a brief time line:
Before theatre, there was the Olympics. Founded in Greece in the 8th century B.C.E., the Olympics originally served as a religious festival in which each event was dedicated to a particular god.
Also before theatre, there was the dithyramb. Half religious/half entertaining, fifty men and boys would tell a story through song and dance as a rite of passage into the military. It was particularly competitive and two teams would compete for the title. For an audience of thousands, this ceremony retold stories that the entire city already new as a reinforcement of collective ideas about their culture. We know very little of what the actual ceremony sounded like, but the closest historians have come to putting it in comparable terms is describing the song/dance similar to a hymn. At the end of the 6th century B.C.E., one person stepped out of the dithyramb and established himself as a single, individual, unique character. We know him as Thespis, the first actor and playwright, and clear marker for the emergence of theatre.
In the 5th century B.C.E., there was City Dionysia. This six-day, city-wide theatre competition was an annual religious festival honoring the God Dionysus. Twelve thousand Greeks came out to honor the god of wine, wheat, sex, violence, revelry, and madness (and eventually theatre) by performing their rehearsed pieces culminating in some sort of reward ceremony granting the winners incredible fame and respect. The dualism in ancient Greek theatre reflects the dual (and almost destructive) nature of Dionysus; tragic things happen to good people, hilarious things happen to bad people.
Greeks in a new context
Written language became an important feature of the 5th century B.C.E. as it dictated the end of oral tradition. Homer didn't have to be memorized and passed down orally anymore. Though there were various forms of performance prior to this century, but when Thespis stepped away and created theatre, it became something we would recognize and know today. Within thirty years, people borrowed Thespis's form and took on new forms, extending it beyond the festival of Dionysus and religion, nowcapable of sharing thought on philosophy, conscience, and even the discussion of secular vs. non-secular.
The Greeks came to develop two conventional theatre genres... two, I'm sure you can figure which... and two which I'll expand on in a later post.
