Who was Dionysus ?

We tend to think of the Greeks as a very ordered ansd civilized society

       Some say highest forms of beauty

Birth of Democracy and all that

       Philosophy, Socrates Plato, 

       Criticism,  Aristotle

Developed theatre as a highly stylized, highly evolved art form

 

For many years the pinnacle and the example for newer civilizations

       Neo/Classical Ideal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birth of Western Theatre   

          Costumes  

          Masks   

          Cothornoi

          Lazzi

 

Dionysus

       Also called Bacchus

       Youngest of the Gods

       Wine and revelry

       Lascivious and ranchy character

        

Imported by the common people

       kind of a folk cult

Euripides

      describes the event in the Bacchae

       women

       blasphemers (particularily men) not allowed

       culminates in the death of Pentheus

 

This is too dangerous

       needs to be controlled

The answer was to not involve everyone

       vicarious ecstacy

Ritualized through theatre

Actors sublimated this frenzy in a safe way.

Annual Festival

         sacrificial

          people went off to become one with the God

          sometimes sacrifices made by women

          sometimes by satyrs     

          sometimes both

 

 

Rituals were Frenzied

       orgiastic

       ecstatic

       sexual
               phallus,  animalistic satyrs

       often brutal

       maybe fatal

Theatre of Dionysus

        maintains a direct connection to the rite

       Earliest record is from 535/ 534 BCE

       Spring festival of five plays: three tragedies, a comedy, and a satyr play

       Next 120 years had a festival or mavybe two festivals each year

Playwrights:

534?? BCE       Thespis - actor

515-455 BCE   Aeschylus - dialogue

495-405 BCE   Sophocles

485-406 BCE   Euripides

448-380 BCE   Aristophanes

384-322 BCE   Aristotle (he's a critic, not a playwright)

342-291 BCE   Menander

Theatre Architecture
http://www.theatre.ubc.ca/fedoruk/TheatreArchitecture

Theatron http://www.theatron.co.uk