1. THE DIVINE MADNESS
Dionysus & Greek Theatre
Greek & Roman Humanities
Professor Will Adams
Valencia College

2. Theatre’s Divine Origins

3. Dionysus: The God of Altered States
 Dionysus is the god of wine
and drunken revelry in
Greek mythology.
 He is the patron god of the
theatre, as well as an
agricultural fertility god.
 He was sometimes at the
heart of frenzied madness
that led to savage murder.
 Whereas Apollo personifies
the cerebral aspects of
mankind, Dionysus usually
represents the libido or id
and their gratification.

4. Dionysus: The God of Altered States
 Dionysus was the son of
the king of the Greek
gods, Zeus, and Semele,
the mortal daughter of
Cadmus and Harmonia
of Thebes.
 Dionysus is called "twice
born" because of the
unusual manner in which
he grew: not only in his
mother’s womb, but also
in his father’s thigh.

5. Dionysus: The God of Altered States
 Hera, queen of the gods,
jealous because her husband
was playing around (again),
took characteristic revenge:
She punished the woman. In
this case, Semele.
 Zeus had visited Semele in
human form, but claimed to
be a god.
 Hera persuaded her that she
needed more than his word
that he was divine.

6. Dionysus: The God of Altered States
 Zeus knew the sight of him in
all his splendor would prove
fatal, but he had no choice, so
he revealed himself.
 His lightning brightness killed
Semele, but first, Zeus took
the unborn child from her
womb and sewed it inside his
thigh.
 There, the fetus that would
become Dionysus gestated
until it was time for his birth.

7. Dionysus: The God of Altered States
 Usually, visual
representations, like the
vase shown, depict the god
Dionysus sporting a beard.
 He is usually ivy-wreathed
and wears a chiton and
often an animal skin.
 Other attributes of
Dionysus are his thyrsus,
wine, vines, ivy, panthers,
leopards, and the theater.

8. Worship of Dionysus

9. Dionysus: The God of Altered States
 The allure of worshipping
Dionysus in ancient Greece was his
ability to create a state of ecstatic
madness in his followers.
 This madness was thought of as a
temporary state of emotional
illusion, in which worshippers’
sexuality and id-based urges
could be fully expressed and
released, usually in a state of
drunkenness.
 The Greeks valued balance highly,
so although these states were
necessary, they were also feared.

10. The Ecstatic Followers of Dionysus
 Dionysus is usually shown in
the company of others who
are enjoying the fruit of the
grape vine in the form of
highly intoxicating wine.
 Satyrs (half-man, half-goat
creatures) and nymphs
engaged in drinking, flute-
playing, dancing, or other
amorous pursuits are
Dionysus’s most common
companions.

11. The Ecstatic Followers of Dionysus
 Depictions of Dionysus may also
include Maenads, the human
women that are inspired by the
god to an ecstatic frenzy.
 They wear fawn or panther
skins, wreaths, and carry the
thyrsus, and in Euripides' The
Bacchae, they also handle
snakes.
 They play music and sing and
dance sing in the mountains
outside the Greek polis.

12. The Ecstatic Followers of Dionysus
 The god-inspired frenzy grants
them superhuman strength.
 Sometimes, the Maenads’
revelry spun them into
bloodthirsty rages in which
they could dismember any
creature they happened upon,
an act referred to as
sparagmos.
 Legends say that Maenads also
committed omophagia, which
refers to the devouring of raw
flesh, following the sparagmos.

13. Greek Theater: Civilized Worship

14. Greek Theatre: The Divine Madness
The development of Greek theatre came out
of worship of Dionysus in Athens.
Today, a trip to the theater is still a special
event, but in ancient Athens, it wasn't just a
time for cultural enrichment or
entertainment.
It was a religious, competitive, and civic
festival event, part of the annual ritual
dedicated to Dionysus: City Dionysia.

