Theater

Theater

The First Musical Instruments

Greek Myths

Pan and Siring

The Last Instruments

Anciant Theater in Greece

The Greek theatre (AE theater) or Greek

drama is a theatrical tradition that flourished

in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC. Athens, the political and military

power in Greece during this period, was the center of ancient

Greek theatre.

Attending the theater in ancient Greece was a

great festive occasion. The statue of Dionysus, god of wine, was carried

through the streets, leading a procession

to the outdoor hillside theater where the plays were to be

performed.

Several plays, all religious and

nationalistic in character, were shown

in one day. The spectators thrilled to

the dramatic stories of gods and heroes and

had the added excitement of

witnessing a contest, for the best playwright was awarded a prize.

Greek theater had its origins in

song and dance. The song was

the ancient dithyramb, a

choral narrative in honor of

Dionysus, sung to the

accompaniment of the lyre. The

dances depicted the harvest work

and festivals honoring dead

heroes.

According to legend, Greek tragedy as we

know it was created in Athens, ca. 530 BCE by a man known as

Thespis. Thespis' true contribution to drama is unclear at best, but

he is forever immortalized in a common term for

performer, thespian.

More is known about Phrynichus. He won his

first competition between 511 BC and 508 BC. He produced tragedies on

themes and subjects later exploited in the golden age

such as the Danaids, Phoenician Women and Alcestis. He was the first poet we know of to use a historical subject. He is

also thought to be the first to use female characters

(though not female performers).

It is in ancient Greece that the origin of

western theatre is to be found. It

developed from a state festival in

Athens, honoring the god Dionysus. The Athenian city-state

exported the festival to its numerous allies in order to promote a

common identity.

The word τραγοιδία, from which the English word tragedy is derived, is "goat-men sacrifice song".

Until the Hellenistic period, all tragedies were unique pieces written in honor of Dionysus, so

that today we only have the pieces that were still remembered well enough to have been repeated when repetition of old tragedies became fashion. It was considered a decline of the original, one-

time-played tragedy.

Tragedy (late 6th century BC), comedy (~486

BC), and satyr plays were some of the theatrical forms to emerge in the world.

Greek theatre and plays have had a lasting impact on Western drama and culture.

Tragedy and comedy were viewed as

completely separate genres, and no plays ever merged aspects of

the two. Satyr plays dealt with

the mythological subject matter of the tragedies, but

in a purely comedic manner.

The masks were used to show the emotions of the characters in a play, and also to allow actors to switch between roles and play

characters of a different gender.

Melpomene is the muse of tragedy and

is often depicted

holding the tragic

mask. . Thalia is the

muse of comedy and is similarly associated

with the mask of comedy.

The Greek theaters were magnificent structures. Fifteen or twenty thousand

spectators sat in bleacherlike tiers

built on a hillside in an arc around the

acting and dancing space, called the

orchestra.

These theaters had remarkable acoustics. In the theater at Epidaurus, which still stands, a match struck in the orchestra can be heard in

the farthest seat.

In the beginning no scenery was used. As

the theater developed, a skene structure of columns with three entrance ways was added behind the

orchestra space. (A number of our theater words began with the

Greeks. Skene has become the English

word scene. Theater is from a Greek word

meaning “a place for seeing.”)

Modern Theater in Greece

The theatre was originally founded in 1880 with a grant from George I and Efstratios Rallis to give

theatre a permanent home in Athens. The

foundations for this new project were laid on Agiou Konstantinou

Street and the building itself was designed by the famous Austrian

architect noted for many other public buildings in Athens at the time, Ernst

Ziller.

The foundations for this new project were laid on Agiou Konstantinou Street and the building itself was designed by the famous

Austrian architect noted for many other

public buildings in

Athens at the time, Ernst

Ziller.

Despite problems getting the building done in time, it was

eventually completed in the late 1890s and in

1900 Angelos Vlachos is

appointed as the Director.

The National Theater began to expand

it's operations and in 1901 a Drama School opens, in

the same year The Royal Theatre

opens its doors to the public with a monologue from

Dimitris Verardakis.

Following the first performance the theatre begins to

expand in popularity among Greece's upper and upper

middle classes and stages more

productions. One of the most famous of

the period was Aeschylus. Oresteia is

staged in a prose translation by Yorgos

Sotiriadis.

The production sparks off a long linguistic conflict, as students from the School of Philosophy, incited

by their classicist professor, Yorgos Mistriotis, march down

Agiou Konstantinou in an attempt to halt the performance. The

episodes that follow, known as the Oresteiaka, result in one death and

ten injuries.

The Royal Theatre announces that it is stopping its performances indefinitely.

