Ancient Greek Theatre
By Maureen Carter

It is a warm summer evening in Greece.  You take your place in the great open-air theatre of Epidauros.  Seated on ancient stone set in the hillside you watch the seats around you gradually fill.  An air of expectancy grows as the sun slowly sinks. The stars glimmer.  The lights go down and in the darkness there is a palpable silence.  From somewhere comes an eerie, rhythmic beat of music.  When a soft spotlight picks out the shadowy masked members of the chorus moving in a slow ritual dance around the circular space or orchestra below you, an old buried gene raises the hairs on the back of your neck.  Why?
 The stone you are sitting on was quarried out of a mountainside near the city of Argos some 2,300 years ago.  The author of the play you are about to hear was probably born a century before that.  But those dim dancing figures are evocative of something even more ancient; the mystical cult of the god Dionysus.  It is from there that the theatre, the dance, the drama, the tragedy to be played out before you has its roots.
 Our little theatre in Epidauros is even more ancient than its more famous relation.  Do ghosts of the past dance here, in honour of the god, on warm summer evenings? 

The Cult of Dionysus
The cult of the god reached had Greece by sea from Thrace by the 7th century BC.   Many of the rites at his festivals were shrouded in mystery, as were the secret Orphic rituals and the festivals of the goddess Demeter in Eleusis. The main place of his worship was at Eleutherai, a city about 50 kilometres north west of Athens, situated on the road between Eleusis and Thebes.  The remains of an ancient temple of Dionysus are still to be seen near the ruins of the city
Dionysus, according to Greek myth, was the child of the god Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele.  Semele, so the legend tells us, was the daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes.  Zeus was filled with desire for the beautiful princess and visited her often in her father’s palace and the girl became pregnant.  Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus, disguised herself as Semele’s nurse and instilled in her a wish to see the god in all his divine glory.  When her wish was granted the sight was too much for Semele.  The brilliant glow surrounding the god engulfed her in flames.  Zeus snatched the unborn child from her womb before it too burned to death.  As it was immature, he enclosed it in his thigh and gave birth to it  when the time was ripe.  So Dionysus was born twice and the double birth earned him the title ‘Dithyrambos’.
After this second birth of the god from the thigh of Zeus he was put in the care of nymphs on Mount Nysa in Thrace.  Zeus disguised the child as a young goat to keep him hidden from the jealous Hera.  The goat/child was brought up in a cave and resumed his mortal shape when he became a man. Hera persecuted him until she drove him mad, when he left Thrace to roam the world.  At some time he was cured of his madness and became divine.  He showed mortals how to cultivate grapevines and make wine. He was good and gentle to those who venerated him, but he brought madness and desolation upon those who scorned him or the lascivious observances of his cult.
During her pregnancy Semele was seized by an uncontrollable desire to dance.  Whenever she heard the flute she danced and the child in her womb danced also.  Dionysus  or Bacchus was the god of vegetation, wine and ecstasy.  The vegetation in the form of the vine produced the wine.  Drinking the wine resulted in a mad ecstasy, which found its expression in music and dance.
Dionysus was a god worshipped by country people.   He was believed, by the simple peasants who worshipped him, to die each winter and be born again in the spring.  So to his disciples he represented new life, resurrection. His female followers were known as Maenads or sometimes Bacchantes.  They left their homes to live in the wilds, following the god with rapturous energy, wearing the skins of animals and were believed to have mystical powers.  His male followers dressed in goatskins and were known as Satyrs.  Symbols of fertility, they inhabited the woods and unploughed fields.  At celebrations of the god’s feast they drank, became inebriated and engaged in wild dancing.
Not much is known about the ancient ceremonies in honour of Dionysus.  Probably some of his male followers, wearing garlands of vine leaves in their hair, danced in a circle singing the dithyramb , a song relating the birth and sufferings of the god.  This method of expressing religious fervour by the singing and dancing of a chorus was an old one.  Poetry was an ancient art in Greece and the dithyrambs were probably sung in verse from early on.    The songs would have been simple but grew more intricate as time went by.
What is known is that, circa 550 BC, Peisistratus, ruler of Athens, brought about great improvements to that city.  He loved culture and encouraged the development of art, pottery, sculpture and architecture.  Athens at that time was a city-state, which is a small town surrounded by villages and farms.  Peisistratus wished to unite the populations of the town and the countryside.  So he brought the peasant cult of the god Dionysus to the city of Athens.  The statue of the god was brought from Eleutherai and placed in a shrine beneath the south eastern slope of the Acropolis.  (On the Acropolis, in those days, were sanctuaries dedicated to Athena and Poseidon.  It was the central place of worship in the area.)   There, each spring, in the place where the god’s statue was lodged, the eight-day festival called the Great Dionysia was held.  At some festivals the god was carried in procession in a ship on wheels.  On a wooden column hung a wool robe topped by a great mask.  This represented Dionysus and wine was mixed and offered to the mask before being drunk by the celebrants.
Masks have been used and worn since Paleolithic times.  Masks disguised the wearer, proclaiming a different identity.  They were worn at ceremonies and the wearer was often believed to be possessed by the spirit of the animal, person or god depicted by the mask.  The masks which represented Dionysus, though, were far too large to be worn by anyone and were heavy, made of olive wood or marble.  Through the mask the god manifested himself. 
The orgiastic dancing and the singing of the dithyramb, which followed the drinking of wine, slowly developed into something more formal at the Great Dionysia in Athens.  The participants of the chorus were probably brought in from Eleutheria for the celebration of the festival of the Dionysus.   Poets vied to write the verses sung by the chorus which told of the birth and life of the god.  The steps of the dance conformed to a pattern established by a leader.  Eventually the chorus performed in a circular area or orchestra surrounded by an audience seated on wooden benches arranged in a semicircle.  At the Great Dionysia the members of the chorus wore goat skins and goat masks; disguised as satyrs, followers of the god.  The goat masks, tragos, gave the name of tragedy to the performance.  The chorus danced and sang words, which were mimed by an actor on a raised platform.
Tradition has it that one day in the mid 6th century BC a certain actor, Thespis, departed from the normal and engaged in a conversation with the leader of the chorus. The art of drama was born.   Thespis also introduced the wearing of masks for the actors, so he was able to depict several characters during the course of the ritual.  He changed his mask in a small tent or skene set to one side of the orchestra.   (In time the masks worn by actors, in the plays that developed, were large, with exaggerated expressions and the wide mouth contained a brass megaphone, which helped project the voice to the large audience.)
 So the first Greek dramatic productions (the word comes from a Greek word meaning to act or do) were performed in honour of Dionysus around his altars at his festivals - the Great Dionysia in Athens in the spring and the Rural Dionysia in the winter.  All performances were free to slaves and free men alike, supported by the state because they were considered to be religious functions and the audience could number 20,000.  If the spectators took a dislike to either the actors or the play, they would pelt the cast with figs and goat’s cheese.
(This article is an extract from my research for a possible book on theatre and it’s origins - Maureen Carter.)