Drama - classical
Terms
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- Chorus
- A group of actors who inform the audience and sometimes speak for the audience
- peripeteia
- a sudden and unexpected reversal in the protagonist's fortunes
- Deus- ex Machina
- a mechanical device that lowered and raised actors on and off stage but which now means any improbable or easy means of ending a story.
- mask
- device used by Greek actors to convey mood, increase visibility and amplify the voice?
- tetralogy
- a standard entry for a theater festival competition consisting of a trilogy of tragedies and one satyr play
- episodia
- In ancient Greek theater, dialogues, often heated, that dramatized the play's conflicts
- Aristotle
- Greek philosopher (384-322) author of The Poetics which contains his theory of tragedy
- Aristophanes
- Greek playwright and author of comedies such as The Birds and Lysistrata
- orchestra
- area in the amphitheater where the chorus danced
- Thespis
- reputed to be the first actor to step from the chorus in 534 BC, and engage in dialog with them; first actor.
- anagnorisis
- a sudden recognition or discovery of previously unknown information on the part of the protagonist
- Aeschylus
- Greek playwright and tragedian (525-456 BC), the earliest recorded Greek playwright.
- Apollo
- Greek god of the Sun, of truth and prophecy, and of the lyre, music and poetry
- Sophocles
- Greek playwright and tragedian (496-406 BC0, author of Oedipus the King and Antigone
- thespian
- a term used today which means actor
- Euripides
- Greek playwright and tragedian (480-406 BC), author of Medea and The Bachae.
- tragedy
- ancient Greek dramatic form focusing on a powerful figure whose downfall arouses fear and pity
- comedy
- ancient Greek form focusing on sharply on the society's foibles or on an individual misadventures
- Dionysis
- god of wine and fertility, patron of Greek theater festivals
- agon
- Greek word for competition or contest
- burlesque
- focusing on physical, often sexual or vulgar humor
- skene
- small hut like building behind the stage used as a dressing room and later as a backdrop for painted settings
- stasimon
- an ode in which the chorus responds to and/or interprets the preceding dialogue
- satyr play
- short plays featuring drinking, overt sexuality, pranks and general merriment