Greek Sets and Props

· The set designs for early Greek theater used a few movable sets which would be considered unrealistic in today’s time because our audiences expect to see distinguished sets and set changes. During the Greek times, these changes were very subtle.

· Early Greek set designs were not very elaborate since it was hard to create a specific location for every show ever performed.

· The Greeks did not use any type of curtain to separate the backstage area from the performance space.

· The skene house was used to store sets and props, and was a place for the actors to change their costumes. It also served as a backdrop that represented a specific location of the play itself.

· Many times, the setting and place of the play was illustrated to the audience by the descriptions that the characters onstage gave..

· The Greeks created the mechane (aka deus ex machina) which was an apparatus that raised up the actors playing gods to appear to be coming down from the heavens.

· They also used a wooden structure called an ekkyklema. They would wheel this out onstage with a “dead” person on it so the audience could see what happened to the character that died offstage.

· The Pinake: early form of a theater flat (wooden frame with fabric covering one side) with a scene painted on it.

· The periaktoi: three flat-like structures hinged together each with a different scene painted on.

· There were very few set pieces used, but when they were present, they usually consisted of an altar for the gods, or trees and bushes to show the location of the play was outside.

· Altars were used to remind the people that theater was a religious event to honor the gods.


Greek Lighting

· The sun provided natural lighting for the early Greek plays.

· Spoken décor was also used to tell the audience what time of day the play was taking place in.

· If a play called for a sunrise within the show, then this would be the first performance of the day as the Greeks would actually use the real sunset to illustrate this moment in time.


Greek Text and Language

· Aristophanes structured the text of Frogs to include episodes, lyric stanzas, parodies, and contests.

· An example of an agon, or contest in The Frogs is the battle between Euripides and Aeschylus over who was the better poet and who should return to earth with Dionysos.

· Episodes are the scenes of the play.

· Lyric stanzas are sections of poetry that were sung by the twenty-four member choruses of Aristophanes’ plays.

· A parody is basically the dialogue that occurs between actors in a comedy. It has two main purposes. One is to present the serious poetry to the audience and other people so that they can criticize it. The other purpose is to find a comic element within tragic situations and to poke fun at it.

· The language of this comedy is poetic as it combines iambics, anapests, and lyrics.

· The verses follow patterns of quantity and not stress (long and short syllables).

· Some of the themes that Aristophanes presents in his plays include a criticism of tragedy, the welfare of Athens and the city-state in general, and religion and the relationships with the Greek Gods.

· Aristophanes poked fun at religion and the gods, which can be seen in the example of Dionysos being a character in The Frogs while the entire performance is to honor the God Dionysos (reason for the altar).

· One idea that make the works of Aristophanes unique is that he mixes fantasy with reality by putting unrealistic characters into situations of life’s reality, as well as placing real characters into unrealistic settings.

· Farces invoke the audience to laugh due to actions, where as comedies usually make the audience laugh because of the characters.

· Frogs is considered to be a farcical comedy since the actions rather than the characters make the people laugh.

· It is hard to place Aristophanes into the category of a farce-dramatist or a comedic-dramatist because his works demonstrate that he can be seen as both. A reason why his plays are hard to distinguish is that he added elements of seriousness to his works.

· The elements of seriousness can be found in the poetry itself, as well as in the ethical and/or moral comments made by characters in the play.

· Frogs is seen as a non-literary type of drama because it has comic routines that are based on improvisation (once again, it is hard to categorize Aristophanes’ plays as literary or non-literary since he fell in between both).

· Aristophanes presents different types of heroes in his plays. In The Frogs, Dionysos represents the Bomolochos hero and Xanthias portrays the Poneros hero.

· Bomolochos is the irrelevant and loud hero whose subtle humor serves to emphasize complex plot explanations.

· Poneros is the excessive and subtle hero that personifies ingenuity and is the associate to the “real” hero.