Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre Changes in Festivals evolution - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre Changes in Festivals evolution - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Oct 30, 2022 38 likes •220 views

Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre Changes in Festivals evolution toward the inclusion of drama in more festivals festivals also became panhellenic the general collapse of civic pride in Greece led to fewer choregoi which, in

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Changes in Festivals

  • evolution toward the inclusion of drama in

more festivals

  • festivals also became panhellenic
  • the general collapse of civic pride in

Greece led to fewer choregoi

  • which, in turn, forced the creation of the

agonothetes (“dramatic-contest official”)

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Changes in Actors and Acting

  • the rise of mega-stars like Polus

– very popular around the known world!

  • also, the formation of The Artists of

Dionysus, a union overseeing the interests of theatre professionals

– especially those who went on tour – n.b. the usefulness of the three-actor rule and embolima to touring actors

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Changes in Drama

  • Was exposition added to the dramas to

make them more comprehensible to the ever increasing influx of foreign viewers?

– that is, do the texts of tragedies, as we have them, stem in any significant way from scripts written down in the Post-Classical Age? – unlikely! Given the variability of myth, the classical tragedians would have needed to supply exposition, especially for foreigners

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Changes in Drama

  • nevertheless there are clear interpolations

inserted by later hands into the texts of classical dramas as we have them

– e.g. Antigone 905-915

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Changes in Theatre

  • new technical devices

– bronteion: thunder – keraunoskopeion: lightning – “Charon’s steps”: dead rising from tombs

  • many different types of theatres

– some are larger than the Theatre of Dionysus (Ephesus) – others are smaller (Delphi)

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

The Theatre of Ephesus

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

The Theatre of Ephesus

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

The Theatre of Ephesus

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

The Theatre of Ephesus

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

The Theatre of Delphi

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Mime

  • a low-brow form of entertainment

– not popular during the Classical Age, even though it is attested that far back – nor even during the Post-Classical Age

  • rose to prominence in the Roman period
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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Mime

  • highly variable in form and tone

– mostly raucous, indecorous, full of slapstick – but later mime could be philosophical

  • and may not even have been performed
  • only one principal performer (archimime)

– who played all the speaking parts!

  • mime was what the early Christian fathers

despised and protested against so much

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Mime

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Mime

  • no mimes have been carried through a

literary tradition (duh!)

  • but six Mimiambi by Hero(n)das have

turned up on an Egyptian papyrus

– all are vulgar; some even obscene

  • cf. the Oxyrhynchus Mime (“The

Adulteress”)

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Conclusion: Classical Drama

  • note how quickly the evolution of drama

took place

– from invention to the sit-com, in 300 years!

  • the number of “geniuses” who appear:

– "Thespis," Phrynichus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, Alexis, Philemon, Diphilus, Menander, etc. – even Renaissance Italy can’t match this!

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Conclusion: Classical Drama

  • no new technical advances until the

advent of electricity

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Conclusion: Classical Drama

  • moreover, there have been no new

dramatic techniques invented at all!

– costuming, dialogue, masks, prologues, irony, epilogues, tech crews, disguises, actors' unions, character-types, scenery, pampered stars, farce, love triangles, flying around the stage on ropes, hit musicals, censored plays, touring shows, . . . – and if you add mime: nudity and sex, too!

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Chapter 11: Post-Classical Theatre

Conclusion: Classical Drama

  • but don’t be depressed!
  • we don’t have to be better than the

Greeks, because we are the Greeks!

– just Greeks arriving at the party a little late – and speaking Latin with a German accent!

  • the Greeks are our ancestors, too, and we

today own them as much as anyone else

  • speaking of Latin, next up is Rome!