Greek theater and Trifles

Question 1

What envirnmental and cultural factors shape the characters?

Answer 1

Job Title or Work Experiences/Skills/Knowledge

Marital Status

Question 2

The Traditional Detective Drama Plot: Linear and Climactic

Answer 2

1. Exposition: We learn the circumstances of the case or crime.
2. Rising Action: Evidence is discovered, conflicts tend to arise between characters.
3. Climax: Through empirical observation and deduction, detectives reveal truth, solving crime.
4. Falling Action & Resolution: tying up of loose ends (how the crime is solved, why the criminal did it, punishment to be meted out). However, Glaspell leaves Trifles open ended. Why?

Question 3

Trifles as Feminist Drama

Answer 3

•Barely passes the Bechdel Test (two women with names talk about something besides men to each other)

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•Makes gender bias transparent

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•Asks audience to identify with female characters

Question 4

What is the Trifle’s Central Symbol?

Answer 4

The central symbol of a play, poem, or novel often reveals the deeper meaning of what is being conveyed.

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•Think of it also as a metaphor: a thing regarded as representative of something or someone.

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•Is there something in Glaspell’s play which symbolically communicates the never-seen Mrs. Wright to us?

Question 5

“A Jury of Her Peers,” (1917)

Answer 5

•Glaspell writes of the actual murder case as a journalist in Des Moines, IA, in 1900. Margaret Hossack was tried for killing her husband, John, and was found guilty in the first trial by the jury.

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•The case haunted Glaspell.

Question 6

How are we defining Theatre and Drama in this course?

Answer 6

•Based on a predetermined script of words and/or actions (Dramatic Literature)

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•Dialogic

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•Almost always there is a clear delineation between actors and audience, though this will be challenged throughout theatre history (and this semester).

Question 7

The Advent of Theatre:

Answer 7

• Many points of origin
• A universal human trait
• Storytelling and Ritual, especially as religious rites.
• Greek theatre left extensive physical record, influenced later theatre practices, especially in Europe

Question 8

VOCABULARY (λεξιλόγιο):

Answer 8

• Dionysus - is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth.
• Dithyramb - a wild choral hymn of ancient Greece, especially one dedicated to Dionysus. A passionate or inflated speech, poem, or other writing.
• Tragedy - a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.
• Chorus - a group of singers or dancers performing together in a supporting role in a stage musical or opera.
• Theatron - has the same meanings as theatre
• Orchestra - the part of a theater where the orchestra plays, typically in front of the stage and on a lower level than the audience.
• Skēnē - the skene was the structure at the back of a theatre stage.The word skene means “tent” or “hut,” and it is thought that the original structure for these purposes was a tent or light building of wood, and was a temporary structure.
• Parodos - is an entrance affording access either to the stage (for actors) or to the orchestra (for the chorus) of the ancient Greek theater. The parodoi are distinguished from the entrances to the stage from the skene, or stage building.
• Ekkyklēma - also called Exostra, in classical Greek theatre, stage mechanism consisting of a low platform that rolled on wheels or revolved on an axis and could be pushed onstage to reveal an interior or some offstage scene such as a tableau.
• Mechane - or machine was a crane used in Greek theatre, especially in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Made of wooden beams and pulley systems, the device was used to lift an actor into the air, usually representing flight.
• The City Dionysia - Great Dionysia, also called City Dionysia, ancient dramatic festival in which tragedy, comedy, and satyric drama originated; it was held in Athens in March in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine.

Question 9

A Celebration of the God Dionysus (Διόνυσος)

Answer 9

•Who was Dionysus?

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•Son of the principal god (Zeus) and a mortal woman (Semele).

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•Twice-born

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•A resurrection god, along with Osiris, Baal, and Tammuz.

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•A foreign god, perhaps from Thrace, perhaps from Ethiopia.

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•Also called Bacchus, the name adopted by the Romans.

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•Hymns to Dionysus known as dithyrambs.

Question 10

Athens in the 5th Century BCE

Answer 10

• A Greek Polis, or City-State
• A Major Naval Power
• A Center of Cultural and Intellectual Activity

Question 11

Who Were the Athenians?

Answer 11

• 300,000 persons lived in Athens
• 30,000 were “citizens” (free, adult males) Other 90% were slaves, women, children, foreigners

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•The intellectual center of the West

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•Loved the idea of the agon (competition, contest, debate)

Question 12

The City Dionysia: Theatre as/emergent from Ritual

Answer 12

Lasted 5 days; the theatre was only one part of the festival:

• Procession and Revels
• 3 Days Performances with a competition between 3 tragic playwrights with three plays and a satyr play.
• Assembly
• Publicly funded with subsidized tickets

Question 13

Who Acted in the Plays?

