Greek Theatre

Theatre came into its own during the time of Ancient Greece as the Greeks valued the art of theatre and so they progressed from early mans version of theatre and instead focused more on new completely original stories that were written down about people or Greek history whilst still incorporating the foundations set by early man as they also wrote plays about their Gods and stories on how they believe the world came to be. Plays such as Herakles performed first in 416 BC and Antigone first performed in 441 BC at the Festival of Dionysus. Both these plays are tragedies, which is a theme of theatre such as comedy and romance. The play Antigone still, like many Greek plays, holds relevance in modern day society as it posses many questions such as does Man's Law supersede God's law? These questions reflect the type of society that was Ancient Greece; a time for thinking, philosophy and new ideas. Theatre quite literally mirrored the life of the Greeks and the unanswered questions that they had.

The image above displays a Greek Amphitheatre that is still intact today. The sheer scale of the structure just proves how important theatre was in Greek life as thousands of people could congregate here to watch plays performed regularly. Another new aspect of Greek theatre was the instillation of a chorus. A group of people who would be situated below the stage in a sort of pit that can be linked to modern day orchestra pits. The chorus would sing, or jump in unison to make a certain noise at a certain time or play instruments in order to add depth to the plays, making them more interesting and exciting.