Associative Dramaturgy

Distinct fromplotting based on temporal sequencing or cause and effect, Ass. Dramaturgy employs plotting that relies on thematic associations, often to bring present concerns into ritual performanceas.

"Mythic Flashbacks"  The Triumph of Horus

"Artistic image-making", "representation", we make something outside ourselves our own gaining authority over it

Uses theatrical means to serve ritual function. Performacnce allows a plot taken from myth of the god being honored to be placed upon bodies of human actors, drawing them into the myth that is made manifest through them.

• Occasional 
• Liturgical
• Site specific
• Commemorative
• Efficacious
• a way of knowing
• a way of teaching
• a way of remembering, commemorating
• a way of effecting change

- a way of invoking assistance of cosmic powers

- restoring prosperity through connection to powers

- passing on traditions and social knowledge

- earliest recorded instances of theatrical performance are sacred dramas based in ritual performance
- 2500 BCE (Egypt), even earlier in Sumeria  

-Part of the liturgy

-Latin

-Used Locations inside the church

- Based on ritual Pattern in which a god sacrifices part of himself to renew life.

- Sacred means to understand and accept suffering in the world

- Basic pattern = a god suffers, dies, and is reborn on behalf of humankind

Emerged in 5th Century Athens

religious, social, educational, political

license of carnival when unexpected wishes are acted out without overt consequences.

Aesthetic of Old Comedy

In a tame and generalized nod to carnivalesque licesence, New Comedy parodies the patriarch within a strictly patriachial society, celebrating the imagination and fecundity of youth.

Part of the Aesthic of Aristophanic Old Comedy

Ditched in New Comedy

In Christianized Rome (Early Medieval Europe)

-Disdain for bodies

-distrust of illusion

-dismissal of pleasure(entertainment)

-disapprocal of emotions

• Seeks to take its participants on a journey or report a journey to them 
• enter into a trance
• Rupture in the surface of daily reality 
• Allows them to communicate with unseen powers, and experience unkown realms.
• Links the world of living with world of shadows via trance
• The Shaman
• communicates with realm of spirits, makes them manifest to audience
• speaks to spirits and gives them voice without falling under their power
• the link b/w world of living and world of shadows

Korean Shamanistic Tradition

• Shaman asks favors of spirits before sending them back (words, feats, gestures)
• Performed to gain good fortune, for clients, to cure illness, exorcising lost or malignant spirits
• To regain favor of local or village spirits
• Drive off evil spirits
• Console spirits of the dead, guide them to rest

- Devoted to the cult of Osiris

-Abydos = place where Osiris was buried

- 2500- 550 BCE

-Depict the burial of Osiris

-Ties body of Osiris to the grain that is scattered, buried and resurrected.

Ties Human life to cyclic death and resurrection of nature. 

- Division of Ritual Drama (along with death/resurrection and primal battle with chaos) in Mesopotamia

- Sacred Marriage between two gods enacted by humans representing the deities. 

Worship of Dionysus (orgia, "secret rites") included singing, dancing, ritual drinking, and general abandon in an atmosphere of giddy expectation

Division of Ritual Drama(along with death/resurrection and primal battle with chaos in Mesopotamia) 

Sacred Marriage between two Gods, enacted by humans representing the deities. 

Choral odes honoring Dionysus Dithrambus ("of the double household") and recounting his suffering and victories. Later Dithyrambs were composed on other themes taken from diven and heroic legends.

They were improvised b/w choral leader and chorus in a kind of call-and-response or verse-and-refrain. 

Thespis' innovation

Actor encircled by chrous (bullseye)

hero suffers while chorus empathizes withs his suffering

Responsorial

- Sophocles adds 3rd actor (bullseye + triangle)

- Allowed for drama of vacillating allegiances 

- (468 BC)

- a moment of recognition (in tragedy)

- tragic hero suffers to find meaning in self-knowing that spiritualizes the suffering body while making suffering the site of heroism.

a reversal of fortune (in tragedy)

- Mask

- facilitated double roles since there were only three actors at most

- In 534 BCE Peisistratus established a civic festival honoring Dionysus in Athens and held on the grounds of the new temple of Dionysus. competition in the singing (and dancing) of dithyrambs with competitors coming from across Attica. 

