{"id":794,"date":"2019-11-12T22:15:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T03:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/?page_id=794"},"modified":"2026-07-31T00:30:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:30:28","slug":"greek-theater","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/illustrated-lectures\/greek-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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General Design of a Greek Theater Like other significant civic events such as assemblies and orations, the Greek theatrical experience took place outside, in a prominently established site capable of holding thousands of people. Up until about the time of Thespis, theatrical performances in honor of Dionysus in Athens took place in the agora, until an accident that hurt spectators prompted the building of a new theater on the south slope of the Acropolis, next to the already-established Temple of Dionysus Eleutherios (named for Eleutherai in Boeotia, where the god’s cult worship began in mainland Greece). This Theater of Dionysus in Athens may have been the first, but the idea caught on fast: of the 164 Greek theaters excavated in Greece, all share three minimal requirements – built into a hillside, offering a breathtaking view, and providing a flat performance area. The Orchestra Even the most primitive Greek theaters had the most important of these elements: the orchestra, or “dancing place.” It was in this circular area that the chorus, a group of 12-15 actors performing as a single unit, sang and danced. In the archaic Theater of Dionysus in Athens, the original orchestra floor was simply smoothed dirt, later replaced with polished stone as theater architecture evolved. At the center of the orchestra stood an altar to Dionysus, where a flute player was stationed. The Theatron Classical theater is all about spectacle. In Greek, theaomai means “to view,” and theatai were the “spectators” who watched from the theatron, or “viewing area” (the Roman “auditorium,” by contrast, comes from the Latin audio, “to hear”). Every seat in a Greek theater offered a clear view of the orchestra and stage, with no supporting pillars to obstruct sightlines, and since the theater was built into an existing hillside, seating naturally rose in ascending tiers. Beyond sightlines, Greek theaters boast remarkable acoustic properties: a single voice, or even the sound of a struck match, can rise clearly to the uppermost seats (crickets permitting – a particularly vexing problem at the wooded site of Epidaurus). Preferential seating was common: most theaters had a row of specially designed seats nearest the orchestra reserved for dignitaries, judges, and priests, and the Theater of Dionysus in Athens even included a throne for the officiating Priest of Dionysus. The rest of the audience, which could number 15,000 or more, reached their seats via stairways. In a typical theater, radial stairs divided the theatron into kerkides, wedge-shaped seating sections, while a walkway called a diazoma divided the upper story of seating from the lower portion nearer the orchestra, allowing for a further arrangement of stairways above. Most extant Greek theaters date only to the Hellenistic period (3rd-2nd century BC), but the Archaic-era theater at Thorikos, the earliest stone theater in Greece with sections dating to the 6th century BC, is unusual in being rectangular rather than round, raising the possibility that round theaters were a later development. Thorikos’ theater has only two stairways, dividing the theatron into three sections: a nearly rectangular central section flanked by two curved edge sections. The seating areas of most classical theaters are not especially well preserved, since limestone blocks were often carted away as building material in later ages. Where seats do survive, such as the lower rows of the Theater of Dionysus in Athens, they show careful attention to detail, including 13 inches of foot room so that spectators could sit with their heels back comfortably. As seating areas expanded, supporting retaining walls called analemmata became necessary to shore up the theatron. The Skene One of the first modifications to the basic performance area of archaic theaters was the addition of a portable wooden stage structure, later replaced by a more permanent design. By the time of Aeschylus, the skene came complete with a painted facade representing the play’s power source, usually a palace or temple, along with a door through which actors entered and exited. Murders and other violent acts were typically staged out of sight, “behind closed doors,” with their aftermath revealed to the audience via a wheeled cart called an ekkyklema, most often bearing the corpse of a murdered character. The circular pathway surrounding the orchestra, called the parodos, could be accessed from either side of the skene and served a double purpose: giving the audience access to their seats, and giving the chorus and certain actors access to the orchestra. The chorus never entered the orchestra through the skene, and certain characters – messengers, visitors, exiles – were similarly denied access to the skene itself, since they lacked the standing associated with the power structure it represented. Divine messengers or visitors, unlike ordinary mortals using ramps or stairways, might instead be lifted bodily into the air by a crane called a mechane. Eisodoi are the ramps giving access to the parodoi, and the Romans were especially fond of elaborating the stage area further, adding two-story stoas used for storing scenery and props and as actors’ changing rooms, and features like the Bema of Phaedrus, a Roman addition to the Theater of Dionysus in Athens. The Staging of a Play Understanding how a playwright used the different parts of the classical theater can illuminate the underlying themes of a play. The orchestra was the chorus’ domain, while actors generally remained on the skene unless entering the performance area through a parodos directly onto the orchestra; since the skene represents the seat of power in the play, who does or doesn’t pass through its doors carries meaning. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, for example, the skene is dressed to represent the palace at Mycenae. It is Clytemnestra who enters the performance area through the double doors of the skene, signaling that she is in charge; Agamemnon, returning home from the war, instead enters directly into the orchestra by chariot via the parodos, joining the multitude of citizens (the chorus) already there, a clear signal that he does not hold the upper hand in his own house. He eventually does pass through the skene’s doors – only to be wheeled back out through them as a corpse on the ekkyklema after his murder. After killing Cassandra and Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus pass through the same double doors to appear before the people of Argos as king and queen. The scene is replayed in reverse in The Libation Bearers, the trilogy’s second play, when Orestes begins as a visitor welcomed into the royal house through the skene’s door, then wheels the corpses of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra back out through those same doors on the same ekkyklema.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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General Design of a Greek Theater Like other significant civic events such as assemblies and orations, the Greek theatrical experience took place outside, in a prominently established site capable of holding thousands of people. Up until about the time of Thespis, theatrical performances in honor of Dionysus in Athens took place in the agora, until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":790,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/page_fullwidth.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-794","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/794\/revisions\/1325"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/drjclassics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}