Sophocles: King Oedipus (original) (raw)

Drama as a Mode of Communication in the Ancient Greek World

Sri Lankan Journal of Human Resource Management, 2013

In the ancient Greek world, drama was a part of their lives, something intimate, frequent and inseparable. It was not the individual choice that took the mass to the Greek theatre, but they were a part of this process of dramas as a nation, which came in the guise of rituals of festivals, held in honour of god Dionysus. Drama and drama festivals were facilitated with state recognition and were sponsored by the rulers of the city-states, encouraging the citizens to participate in them. Massive theatre structures were constructed, providing seating capacity for thousands. Within such appealing circumstances, Greek drama has evolved through time, gifting outstanding dramatists and drama compositions to the world of aesthetics. Greeks being a nation whose lives were embedded in a performance culture, drama was the most effective and intimate to be utilized as a mode of communication, during such an ancient period where there were no other modes of communication like in the world of today.

Greek Tragedy in Theory and Praxis

Maske und Kothurn, 1989

Greek tragedy was fashioned and instated in Athens a single act when Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant, invited the poet-actor Thespis, to perform for the Athenians in the Dionysia festival of 534 B.C. 1 This political act integrated tragedy irreversibly into the religious/social/cultural context of the Athenian Polis. The origin of tragedy as well as the mode of its initial representation are obscure to us, and we cannot know for certain the changes that took place during the first generations of its poets, between Thespis and Aeschylus 2. Nevertheless, the information that we do have of its first performances helps us define the essential characteristics of the primary form of Greek tragic performance: a plot played out through dialogue between the actors and a chorus, performed in a defined place, in front of a live audience on a special occasion-the Dionysia festival 3. It is clear that from its first civic production, tragedy has been associated with its "performance", and the location of that performance-a theatre. It is Aristotle's removal of tragedy from this context for the purposes of his discussion, in the Poetics, that poses the problem area of this article. Theatre by its very nature, comes to fruition through three stages: the drafting of the plot (the text), the rehearsal process, and the enactment in front of an audience within the framework of a particular event. Each of these stages incorporates unique components, yet all three function towards one goal: the theatrical event, the total performance in front of an audience. This is the raison d'être for which they work simultaneously. Two irrefutable/irreversible conditions are needed for a theatrical event to take place: the first is the special combination of play, rehearsal and performance 4. The 1 For a collection of the important passages of evidence in regard to Thespis Cf. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy, 2 nd ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 69-89. 2 Walter Burkcrt, in his important article on the ritual origins of Greek tragedy, summarizes the complexity of the question: "We may collect exact information or formulate precise hypotheses as to the external organization of the Dionysia in the Polis Athens in the sixth century B.C.: temple and theatre, chorus of citizens and choregos, poietes, didaskalos, upokrites, masks and actors' dress, musical instruments, figures of dancing, musical and literary techniques in the tradition of choral lyric and the iambos. But whoever tries to grasp the unique kairos in the history of the human mind which brought forth tragedy, to understand the intellectual, psychological, and social motives involved, enters a field of basic ambiguity."

Comedy and Festival in Ancient Greece

The idea of the festival is inseparable from Greek comedy. Festivals often lurk in the background of Menander's plots, since they provided the occasions when youths accidentally impregnate maidens: it was at the festival of the Tauropolia that Charisios had made Pamphile pregnant in Epitrepontes, it was at the Adonia that Plangon in Samia conceived her baby, and it was in the procession during the festival of Dionysus that the hero of Menander's Synaristosai first became infatuated with a girl (fr. 337 K-A). 1 Menander's most substantial surviving text, Dyskolos, has at its heart a private celebration of the god Pan at a cave believed to be inhabited by nymphs in the rural deme of Phyle; the celebration includes all the standard features of larger, public festivals-a sacrificial meal, followed by drinking and dancing that goes on into the night. 2 Another of Menander's plays, Sicyonian, apparently ended with an all-night festival at Eleusis, presumably in honour of Demeter and Persephone. 3 But the festivals in these plays are occasions for important developments in personal and domestic relationships, especially the idealised inter-familial bonds through marriage and reproduction which it is Menandrean comedy's generic imperative to create and celebrate. In Dyskolos, the festival of Pan is not even one accorded an official place in the city calendar, since Sostratos' mother is only inspired to organise the sacrifice after being visited by Pan in a dream.

Ritual, Myth and Tragedy: Origins of Theatre in Dionysian Rites

In the deep, dark forests and in the lush green valleys, worshippers of Dionysus celebrate the eternal cycles of death and rebirth, symbolized in the sacred mask of the wild god. Drunk and intoxicated, wearing the mask of Dionysus, the actor is at once the shaman and the priest. Channeling the presence of the fearsome divinity, he drinks the sacred wine and eats the raw flesh of his prey. In this eternal moment, he becomes one with the god and the beast residing inside of him. Within Ancient Greek culture, the sacred rites of Dionysus have been appropriated and transformed to theatre performances. The shaman became the actor, the participants became the audience, the sacred altar became the stage. From myth as a ritual performance emerged the theatre of tragedy, in which the undying spirit of Dionysus, majestic and terrifying, speaks to us even today.

The Greek Dramatic Festivals under the Roman Empire

This dissertation is a cultural history of the Greek dramatic festivals under the Roman Empire, primarily from literary and epigraphic sources. I argue against the idea that Greek culture was in decline during the Roman period, demonstrating that dramatic performance culture flourished at this time. New tragedies, comedies, and satyr-plays were composed and performed at Greek festivals through the second century CE, while re-performances of classical drama lasted into the third century CE. Alongside contemporary drama, Greeks continued to stage re-productions of classical tragedy and comedy. This shared cultural and literary knowledge contributed to the construction and perpetuation of Greek identity in the provinces.

SOPHOCLES ROAD TO CONTEMPORARY GREEK THEATRE

The aim of our study is to trace the presence of Sophocles in Modern Greek Theatre, from its first steps during the Enlightenment period up to the present day. Because the meaning of the term theatre includes both the stage action and the dramatic production, our research will extend in both directions. That is to say, we shall identify stage interpretations of the dramas of Sophocles, which were landmarks and which set the pace for the course of contemporary approaches to interpreting, not only the works of Sophocles, but ancient Greek drama in general. At the same time we shall record and comment on original theatrical works by contemporary Greek playwrights, while having the works of Sophocles as a direct or indirect model. In this sense our research exceeds the boundaries of the specific ancient tragic poet and expands further into how ancient Greek drama is assimilated by its modern equivalent. It extends itself to the expressed or unexpressed relationship that links ancient to contemporary Hellenism. Beginning from the stage action parameter we can pause at a number of representative performances of the works of Sophocles (and, in a wider sense, of ancient Greek tragedy), which in their own way became milestones in later stage interpretations of ancient Greek drama. Modern Greek theatre is in constant and direct contact with the wider body of European theatre. Through this process it takes on the form of specific, more general tendencies. Views initially identified in our study must refer to archetypal performances of Sophocles' tragedies that act as symbols not only in Modern Greek, but also in world theatre as a whole.