- In 501 BCE Cleisthenes reorganized the City Dionysia linking the diathrambic competition to the "ten tribes" and perhaps introducing a competition of tragedies

- 486 BCE: competition of comedies added to City Dionysia.

- Reforms of Pericles the City Dionysia became: a religous festival

- a social celebration and civic holiday

- a political even demonstrating Athenian greatness

• The most socially influential citizen of Athens
• Held office for one year, starting mid summer
• The year was named after him
• Likely decide which playwrights to produce
• Selected and assigned each choregos to one playwright.

• "chorus bringer"
• very wealthy citizen
• Selected by the Archon as a sort of patron or producer
• financed the entire production except for actors 
• Luxuriated in his own extravagance
• The role was an honor, a duty, and shameless self promotion. 

• pre-contest, time beforehand when titles of plays were announced
• Actors, choruses and musicians may have previewed scenes, songs, and costumes
• After 435 B.C., the proagon took place adjacent to the Theatre of Dionysus in the Odeon of Pericles (the first indoor performance space, and largest roofed building in the Greek-speaking world) 

- Three Tragedies and a satyr play

- Presented on 2nd 3rd and 4th days of City Dionysia

- Aeschylus innovation

- a wheeled platform rolled through a skene in ancient Greek theatre

- It was used bring to interior scenes out into the sight of the audience

Mechane ("Deus ex Machina")

a crane used in Greek theatre specifically in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. Made of wooden beams and pulley systems, the device was used to lift an actor into the air, usually representing flight. The stage machine was particularly used to bring gods onto the stage from above//a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. 

- a publicly subsidy of tickets for poorer citizens, established by Pericles.

- The final play in a tragic tetralogy

- Anti-heroic refractions of serious mythical subjects

- Sexual and scatological humor

- More parody than satire

- Always ended happily

Prologos, Parodos, Agon, Parabasis, Revue, Komos. See Aristophanes (~580 BC).

Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and satyr play). Three periods: Old, Middle, and New. 

a winter Dionysian festival

festival was in honour of Dionysos Lenaios. 486 BCE: competition of comedies added to City Dionysia

444 - 441 BC. celebrated near the end of January, but was only observed by citizens of Athens. Seas were unsafe in January, so it was primarily a local festival. Came to be associated with more freedom of expression and therefore, comedy in which Athenian officials and political affairs were ridiculed. 

- Grand entrance of the chorus from the sides (parodoi) of the stage

- Comic Chorus was twice as large as tragic chorus: 24 men sometimes divided into 2 half choruses

- Formal, almost ritualized, contest or debate

- Often results in outlandish conclusions that take the comedy to the next step

- Must be resolved for the play to continue

• Chorus leader removes all but most basic costume and speaks directly to the audience
• Political comment and advice
• Personal attacks

Revue

A series of scenes or sketches in which new arrivals are dealt with by the central character

Outlandish punishments are meted our and the abuses of the polis are highlighted

Hellenistic Comedy that focused on domestic issues of love, money, respect, marriage. Usually involves a young man and woman whose love is blocked by some kind of opposition, usually parental, which is then resolved by a plot twist. Celebrated "beautiful young bodies" (emblems of hope and renewal) in contrast to the grotesque bodies of Old Comedy 

335 BCE is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. 

- mimesis

- catharsis "purgation" "purification" "clarification"

- Peripetia "reversal"

- Anagnorisis or "recognition" "identification"

- Hamartia or "miscalcualtion" (tragic flaw in Romanticism)

- Mythos "plot"

- Ethos "character"

- Dianoia "thought", "theme"

- Lexis or "diction" , "speech"

- Melos or "melody"

- Opsis or "spectacle" 

- Raised stage supported and backed by a stone building (skene) with roof and columned facade

- The speaking-place or stage of the ancient Greek theatre