The theatre remained closed, occasionally playing host to

foreign theatre companies, until 1932. It remained closed until

The National Theatre was founded, under an act of parliament signed by the

education minister, Yorgos Papandreou, on 30 May.

remained closed, occasionally playing host to foreign theatre

companies, until 1932. It remained closed until The

National Theatre was founded, under an act of parliament

signed by the education minister, Yorgos Papandreou, on 30 May.

Russian Theater

Russia came late to theater. By the time

of the first professional theater

performances in Russia in the mid-17th century, the

Spanish, English and French theaters had already experienced their Golden Ages

and produced playwrights such as

Shakespeare, Calderone and

Moliere.

The earliest entertainers were the skomoroki,

itinerant court -attached jesters-

musicians- singers-story-tellers, who

often performed with bears and puppets, perhaps as early as the tenth Century. The theater's roots were folkloric rather

than liturgical.

The church was by turns friendly and hostile to the theater. They abhorred

the skomoroki but encouraged church-

sponsored theater. One of their earliest

predictions in the 1400s was the church produced "Fiery Furnace" in Kiev

where townspeople masquerading as

Chaldens burned three choirboys impersonating Israelite youth in a pulpit-

cauldron.

The skomoroki were officially attached to

the court in 1572, but their performances were forbidden by

order of Tzar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1648. The people thought

they possessed magical power and Alexei's advisors viewed them as a

threat to the court.

They fled to the north, continued to perform in the countryside and centuries later

their skills reappeared in

public performance in the circus, the

fairground balagan and variety arts

estrada theater.

The Kiev Academy helped establish a

formal dramatic repertory in late

17th and early 18th Century. Their plays

on biblical and historic themes, expressed pro-

tzarist sympathies and incorporated realistic elements,

songs and dances.

Some private theaters were built

in Kiev, in Saikonospanssky

cloister, in Novgorod

seminaries and at the bishop's house in Rostov. Novices

were actors and performed in plays

such "Sinner," "Christ Christmas and Resurrection,"

"Saintly Martyr Evodia," "The Second Lord's

Advent."

In 1672, Tzar Alexei Mikhailovich, who had banned the skomoroki in 1648, changed his attitude toward the

theater and invited a German Lutheran

pastor, Johann Gottfried, to stage a play in honor of his

son's birth, the future Peter the Great.

Alexei's daughter, Princess Sophia

Alekseevna, was the author

of the first Russian tragedy

"Martyr Ekaterina." After

the death of Alexei in 1674, the theater was

closed.

Peter the Great sponsored the first

secular public theater under the leadership of the German actor -manager Johan

Kunst. Plays were produced in German

and Russian. Attendance was encouraged by

eliminating road taxes on

performance days, offering free

admissions and issuing Royal

decrees.

Peter favored plays dealing with the

victories and deeds of the Russian

army and allegories of his

reforms performed by the students of

the Greek-Slavonic Academy which

had been established in

1701.

A theater constructed in Red Square in 1702 called "The Comedy Chramina" ("The Temple of Comedy") was used by Kunst's German

troupe and performed plays by Moliere, Calderone and

other European playwrights. Comic

interludes were popular. No formal theatrical tradition was established and the

theater was closed in 1704.

Empress Elizabeth invited the Yaroslav

actor Fyodor Volkov , his brother Grigory and the dramatist director Alexander

Sumarokov to establish the first

permanent professional theater in

Russia in 1756 on Vaslievsky Island in

St Petersburg.

Plays were written in Russian by

Sumarokov and Lomonosov and

others but they were conceived in a

lusterless neoclassic pattern in imitation of the French comedy

and tragedy and failed to remain in the

Russian repertory.

Catherine loved the theater and it thrived during her reign. She

viewed the theater much as Peter I had. In

1777, Catherine authorized the building of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and in 1779

added the Imperial School for the training

of Russian actors, singers and dancers.

During Catherine's reign, Denis Fonvizin wrote

"The Brigadier" (1769) and "The Minor" (1791) establishing the Russian

satirical comedy of manners and the first

steps toward a national comedy of social realism

with native character, linguistic and topical

elements. This play is still regularly performed on

Russian stages and remains a Russian

favorite.

Under Alexander I and Nicholas I the number of theaters

increased, "Russian Realism"

became the leading aesthetic

principle and important non-imitative plays

were written in the Russian language.

Konstantin Stanislavsky, a textile magnate

and amateur director and actor,

and Vladimir Nemirovich-

Danchenko, a prizewinning

dramatist, critic and head of the drama section of the Philharmonic School met on June 23, 1897.

They wanted more realistic acting and stage design and

plays appealing to the growing progressive

urban audience desiring more than

the light fare preferred by the bourgeois

audiences of the Maly and commercial theaters. Their

innovations were to eventually

revolutionized world theater practice.