15. Greek Theatre: The Divine Madness
 The City Dionysia was a major
state-sponsored festival in
ancient Athens, featuring
dramatic competitions.
 It was held from March – April
in honor of Dionysus in an area
sacred to Dionysus.
 Dramatic competitions were
held in the genres of:
 Dithyrambs
 Tragedies
 Comedies

16. Dithyrambs: Songs to Dionysus
 A dithyramb was a hymn sung by a group of fifty men or
boys (chorus), under the leadership of an ex-Athenian
leader, to honor Dionysus.
 The dithyramb became the focus of early Dionysian
worship and is considered by Aristotle to be the origin of
Greek theatre.
 Eventually, one man – Thespis – stepped away from the
chorus and performed his part independently, becoming
the first actor.
 This action is seen as the birth of true Greek theatre.

17. Tragedies: A Cathartic Competition
The plot of a tragedy revolves around a tragic
hero who suffers a misfortune.
Modern film screenplays consist of dialogues
among individuals.
Ancient tragedy began as a conversation
between a single actor and the chorus.
Over time, a second and third actor were added.
In his Poetics, Aristotle wrote about the qualities
of tragedy, which include a catharsis or cleansing
at the conclusion.

18. The Structure Of A Tragedy’s Plot
 The basic structure of a Greek
tragedy is fairly simple: After a
prologue spoken by one or more
characters, the chorus enters,
singing and dancing.
 Scenes then alternate between
spoken sections (dialogue
between characters, and
between characters and chorus)
and sung sections (during which
the chorus danced).

19. The Structure Of A Tragedy’s Plot
 Here are the basic parts of a Greek Tragedy:
 PROLOGUE: Spoken by one or two characters before the chorus appears. The
prologue usually gives the mythological background necessary for understanding the
events of the play.
 PARODOS: This is the song sung by the chorus as it first enters the orchestra and
dances.
 FIRST EPISODE: This is the first of many "episodes", when the characters and chorus
talk.
 FIRST STASIMON: At the end of each episode, the other characters usually leave the
stage and the chorus dances and sings a stasimon, or choral ode. The ode usually
reflects on the things said and done in the episodes, and puts it into some kind of larger
mythological framework.
 For the rest of the play, there is alternation between episodes and stasima, until
the final scene, called the...

20. The Structure Of A Tragedy’s Plot
 EXODOS: At the end of play,
the chorus exits singing a
processional song which
usually offers words of wisdom
related to the actions and
outcome of the play.
 At this point, the audience is
granted the catharsis, or the
release of the tension created
by viewing the many
emotional episodes of the
tragedy.

21. Greek Comedy: Divinely Dirty
 Greek comedy is divided into Old and New.
 Old Comedy tended to examine political and allegorical
topics while New Comedy looked at personal and
domestic themes. For comparison, think of The Colbert
Report vs. Modern Family.
 Greek comedy represents men as worse than they are in
real life, whereas tragedy shows them better. Tragedy uses
real people, whereas comedy uses stereotypes.
 Typically, the humorous devices of Greek comedy –
whether Old or New – were either scatological or sexual in
nature.
 These plays may have discussed important social issues at
times, but they did so in a way that is decidedly low-brow.

22. Greek Playwrights:
Scribes of Dionysus

23. The Ancient Greek Playwrights
Tragedians Com edians
Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes Menander
525-486 B.C. 495-406 B.C. 484-407 B.C. 447-386? B.C. 342-292 B.C.

24. Aeschylus: 525 – 465 BCE
 Aeschylus was the first of the 3
renowned prize-winning Greek
writers of tragedy
 Aeschylean tragedy is, above
all, grand, massive, and
dignified.
 The language is heavy and,
even in the Greek, often
difficult to understand, full of
compound forms and complex
metaphors.
 He is still considered by many to
be the greatest Greek
playwright.

25. Sophocles: 496 – 406 BCE
 Sophocles was the second of
the 3 greatest Greek writers of
tragedy
 The so-called “Sophoclean
heroes”(such as Oedipus or
Creon) dominate six of the
plays of Sophocles that we
possess.
 They are stubborn and self-
willed, and they pursue their
own purposes and fashion
their own identities.

