Greek Theatre Research Paper

Lights, camera, action! Usually while watching a play or a movie you're more focused on the entertainment value and main plot that you don't stop to think about where it actually originated from. It all started in Ancient Athens where they would celebrate with festivals in honor of their gods. Without this background who knows how theatre would be today. Greek theatre has created a path for modern theatre to build off of. It all began it the 6th century BCE where they would preform tragedy plays at religious festivals. There were two forms of plays that were most popular, comedy and tragedy. Comedy plays originated from many different things. One of the main things was the decorations frequently showed on pottery of actors in costumes of horses, saytrs, and dancers. Another thing was poems from famous playwrights, Archilochus and Hipponax. Comedy plays also came from songs sung during Dionysiac festivals. The origin of tragedy plays is debatable. Some people say that tragedy plays came from lyrical performances of epic poems. But others say that it originates from rituals in worship of Dionysos, the god of theatre, with a song ritual with the sacrificing of goats while wearing masks. Greek theatre continued to …show more content…
They formed the foundation of modern theatre. Sophocles was very popular in his time and important in the development of modern theatre. He was remarkably innovative which became very useful. He added a third actor to the format of tragedy plays which was a major breakthrough because it the made the option for more plot choices possible. He also was the first to suggest a painted scenery and not only just a painted background but different ones depending on the scene. Sophocles wrote around 120 plays in total but not all of them survived. Antigone (442 BCE) and Philoctetes (409 BCE) are two examples out of the seven full plays Sophocles wrote that