Theater Space
· The Ampetheater was created to give a stage to actors performing in tragedies and comedies.
· The stories they told had a religious basis so everyone knew them.
· Since the whole town would come to see the show, the Greeks needed to make theaters that would accommodate all the people, hence the rise of the Ampetheater.
· The Ampetheater was the best use of the land because Greece is very hill-y so they used that to their advantage.
· They built the theaters at the bottom of hills so that there was good acoustics and natural raised seating.
· The place were people sat was called the Theatron.
· People entered the theater through the Parados which the chorus also used to enter the stage from.
· The chorus performed in the Orchestra.
· The orchestra was a circular space with seats on almost all sides to show the boundaries of the space, and it was where the chorus would dance.
· The actors would perform above the chorus on the stage.
· This space was known as the Proscenium.
· Behind the proscenium was the Skene house.
· This was used as a backstage changing area and it also helped the acoustics giving the sound something to bounce off of.
· The actors would enter and exit through the three doors that were on the Skene house.
· Which of the three doors an actor would enter or exit depended on the rank of the actor and the part they played.
· Since most of the theater productions where religious, there would most often be an alter nearby.
· For example, in frogs there is no mention of an alter till the very last scene, there could have been one for the poets to pray to before they have their “verbal duel“.
Costumes
· Since this is a Greek show, the most important costume piece that the actors wore was the mask.
· The masks helped to show different characters. There was even a difference between the masks for comedy and tragedy.
· An example is the masks for the chorus. In a tragedy the chorus would all have the same face, but in comedy the chorus would have different masks to add to the comedy.
· Also to tell the noble man from a normal person, the nobles all wore crowns.
· The masks would cover all the actors face so that they could play multiple characters during one show with space for the eyes and mouth to show through.
· Another important part of the costume was the toga.
· The color of the toga depended on the character.
· An example is the chorus, as people in Hades they wear rags, but as Initiates, they wore white.
· Also they wore cloaks over their togas.
· Another example is Dionysus who wears his yellow cloak over his Heracles costume.
Dance & Music
· Its hard to tell if there were any dances in The Frogs.
· The reason that we do not know is that there is no reference to any dances in the script.
· Also there possibly were two chorus’s so that makes it even harder to tell.
· One of the chorus’s were a group of frogs, and it is not certain that they even appeared on stage. If they did, Aristophanes would have had them do an animal dance for the enjoyment of the audience.
· The other chorus where Hades dweller and Initiates and there doesn’t seem to be any dances for them to do.
· If there were dances, there would have been music that would follow the mood of the chorus.
· Most of Aristophanes music was free versed.
· He would write music that would have less beats then what was written.
· This let the actors and singers show more emotion in what they sang.