26. Euripides: 484 – 407 BCE
 Euripides was the third ancient
tragedian, who wrote about
women and mythological
themes like Medea and Helen of
Troy.
 Some later playwrights, such as
Aristophanes, portray him as
arid in his dialogue, and
determined to make tragedy
less elevated by introducing
common people.
 Others call him a misogynist, an
underminer of received
morality, and unorthodox in his
religious views.

27. Euripides: 484 – 407 BCE
Yet, no other
playwright from
antiquity challenged
the status quo in such a
controversial manner.
He brought about
issues for the people
and for the
philosophers, and not
just for the literary
figures.

28. Aristophanes: 448 – 385 BCE
 Aristophanes is the only
comedian from Greece’s
periods of Old and Middle
Comedy of whom we
possess any complete plays.
 His wit and satire
supposedly sparked many
debates and angered
many people, especially
the politicians he parodied.

29. Menander: 344 – 292 BCE
 Very little has survived
from this playwright from
Greece’s New Comedy era,
other than what later
comedy writers adapted
from Menander.
 He is said to have written
more than 100 plays, but
only one survives, Dyscolus,
which wasn’t printed as a
modern text until 1958.

30. Putting On A Show:
Staging & Producing Greek Theatre

31. Theatre As An Obligation
 Well in advance of the City
Dionysia, the city archon
selected 3 patrons of the
arts (choregoi) to finance
the performances.
 It was a form of taxation
that the wealthy were
required to perform -- but
not every year.
 And the wealthy had a
choice: they could supply
Athens with a performance
or a trireme.

32. The Ancient Athenian Actors
 While the chorus was
composed of (well-trained)
non-professionals, the
playwright and actors usually
had a passion for and
experience with the theatre.
 Some of the actors became
such polished celebrities their
participation would give an
unfair advantage, so the lead
actor, protagonist, was
assigned by lot to a
playwright who was expected
to compose a tetralogy,
direct, choreograph, and act
in his own plays.

33. Tetralogies & Satyr Plays
 A tetralogy consisted of
three tragedies and a
satyr play – a like a
dessert at the end of the
heavy, serious drama.
 Partly humorous or
farcical, satyr plays
featured the half-human,
half-animal creatures
known as satyrs and
were usually heavily
sexual in their content.

34. Ancient Theatrical Costumes
 By convention, the actors in tragedy appeared larger
than life.
 Since there were about 17,000 open-air seats in the
Theater of Dionysus going more than half way round
the circular dance floor, this exaggeration must have
made the actors more recognizable.
 They wore long, colorful robes, high head dresses, tall
shoes, and masks with large mouth holes to facilitate
ease of speech.
 Men played all the parts.
 One actor might play more than one role, since there
were only 3 actors.

35. The Importance of Masks
 Masks prevented the
audience from identifying the
face of any actor with one
specific character.
 This allowed men to
impersonate women without
confusion.
 They also helped the audience
identify the sex, age, and
social rank of the characters.
 Masks were often changed by
the actors when they would
exit after an episode to
assume a new role.

36. Dionysus’s Sacred Space:
The Greek Theater

37. Theatrics in Tiers
 The viewing area of the Greek
theater is called the theatron,
whence our word "theater".
 Theatron comes from a Greek
word for “viewing”.
 The Greek theaters also
excelled in acoustics, so the
people up high on the hill could
hear.
 Seats were arranged in curving
tiers, so that the people in the
rows above could see the action
in the orchestra without their
vision being obscured.

38. The Anatomy of the Greek Theater

39. The Anatomy of the Greek Theater

40. Athenian Theatrical Technology
The ekkyklema (“a
wheeled-out thing”)
was a cart on wheels
which carried a dead
body onto the stage.
It was sacrilegious to
show a character
actually dying on the
stage.

41. Athenian Theatrical Technology
The mechane was a
crane-like machine
that could lift a
character up as if
flying, or could carry
an actor, usually in
the guise of a god, to
the top of the skene.

42. Telos