Thespis of Icaria (present-day Dionysos, Greece Dionysos is a residential suburb in northeastern Attica, Greece — just about 23 km northeast of Athens. Dionysos is almost purely residential, but there are a few shops. The area sits in the northwestern part of the Penteli mountains and its forests that are dominating the south. Another series of mountains and forests lie to the north. Much of) (6th century BC) according to certain Ancient Greek Ancient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization and shaped cultures sources and especially Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor An actor or actress is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity. The ancient Greek word for an "actress," ὑποκριτής (hypokrites), means literally "one who interprets"; in this sense, an actor is one who interprets a dramatic character playing a character in a play (instead of speaking as him or herself). In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus.[1]
According to Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most[2], writing nearly two centuries later, Thespis was a singer of dithyrambs Plutarch contrasted the dithyramb's wild and ecstatic character with the paean. According to Aristotle, the dithyramb was the origin of Athenian tragedy. A wildly enthusiastic speech or piece of writing is still occasionally described as dithyrambic (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrains A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the villanelle, the virelay, and the sestina). Thespis supposedly introduced a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks.
This new style was called tragedy Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that, paradoxically, offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition, and Thespis was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, in November 23, 534 BC, competitions to find the best tragedy were instituted at the City Dionysia The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedies and, since 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually comprised two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which in Athens Athens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years, and Thespis won the first documented competition. Capitalising on his success, Thespis also invented theatrical touring: he would tour various cities while carrying his costumes, masks and other props in a horse-drawn wagon (see picture, right).
It is implied that Thespis invented acting Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play. Most early sources in the West that examine the art of acting discuss it as part of rhetoric in the Western world The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term that can have multiple meanings depending on its context (e.g., the time period, the region or social situation). Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical, and that prior to his performances, no one had ever assumed the resemblance of another person for the purpose of storytelling: In fact, Thespis is the first known actor in written plays. He may thus have had a substantial role in changing the way stories were said and inventing theater Theatre is a branch of the performing arts. While any performance may be considered theatre, as a performing art, it focuses almost exclusively on live performers creating a self contained drama. A performance qualifies as dramatic by creating a representational illusion. By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a as we know it today. In reverence to Thespis, actors throughout western history have been referred to as thespians.
Titles of some plays haved been attributed to Thespis. But most modern scholars, following the suggestion of Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius , was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy, consider them to be forgeries, some forged by the phiosopher Heraclides Ponticus Heraclides Ponticus (387 BC-312 BC), also known as Herakleides and Heraklides of Pontus, was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who lived and died at Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey. He is best remembered for proposing that the earth rotates on its axis, from east to west, once every 24 hours. He is also frequently hailed as the, others by or altered by Christian writers:[3][4]
- Contest of Pelias and Phorbas
- Hiereis (Priests)
- Hitheoi (Demi-gods)
- Pentheus
Fragments (probably spurious) in A Nauck Johann August Nauck was a German classical scholar and critic, Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta (1887).[5] A branch of the National Theater of Greece expressly instituted in 1939 to tour the country is named "The Wagon of Thespis" (Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of: Άρμα Θέσπιδος, Árma Théspidos) in his honour.
See also
- Aeschylus Aeschylus was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict among them; previously, characters interacted only
- Aristophanes Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide us with the only real examples we have of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are
- Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most
- Dionysia The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedies and, since 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually comprised two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which
- Euripides Euripides (ca. 480 BCE–406 BCE) was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias. Eighteen or nineteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete—there has
- Phrynichus
- Sophocles Sophocles was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Sophocles wrote 123 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax,
Bibliography
- Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
- Gaster, Theodor, H. Theodor Herzl Gaster was a British-born American Biblical scholar known for work on comparative religion, mythology and the history of religions. He is noted for his book, The Dead Sea Scriptures, about the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as his one-volume abridgement of Sir James Frazer's massive 13-volume work The Golden Bough, to which Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East, Henry Schuman Publishing, New York, 1950. ISBN 0877521882.
References
- ^ "Theatre of the Greeks" by P.W. Buckham
- ^ Aristotle, Poetics Poetics refers generally to the theory of literary discourse and specifically to the theory of poetry, although some speakers use the term so broadly as to denote the concept of "theory" itself
- ^ Diogenes Laertius, Book V, Heraclides, 92:"And Aristoxenus the musician says, that he composed tragedies, and inscribed them with the name of Thespis."
- ^ A Nauck Johann August Nauck was a German classical scholar and critic,Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta (1887), page 832: "Thespidis quaecumque feruntur ab impostoribus esse ficta vix est quod moneam, et proditur hoc fraudis genere usus esse Heraclides Ponticus......Heraclidis igitur crediderim esse fr.1-3; nam fr.4 non dubito quin alteri post Christum saeculo debeatur."
- ^ A Nauck Johann August Nauck was a German classical scholar and critic,Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta (1887), page 832-833.
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Thespis
Sat, 07 Oct 2006 19:56:01 GM
They have made several comments that have been deleted, and are trying to falsely claim that the recent upgrade of . Thespis. Journal meant a transfer to a site for less traveled blogs. Like most statements that emanate from liberals, ...
Q. I am an actress & I wanna get a tattoo in greek since that is the origin of the first actor Thespis. I know its spelled but I don't know how to pronounce it in english. any help?
Asked by Les M - Thu Jan 8 02:08:07 2009 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments
A. ee-tho-pee-Os (stress on caps)
Answered by Emily - Fri Jan 9 03:22:41 2009
