Greek Theatre

Background

The Greek Theatre were around from 550-220 BC and this is where it is first heard of plays and theatre. There were two types of Greek Plays, comedy and tragedy. This has affected views on plays in many ways. The theatres were built on mountain sides. As you can see from the picture the audience was higher than the stage, this was so that the audience could see every part of what was going on. However, the problem with this was that the people at the back had difficulty hearing what was going on, therefore over exaggerated movements were used a lot. The theatron was shaped like a speaker so that everyone in the audience could hear what the actors were saying, as obviously microphones are not in existence. Also speaking in exaggeration could help communicate with the audience.

Chorus
Also there were chorus used. The chorus told the story and acted as narrators. They also indicated the start and end of the performance. They wore linen slippers, tunics and flesh tights. This showed that they were apart from the performance and the costume could be seen as neutral.

During this lesson where we learnt about chorus, we were put into threes and then given a stanza to use physical theatre to make the piece to come to life. Like what the chorus members did. I found it really difficult at first as it was hard to let go of myself quickly to the group. I learnt how to apply brand new techniques and it helped with my understanding of Greek Chorus.

Slapstick Comedy
Greek Theatre also uses a lot of slapstick comedy and this has inspired lots of other people, commedia d'larte or even the chuckle brothers for examples. Slapstick comedy was used so that the audience could see what was going on.

The next lesson we went into pairs and performed an extract given by Andy and learnt how to make the script comedy using words and movement. I worked with Joe and we first cut a lot of the words out so that we could work on more movement than words. We then used exaggerated movements to make the audience (the btec group) laugh. I enjoyed doing this because it was about less words and more action.

Masks
Masks were used a lot in Greek theatre. A reason why they were used was because only Men were allowed to act as it deemed at the time that Women shouldn't act, therefore when Men were portraying women, they had to wear masks to get this idea across to the audience.'Thespis was the first writer, who used a mask.' Members of the chorus used masks that were usually similar to each other but completely different to the main cast to differentiate them. The masks were usually made of leather, wood or linen. A marble or stone face would be used as a mould to create the masks. Human or animal hair was also used to create the masks and make them look effective on stage,