A ritual drama is a dramatic performance (employing story, dialogue, and impersonation) with a plot taken from the myth of the god in whose honor it is enacted. They are performed in public as part of the liturgy of a festival honoring the particular deity. Originally performed at a sanctuary sacred to that deity or a site endowed with divine importance by the enacted story, they are later carried to other sites.

ANTI-THEATRICAL

PREJUDICE

At Abydos, the place where Osiris was buried, some kind of annual ritual procession depicting the burial of Osiris and perhaps including major events from his life, was staged. The ritual drama occurred annually from c. 2500 BCE to c. 550 BCE.

"TRIUMPH OF HORUS

OVER SETH"

The Ptolemaic temple at Edfu on the upper Nile contains heiroglyphic text and reliefs depicting an elaborate ritual-drama of kingship performed at the Festival of Victory. The drama dates from c. 1300-1200 BCE.

HIEROS GAMOS

(SACRED MARRIAGE)

Initian ceremonies held annually for the cult of Demeter and Persephones based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were the ones of the greatest importance. These myths and mysteries began c. 1600 BC and lasted around 2,000 years, were a major festival during the Hellenic era, later spreading to Rome.

Worship of Dionysus involving singing, dancing, drinking, and general abandon. The goal was to reach a state of ecstatic oneness with the god. Intoxicated worshippers partook in rites of sparagmos and omophagia.

Refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes a human being, would be sacrificed by being dismembered, the tearing apart of limbs from the body.

The eating of raw flesh, especially in the cult worship of Dionysus.

ECSTASY

"To stand outside oneself," establishes a primary relationship with the divine.

An altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently accompanied by visions and emotional/intuitive (and sometimes physical) euphoria.

Like representation, a social event that points back to society.

A moment of tragic recognition that underscores the shared humanity of suffering people in the face of unspeakable actions. The audience joins in an outpouring of social empathy.

Tragedy developed out of the choral dithyrambs honoring Dionysus. The chorus retains a central position in Attic tragedy. They are neither neutral nor above the action. A chorus of 12 men (extended to 15 in the middle of the 5th c. BCE) was hired by the choregos appointed to each tetralogy.

Ecstatic choral hymns in verse honoring Dionysus. Divided into strophes and antistrophes., capturing a sense of statement and response. Originated by Arion of Lesbos in around 600 BCE.

DRAMA OF

UNIVERSAL HUMANITY

Thespis' innovation of around 650 BCE, represented by an actor encircled by the chorus. Accomodates a limited array of expositional and dramatic forms that are essentially responsorial. The hero suffers and the chorus empathizes.

DRAMA OF

INDIVIDUAL CONFLICT

Aeschylus' innovation of 471 BCE represented as an actor encircled by the chorus in dialogue with a second actor outside the circle. Information and points of view can now be brought from offstage to expand or challenge the action of heroic suffering and choral empathy.

DRAMA OF

SOCIAL CONFLICT

Sophocles' innovation of 468 BCE expanded the dramatic conflict by allowing for contradiction and the enactment of a drama of vascillating allegiancies, represented as an actor encircled by the chorus interacting with two others outside the circle.

Flat-soled soft leather calf-length boots that allowed for quick and fluid movement.

CITY DIONYSIA

(GREAT DIONYSIA)

Pesistratos used theatre to legitimize his rule at Athens. He expanded a local peasant festival honoring Dionysus into a great civic festival celebrating key values of the polis and attended by citizens from other poleis. After 532 BCE, competition of literary tragedies became the center of the festival.

CHOREGOS,

CHOREGOI (pl.)

An honorary title for a wealthy Athenian citizen who assumed the public duty of financing and paying the expenses of the preparation of the chorus and other aspects of dramatic production that were not covered by the state.The prizes for drama at the Athenian festival competitions were awarded jointly to the playwright and the chorêgos.

