Unravelling the thread of Ancient Drama

What is it about Antigone, Medea, Oedipus. Electra, Ekavi or Orestes

that move us so profoundly?

A complex form of art hailing from the 5th century B.C., the ancient Greek drama, tragedy and comedy, raises crucial questions about the human condition and human societies. Notwithstanding that these plays were written over 2,500 years ago, these questions persist, evident in the fact that ancient Greek dramas are still popular and performed in contemporary theatres all around the world.

The theatre of Ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between 550 BC and 220 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was institutionalized as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honored the god Dionysus.

The three genres of ancient Greek drama were comedy, satyr plays, and most important of all, tragedy. Although there were many playwrights in this era, only the work of four playwrights has survived in the form of complete plays. The tragedians Aeschylus , Sophocles  and Euripides  and the comic writer Aristophanes. Their plays, along with some secondary sources such as Aristotle, are the basis of what is known about Greek theatre.

Comedy: The first comedies were mainly satirical and mocked men in power for their vanity and foolishness. The first master of comedy was the playwright Aristophanes. Much later Menander wrote comedies about ordinary people and made his plays more like sitcoms.

Tragedy: Tragedy dealt with the big themes of love, loss, pride, the abuse of power and the fraught relationships between men and gods. Typically the main protagonist of a tragedy commits some terrible crime without realizing how foolish and arrogant he has been. Then, as he slowly realizes his error, the world crumbles around him. The three great playwrights of tragedy were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Aristotle argued that tragedy cleansed the heart through pity and terror, purging us of our petty concerns and worries by making us aware that there can be nobility in suffering. He called this experience "catharsis".

And as J.Peter Euben writes in his study “Greek tragedy and Political theory”, “Tragedy explores passions and actions no public life could countenance, and problematized the city’s most fundamental cultural accomodatations, whether these were sexual, generational, institutiona, or intellectual.”

Satyr Plays: These short plays were performed between the acts of tragedies and made fun of the plight of the tragedy's characters. The satyrs were mythical half-human, half-goat figures and actors in these plays wore large phalluses for comic effect. Few examples of these plays survive. They are classified by some authors as tragicomic, or comedy dramas.

The characteristic that made Greek tragedy so outstanding is the harmonic combination of primeval sentiment and reasonable thinking. Greek theatre was a physically embodied, highly absorbing and profoundly emotional experience for its audience.Ancient Greek theatrical plays are full of universal truths. The basic nature of humans: their passions, desires and the drama that is all around, hasn’t changed much.

We live in a cataclysmic age, our world increasingly torn by war, famine, mass migration, sectarian violence, terrorism, pestilence, and environmental disaster. In spite of the technological advances that have led to unprecedented levels of communication and interconnection across the planet, we are, in some ways, isolated by our devices. Now, more than ever, we are in need of timeless stories, myths that bring us together in the presence of community and help us face some of the darkest aspects of our humanity.