Answer 13

• Men wearing masks and robes. No women actors; men played male and female roles (this will also be true in Zeami’s Japan and Shakespeare’s England. Roman women during the Imperial Age in Rome could be actors).

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• 2-3 Actors often playing multiple roles.

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• Musicians

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• Also a Chorus. More on this following……

Question 14

Location of the Production: Where Euripides ‘media premiered?

Answer 14

Theatre of Dionysus built into side of The Acropolis.
The Neighborhood where Euripides’ Medea premiered

Question 15

Main Parts of the Stage

Answer 15

•An Amphitheatre

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•The Theatron (“seeing place”).

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•The Orchestra (“dancing place”)

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• Parodos: entrance/exit for Chorus, Messengers, actors who needed to appear to be coming to/from somewhere else
• Then there is the Skēnē…

Question 16

Skēnē

Skēnē…from canvas or fabric to stone.

•Skēnē… (Greek)

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•Scaena… (Latin)

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•Scène…(French)

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• Scene…(English)

Answer 16

Tent = Tent (Xerxes’ Tent Captured after the Battle of Salamis)

Question 17

Stage Technology: The Mechane

Answer 17

•The Mechane was used to lower characters, particularly gods, onto the stage, as if they were descending from the sky. This was possibly used at the end of Medea with the flying chariot. Euripides became infamous for using the mechane.

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• The device is better known in English in its Latin form: Deus ex Machina, The God from the Machine.
• It will also be used in Shakespeare’s theatres

Question 18

Stage Technology: The Ekkyklēma

Answer 18

•A cart that would be wheeled out to reveal some terrible or horrific tableau.

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•The Greeks did not allow for violent acts on the stage. All violence took place off stage. We do not see Medea murder her sons. We do not see Oedipus stab out his eyes

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•Folk Etymology: Obscene from the Latin ob scaena, or “off scene.” A nice try, but a handy mnemonic prompt.

Question 19

Constraints and Customs:

Answer 19

•Performed in daylight: no curtain or lights to hide scene changes. Similar to the public theatres later in Shakespeare’s London

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•Mostly mythic stories everyone knew

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• Only 3 actors maximum!
• Protagonist

•Antagonist

•Agon = “struggle”

•The Chorus interacts with actors/comments on action

Question 20

Three Types of Plays, All with Choruses:

Answer 20

•Tragedy – plays that address the human experience in ways that evoke pity and fear in the audience. Chorus first of 15 (reduced from 50) then to 12.

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•Comedy – humorous plays, often satirical, tended to imagine happy outcomes. Chorus of 24.

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•Satyr – bawdy plays that touched upon the tragic themes of the plays shown earlier in the day. Chorus of 12. Only one play survives: Euripides’ Cyclops.

Question 21

Tragedy (Tragōidia) Means?

Answer 21

“Goat Song”: Why?

Greek tragedies were known as goat-songs because the prize in Athenian play competitions was a live goat. The contests were part of worship to Dionysus, involving chants and dances in his honour.

Question 22

The Library of Alexandra:

Answer 22

circa 280 bce to ?

Question 23

Of the Playwrights That Have Survived:

Answer 23

•Aeschylus: 6 of Almost 80 Plays

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•Sophocles: 7 of 120 Plays

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•Euripides: 19 of 90 Plays

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•Aristophanes: 11 of 40 Plays

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•Menander: 1 of 96 Plays

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•Seneca: 8/ Terence: 6/ Plautus: 20 out of 120/ Pacuvius: 0/ Accius: 0

Question 24

According to the Library of Congress, what % of the films made during the Silent Era are Lost:

Answer 24

75 %

Question 25

Timeline: BCE

Answer 25

Question 26

VOCABULARY (λεξιλόγιο):

Answer 26

• Catharsis - the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
• Peripeteia - a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative.
• Hamartia - a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.

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•Anagnorisis - is a moment in a plot or story, specifically a tragedy, wherein the main character either recognizes or identifies his/her true nature, recognizes the other character’s true identity, discovers the true nature of his situation, or that of the others – leading to the resolution of the story.

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•The Six Elements - plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle.

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•Pathos - a quality that evokes pity or sadness.

