The Oresiteia - The Chorus Speaks; Blog

Historical Context and Research

Link to National Theatre website - http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/video/an-introduction-to-greek-tragedy

Ancient Greek theatre was most popular during the years 550BC and 220BC. Greek tragedy was one of the three dramatic genres, the others being comedy and satyr, which were performed as a festival to honour the god Dionysus in Athens.  Euripides was one of the most influential playwrights of the time whose work was still being developed and performed years after their initial first premier. Play wrights such  as Euripides created a foundation of which all contemporary theatre is based upon. These plays would have been  performed by an all male, amateur cast. Also, the playwrights would only use 3 actors on stage at a time.

• The image on the left is a representation of a theatre that the plays would be performed at. The circular stage at the bottom is called the Orchestra where the chorus sung and danced.
• The central image is of a typical ancient Greek tragedy mask which is used to represent a character. Members of the chorus would where these masks.
• The image on the right is of a typical Greek chorus which would have been made up from around 12-15 chorus members, of all whom would be male. They can be seen wearing the character masks and robes to represent the playwrights envision.

This research helped me understand the context of Greek tragedy which should mean I can start to imagine the devising, physical theatre and voice opportunities there are as a chorus for our script.