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Greek Theatre History Worksheet Key

Follow along with the website shown below and fill in the blanks.

http://greektheatrehistory101.weebly.com/

Theatre Space
-Around 500 B.C. - 220 B.C. Greeks began acting to celebrate the change of seasons. This event
was called City Dionysia. During this event men dressed up in rough goat skins and would sing
songs. Eventually this changed into a competition between different tribes for the best play. In
the play there would be 3 men and a chorus (dancers) would fill in the rest of the play. The
different plays would have a beginning, middle and end; most of them would be tragic based off
ofmythology, history, and even the meaning of life and even religion. During the plays they
would start off with a prologue (a brief summary of the story), next would do a paradox
(introduced the characters), then the exposition and mood come into play and ends with exodus
(where characters and chorus depart). Plays would be performed in circular arenas and everyone
would have to attend, it would almost be like a town meeting in a sense. The actors would wear
mask and would wear different kinds of togas and jewelry.

Events During this Time

-In Greece from 500-220 B.C. a lot of things were going on. Greece was not one country it was
broken up into city-states. And in this time these city-states fought a lot. Two major city-states
were Athens and Sparta. They usually fought for land because more land lead to more power.
But also during this time some good things happened like in 450 BC the first bank was founded
in Athens. And in 290 BC the Colossus of Rhodes was built. The Greeks didn't not believe in
only one god they were polytheistic, they believed in many like Zeus and Hades. So religion
really had no interruption in the government.

Important People
-During this time the most famous playwrights were Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes. Aeschylus was a Greek playwright, he is considered to be the father of the tragedy.
Sophocles was probably the most popular playwright during Greek times. He won many writing
competitions. And he is thought to have written over 100 plays. Some are Oedipus the King,

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Date:____________

Period:_____

Ajax, and Electra. Euripides was the last of the great Greek tragedy writers. Euripides was
different in that he used very strong women characters and intelligent slaves in his
plays. Aristophanes is another Greek playwright. He wrote comedies, he is considered the father
of the comedic plays. Some plays he wrote are The Fish, The Birds, Lysistrata and
more... Now Thespis is known as the first person to appear on stage as an actor enacting a
character in a play. He sang and danced. He introduced a tragedy style of acting. He introduced
masks and multiple person plays.

~Summary: Two men are traveling to get birds to help them to build a city. And they have to try
to persuade the birds to help them build the city. The city is supposed to between the gods and
the mortals. And they face trouble and problems along the way.
~Excerpt from Aristophanes play The Birds 227-262:

Inventions
-In this time period they didn't really invent new things for acting but just improved to the stage.
Some changes they made were they made the masks even bigger so the people sitting at the top
could see the faces and further understand the play. Also they added a second altar, the theatre
only to use it if needed to. Another thing they changed is they added The Odelon of Pericles.

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Date:____________

Period:_____

This was just a room usually rectangular. It was used for things like Proagon (a ceremony where
poets would tell about their plays and actors). And dancers would wait there to come on stage. A
nice thing that they did was for people who could not afford the expensive theatre tickets they
mad it cheaper for them to come and see the plays. The improvements they made were to
improve their performances and make them flow a little better.

Styles of Acting
-The Greeks had two styles of acting. One was tragedy. Tragedies were the first kind of acting to
appear in Greece .Their costumes were made out of goat skins. And they sang songs and danced
and also gave burnt offerings at the alter to their gods. The person who kind of started this style
was Thespis. The second was Comedic plays. Aristophanes was the person who wrote most of
comedy plays.