Structure of the Greek Theatre

Summary: This page discusses the Greek theatre structure. It covers the inventions of Athenian, Hellenistic, and Graeco-Roman theatre and how they were used.

The Greek theater is the ancestor of European theaters. There were many theaters in Greece that we have discovered. There are three types of theaters: Athenian, Hellenistic, and Graeco-Roman. Athenian theatre was in the 5th century BC. Hellenistic theatre was from the 4th century onward. It covers roughly the same time period as the conquests of Alexander the Great. When Greek civilization was coming to an end, Roman ideas were spreading through Greece and therefore Graeco-Roman theatre soon evolved. The three types of theatre are distinctly different from each other.

The plays of many playwrights including Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed in all three types of Greek theatre. There are only some physical remnants of these theaters that remain. In trying to gain information on these theaters we only have three sources. One is literary evidence. We can look at the works of Vitruvius. Vitruvius was a Roman architect who wrote a book about architectural styles. Secondly, we have some pieces of old theaters, but we have no complete structures, so our reconstructions are not fact, but theory. Third, we have evidence from plays themselves. However, there are no stage directions written in the plays, to tell us what they would have needed to house the performances.

The Athenian theatre had a religious focus. The plays also had a chorus of up to 50 people. The chorus performed the plays in verse with music. So we can guess that the theaters have large spaces to incorporate the large number of people on stage. For projection of voice, so the audience could hear the actors clearly, the acting spaces were erected at the bottom of hills and the audience sat up on the hillside. First there were wooden seats on the hillside and then eventually stone seats starting about 499 BC. The seats were in a semi-circle and on the performing area was an altar. The performing place, or orchestra, was a circle with on average about 78 feet in diameter. In 465 BC the playwrights began using a backdrop or scenic wall. It hung or stood behind the orchestra. It was called the skene, the area behind it was also used as a costume changing area. In 425 BC a stone scene wall was built. It was called a paraskenia. It was a long wall with projecting sides, it may have had doorways for entrances and exits. Just behind the paraskenia was the proskenion. The proskenion was columned and was similar to the modern day proscenium. (The proscenium is the what separates the audience from the stage. It is the frame around the stage that makes it look like the action is taking place in a picture frame.) They also had entrances for the audience called paradoi. The paradoi (plural of parados) came out from the side of the stage and were tall arches through which the audience entered. By the end of the 5th century BC the skene, the back wall, was two stories high. The upper story was called the episkenion. The Greeks also had a raised speaking place on the orchestra called the logeion.

The Hellenistic theatre also contained the orchestra, parados, and the skene. Most of the theaters of this time share a similar layout. They aimed for symmetry. Columns were used next to the skene ranging from 13 to 8 feet in height. They were typically enclosed by the paraskene. There were painted boards located behind the columns called pinakes. So overall the Hellenistic style included a circular orchestra, an auditorium slightly larger than a semi-circle, a skene divided into rooms, pillars, and a proskene with three doors.

The Graeco- Roman theaters incorporated the ideas of Romans into the Greek theatre. They had a larger audience area. The lower level of seats were the same level as the orchestra. The background and front edge of the orchestra became elaborate and decorative. The plays consisted mostly of comedy. They disposed of the columns and presented a plain stage area. They had the three doors and a skene. The elaborate scene work calls for architectural decoration, more so than the decoration of the set. So the structure itself was very decorative but the set for each play was not. The Graeco-Roman time also had some machines that were put to use. In plays where gods had to arrive they were flown in on a crane. Therefore it was easier to show the gods and they could arrive in many different ways just by using a crane. They also had rolling platforms, most commonly used for bringing in dead bodies onto the stage. It was called the ekkuklema. There were also a lot of simple things such as trap doors for that actors to enter and exit from.

Can you match the parts of the theatre with the Greek names?

Corrigan, Robert W. ed. Classical Tragedy Greek and Roman. New York: Applause, 1990.

Nicoll, A. Development of Theatre. New York; Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1948.

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