“the actor injects his customary humor and pathos into the role”

Question 27

Thespis and the Development of Theatre

Answer 27

•A lone actor turns and addresses the Chorus.

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•Thespis creates one of the ancient world’s most important mash-ups: Epic Poetry with Lyric Poetry:

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• Epic Poetry: Narrative (think

of Homer and The Iliad).

Lyric Poetry: The hymns to Dionysus (the dithyrambs)

Question 28

Theatre and the School of Athens: Philosophical Inquiry

Answer 28

Question 29

Plato:

Answer 29

•Student of Socrates

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•Poetry and Drama offer representations of the world and stand in the way of the pursuit of truth (think of the illusionary shadows in Plato’s Cave).

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•In his Republic, his ideal state would ban poets.

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•Yet his work is dialogic. Socrates always appears as the main Protagonist.

Question 30

Aristotle:

Answer 30

•Student of Plato.

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•Disagreed with his mentor, believing that drama served a vital purpose for society.

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•Wrote the first treatise on Western Drama, the Poetics, which remains one of the most important texts on how Tragedy functions.

Question 31

Aristotle on Plot Structure:

Answer 31

• Whole: a beginning, middle, end.
• Just long enough for a sequence of events to unfold in a probable manner.
• Unity: no extraneous events or stories. All aspects must be important to the whole.

Question 32

A Diagram of the Linear, Climactic Plot Format

Answer 32

Question 33

Briefly: Plot Structure as Action in a Greek Play:

Answer 33

• Beginning:
• Exposition:
• a. Parodos (Chorus Entrance) or
• b. Prologos (Prologue)

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• Middle:
• Epeisodia (Episodes)

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• End:
• Resolution: Exodos (Exodus or Exit)

Question 34

The Plot:

Answer 34

• The Character in the tragedy experiences a change in fortune due to a misstep: Hamartia (sometimes referred to as the “tragic flaw”)
• This leads to a climax in which the character experiences:
• A Reversal, often ironic: Peripeteia
• Sudden Recognition of the truth: Anagnorisis
• Finally, Pathos (suffering from a painful act)

Question 35

The Tragic Character:

Answer 35

• Well-known and highly placed. The tragic heroes in Greek Drama are queens, kings, princesses, war heroes, demi-gods, even Xerxes becomes a tragic figure for the Greek stage.
• Neither perfect nor evil, but undergoes a terrible event due to hamartia
• Events between friends or family leading to awful consequences are the most pity- and fear-inducing

Question 36

The Function of Tragedy:

Answer 36

Catharsis:

A purging or cleansing of emotions through pity and fear.

Therefore, tragedy offers a socially therapeutic role…

Through a symbolic sacrifice.

Question 37

Sophocles and Euripides

Answer 37

• Friendly rivals, who died in the same year (406 bce). We have their different takes on the myth of Electra.
• As playwrights, they were also responsible for composing the music, choreographing the dance and staging their plays. Historically, the playwrights were also actors, though Sophocles ended that tradition.
• “I write people as they should be, Euripides writes people as they are”—Sophocles

Question 38

Euripides (484 bce to 406 bce)

Answer 38

Greek Drama’s fiercest critic:

• War (he detested militarism)
• Women (a proto-feminist. The majority of his surviving plays place women in the center of the action. He was criticized by Aristotle in the Poetics for his play Melannipe the Wise, as he made Melannipe “too clever for a woman”).
• Religion (he was highly skeptical)
• Fame (he thought athletes were useless individuals)

Question 39

Always singable and quotable:

Answer 39

•Later, in a very different Corinth, the Apostle Paul quotes a line from Euripides in his “First Epistle to the Corinthians” in the Christian Bible.

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•However, he failed to use proper MLA or Chicago Style citation procedures.

Question 40

Medea as Feminist Icon

Answer 40

•“Medea exposes male suppression of women in marriage and the tragic results of a male refusal to recognize in women the capacities, feelings, and needs that they accept for themselves; and it shows the corrupting effects of this mistreatment on a woman of tremendous feelings and intelligence”

—Helene P. Foley

Question 41

Medea was a Black Woman:

Answer 41

•Ancient Greeks, including such writers as Herodotus and Pindar, understood Medea as a woman of color.

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•Perhaps another reason for Black Africans to have identified with Thorndike’s Medea. In colonialist literature, Blacks were often referred to, paternalistically, as “children of the sun.” And here was Medea, grand-daughter of Helios.

Question 42

The Parthenon in Athens:

Answer 42