>> What was it like to go to the Greek 
theater nearly two and a half thousand
years ago? 
Oliver Taplin and Edith Hall discuss,
what early Greek theaters looked like, 
who went to them, and why.
The images are mostly of the theater of 
Dionysus in Athens.
What remains today, dates from a mix of 
periods, but much of it was built a
century or more after the first 
performance of Aeschylus' Persians.
>> Well the fundamental form of the Greek
theater, of the Ancient Greek theater, is 
a hillside with a flat space at the
bottom of the hillside, and so that the 
audience sit up the hillside, and they
all look down on the same area where the 
actors and the chorus perform the play.
At the flat area at the bottom, there is 
a sanctuary of Dionysus, including a
temple of Dionysus. 
And a large area in which the chorus and
the actors could perform. 
The main problem, we're talking about the
seating and the physical form of the 
theater, is, that archaeologically, we
have scarcely anything that goes back to 
the era of Aeschylus' Persians , anything
that goes back to the fifth century. 
Nearly everything we have date from the
fourth century, from the next century. 
By which time theaters become really big
business and people are building really 
fine stone theaters.
In Athens, back in the days of Aeschylus 
I think a lot of people actually would
have been sitting on the ground. 
A lot of people will be sitting on wooden
seating. 
Just how the wooden seating was arranged,
we can't say except that we know that the 
fundamental form of the theater is that
it wraps surround the acting space, so 
that you got people coming from at least
the kind of semi-circle of hill side. 
Was there a building in the background,
though there's no doubt that for the most 
of the fifth century, for the time of
and[UNKNOWN] there was a building in the 
background.
representing a palace or representing a 
temple or representing a cave, even.
But it's one of those things that theater 
historians dispute about.
Was there a background building for 
Persians or not?
And I'm inclined to think that in the 
early days there was no background
building. 
In other words that the audience would
look down the slope, across the acting 
space, and behind it they'd see the
Temple of Dionysus, they'd see the view 
going way down to the sea, few miles
away.
>> We know very little about what the 
theater actually looked like at this
time. 
but it is fairly clear from the text,
that the singing was supposed to change 
somehow in the course of the play.
It has to represent both some kind of 
council building where this chorus of
Persian old men, elders of the city meet 
and also there's a tomb of Darius.
But it's quite unspecific as to exactly 
where in the city of the Persians, the
play is actually being played.
>> A lot of imagination is required of the 
audience.
You know, we're, we're in something 
totally different from the modern, pretty
intimate theater. 
Even the largest modern indoor theaters
are pretty intimate. 
you can see facial expressions.
You can see small details of costume. 
You can see small details of props.
That obviously isn't the case in a 
theater that's holding at least 10,000,
and some people are way up the slope 
towards the wall of the Acropolis.
so anything that needs to be seen, is 
going to have to be made very clearly
visible. 
And a lot of the kind of detail that we
expect from naturalism from realism, is 
left to the imagination.
As far as we know, the theater was open 
to all citizens, so the question is just
what who counts as a citizen. 
People reckon that the total population
of Athens, or Athens and Attica, this 
very large area of countryside that
surrounds Athens. 
was around two or three hundred thousand
at this time. 
And the number of actual qualified adult
male citizens is like dreaming about ten 
percent of that.
About 30,000. 
The theatre, by the time we can
archaeologically count the number of 
seats there, it looks as if it probably
holds about 15,000. 
Maybe back in the days of Persians, back
in the days, early days, it actually 
wasn't as big as that.
But I would be surprised if there were 
fewer than 10,000 citizens.
That's about a third of every citizen in 
the entire nation present at the, the
first performance of Persians in 472. 
So it is a par, participatory activity
for all those qualified, of a kind which 
we just don't have any m-, modern
parallel for. 
Women were citizens as well as men, but
they were they were a different kind of 
citizen.
And most of these significant civic 
activities are exclusive to men.
there is a question of whether women went 
to the theater, I'm inclined to think
that they didn't. 
I'm inclined to think that the original
audience was entirely male.
>> I think the average person in the 
audience at the City Dionysia, the
Festival of Dionysius in Athens in 472 
BC, the first audience who ever saw
Aeschylus' Persians, was probably a 
middle-aged man.
He was an Athenian citizen. 
He had probably actually rode about in
the Battle of Salamus himself in 480. 
And he went to see the theater the
theatrical productions every year as part 
of the festival of Dionysus at Athens.
It was partly a civic occasion, a 
political occasion where he met all the
other citizens. 
It was partly a religious occasion, where
they met to celebrate the god together.
>> In some ways the most fundamental 
question about the Greek theatre is, is
why did people go to it? 
Why did people put so much trouble and
expense into putting theatre on? 
And then why did people then take, you
know, a really significant portion of 
their lives, several days a year going to
watch these plays. 
I suppose there are going to be two
levels to this. 
One is actually a kind of civic
participation. 
that it's this sense of belonging, to the
community, in going to this very 
important prestige activity which was
especially associated with the cultural 
and, political and economic achievements
in Athens. 
But nonetheless, they're not going to go
there for four days to be bored. 
clearly, theater in some sense captivated
them, in some sense engage their, their 
attention, both their, their aesthetic,
their physical attention, and their 
mental attention, in a way that made them
feel it was worth spending all this time 
going to it.
I mean, they went to be told stories. 
They went to see the stories of the great
heroes of the distant past, told in a 
fresh way.
Told, actually, usually with, in a new 
way, a slightly unpredictable way.
But also told, with all the spectacle of 
the costumes, the props.
the chorus' activity. 
The music, the dancing.
And told in this very novel, still, 
certainly, back in the days of Persians.
Novel way of, of impersonation. 
We're used to the theater now, we're used
to actors impersonating roles but that 
was quite new in fifth century
Athens,[UNKNOWN] before then stories had 
been told by, solo performers, or they'd
been told by choruses. 
But they hadn't been told by people who
were actually pretending, to be the 
people in the play.
>> I think for the average Athenian citizen
theater goer, Aeschylus Persians would 
have been tremendously heart warming.
I think that it allowed him to undergo 
again all the great fear and, and terror,
and, and, and, and excitement of the 
Persian wars.
Full in the knowledge that they had been 
won faithfully.
and enjoy this specticle tinged with,with 
quite a strong sense of patriotic pride.
>> I think one can say that, in some sense
or other they thought that they were 
being made better.
A phrase that Aristophanes uses toward 
the end of the fifth century, is that
poets, make people better citizens in 
their cities.
In what sense does it make them better 
citizens?
The easy answer to that is just to say 
it's got moral lessons in it, like don't
be overconfident, or be careful how women 
behave or things of this kind.
But you don't need to go to the theater 
for a whole day in order to Learn a
lesson like that. 
there's got to be something more
pervasive, more, more profound in the way 
it affects people than that.
and it seems to me that if I had to put 
in a nutshell, what I'd say is, the
tragic theater reaches parts of human 
activity, parts of human experience, and
parts of human suffering, that can't be 
reached in any other way.
that it gives people experiences which, 
in, in real life, you hope to God you
will never have. 
It broadens the expereince of the
audience, it broadens their experience in 
a way that is very total, it kind of
takes them over. 
So that after the play's finished they
can say I, I am a person who now knows 
more about the world.
who knows more about the possibilities of 
the world, the possibilities of suffering
than I, than I did before I see the 
plays.
That's what I see as, as if you like, the 
enlargement of the experience of the
audience. 
[BLANKAUDIO]