From the Attic theater, a group of three tragedies followed by a satyr play, all by one author, to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia as part of a competition

A wheeled platform rolled out through a skene in ancient Greek theatre. It was used to bring interior scenes out into the sight of the audience. It is mainly used in tragedies for revealing dead bodies

MECHANE

("DEUS EX MACHINA")

A crane used in Greek theatre made of wooden beams and pulley systems, used to lift an actor into the air, usually representing flight. This stage machine was particularly used to bring gods onto the stage from above hence the Latin term deus ex machina ("god out of the machine"). Euripides' use of the mechane in Medea (431 BC) is a notable use of the machine for a non-divine character. It was also often used by Aeschylus.

refers to actions which shamed and humiliated the victim, and frequently the perpetrator as well. It was most evident in the public and private actions of the powerful and rich. The word was also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist's downfall. Hubris against the gods is often attributed as a character flaw of the heroes in Greek tragedy, and the cause of the "nemesis", or destruction, which befalls these characters.

in ancient Athens, the name for the fund of monies expended on festivals, sacrifices, and public entertainments of various kinds; and also monies distributed among the people in the shape of largesses from the state.

an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, they always featured a chorus of satyrs and were based in Greek mythology and contained themes of,  drinking, overt sexuality, pranks and general merriment. At the Athenian Dionysia, playwrights usually submitted four plays to the competition: three tragedies and one satyr play. The satyr plays were performed at the end of the festival to lighten the atmosphere or between the 2nd and 3rd Tragedy of a trilogy as comic relief.

The earliest Athenian comedy, from the 480s to 440s BC, which is almost entirely lost. The most important poets of the period were Magnes and Cratinus, who took the prize at the City Dionysia probably sometime around 450 BC. For modern readers, the most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. It is important to realize that he was only one of a large number of comic poets working in Athens

CONVENTIONS OF

ATTIC TRAGEDY

(1) Chorus

(2) Three Actors

(3) Messenger

(4) Single Complete Action

(5) Late Point of Attack

(6) Emblematic Staging

CONVENTIONS OF

ATTIC COMEDY

(1) Chorus

(2) Parados-a song sung by a Greek chorus as it first enters the theatre

(3) Parabasis-a point in the play when all of the actors leave the stage and the chorus is left to address the audience directly

(4) Agon-a verbal dispute between characters.

(5) Komos-a ritualistic drunken procession performed by revelers in ancient Greece

Much of our knowledge of New Comedy is derived from the Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence. Love became a principal element in the drama. The New Comedy relied on stock characters such as the senex iratus, or "angry old man," the domineering parent who is often led into the same vices and follies for which he has reproved his children, and the bragging soldier newly returned from war. Depicted Athenian society and the social morality of the period, presenting it in attractive colors but making no attempt to criticize or improve it.

ARISTOTLE'S

POETICS

earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in  this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb). He examines its "first principles" and identifies its genres and basic elements; his analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion

the raised speaking place on the orchestra in many Greek theatres

OPSIS

(SPECTACLE)

Aristotle discusses opsis in book 6 of the poetics, but only goes as far as to suggest that "spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet"

FESCENNINE

VERSES

one of the earliest kinds of Italian poetry it developed into satire and Roman comic drama. They made their way into the towns, and became the fashion at religious festivals They took the form of a dialogue consisting of an interchange of extemporaneous raillery. Those who took part in them wore masks made of the bark of trees. These songs gradually outstripped the bounds of decency; malicious attacks were made upon both gods and men, and the matter became so serious that the law intervened

ATELLAN FARCE

(FABULA ATELLANA)

PHLYAX FARCES

(PHLYAKES)

"PLAYS IN GREEK DRESS"

(FABULA PALLIATA)

QUEM QUAERITIS

TROPE

MUMMERS

PLAYS

FEAST OF

CORPUS CHRISTI

CORPUS CHRISTI

PROCESSION

EMBLEMATIC

STAGING

PLACE-AND-SCAFFOLD

STAGING

(LOCUS AND PLATEA)

OSIRIS

ISIS

HORUS

BARONG

RANGDA

ETHELWOLD,

BISHOP OF WINCHESTER

HROSWITHA OF

GANDERSHEIM

WAKEFIELD

MASTER

YORK

REALIST