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Hi, welcomed to class!
I'm PROFESSOR NotONE
Not One, as in I'm not a real professor,
this isn't a real class and i'm not wearing a real watch. As a little
background, I'm currently a student at the wonderful, sunny
Binghamton University
okay maybe not so sunny, but I have been learning some pretty interesting
things
particularly in the first class of the week
three oh four
for those of you who, like me don't speak number
thrree of for means
theater history. In today's class Ill be bringing you up to speed.
So, in high school i was president for my school's thespian troupe
Guys...
Shakespeare's dead!
as president of the troop I was supposed to read part of the induction
ceremony for the new members
this ceremony describes how acting became an art when a man named Thespis
stepped from the greek chorus, became the first actor.
I never really knew what this meant I'd always sort of assumed that it was this
guy Thespis
actually literally stepping from the chorus
and shouting "shut-up chorus i'll take it from here"
that's not what really happened. In Athens in the sixth-
sixth or seventh century BCE
(before the common era)
Athenians worshiped a god named Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of wine and revelry
he was supposed to represent the people's ability to lose themselves. This
could be in drink or physical ecstasy which is why the rituals
honoring Dionysus often involve a lot of drinking
and live displays of sex.
In honor of diagnosis, who was often represented by a goat, Athenians wrote
something called goat songs. interestingly the word got goat in
greek is tragedy. Just to reiterate, the word tragedy
means goat song.
So basically when you're reading reviews and they say something along the lines
of
a fellow murdered his wife out of greed and jealousy and that was a tragedy what
they really meant was
a fellow murdered his own wife out of jealousy and greet and that was a
goat song.
One of the first known goat songs ever written was in the form of dithyramb.
A dithyramb was invented by a man named Arion in the sixth century
before the common era. A dithyramb, which was written for the god Dionysus,
was presented by a chorus of about fifty men in a circular dance called the ring
dance which looks something like this:
the area in which it was presented and danced by the chorus was
called the orchestra which was a circular area
circle, yes
the area in which the audience sat to watch the dancing was called the theatric.
Sound familiar?
I thought so too. In the year five thirty four BCE a man became the
first playwright
when he added a character to this chorus who spoke his lines in
interaction with the chorus. Because the chorus as a whole was considered one
character
the interaction between this new addition
and the whole chorus
was the first form of dialogue.
The playwright who added this new character was named Thespis. This is very
different from what I learned in my thespian induction ceremony which
told me that Thespis was the first actor not first playwright. I like to
think that Thespis not only wrote this first play but he also acted within it
as the first actor
to interact with the chorus. Remember that earlier I said Dionysus
represented a person's ability to lose himself in either drink for physical
ecstasy. Since then scholars have possibly retranslated
these words to mean that
Dionysus represents a person's ability not only to lose himself but also to
become someone else, just as an actor should. That's all for today
i hope you all enjoyed the first lesson!
All my facts are found in this textbook living theater or in my lectures in
class. Professor,
if any of this stuff is wrong please don't kill me, I'm very sorry! See you all
next class!