Thespis of Icaria (present-day Dionysos, Greece) (6th century BC), according to certain Ancient Greek Ancient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. At the center of this time period is Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC, at first under Athenian sources and especially Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover 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 "actor," 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. His writings cover 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 The dithyramb was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god:Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb.". Plato also remarks of dithyrambs in the Republic (394c) (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 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 has been, and Thespis was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, on 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 The Greek capital has a population of 745,514 within its administrative limits and a land area of 39 km2 (15 sq mi). The urban area of Athens extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3,130,841 (in 2001) and a land area of 412 km2 (159 sq mi). According to Eurostat, the Athens Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the 8th most, 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 had 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 have been attributed to Thespis. But most modern scholars, following the suggestion of Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laertius , 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 philosopher Heraclides Ponticus Heraclides Ponticus , 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 originator of 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, 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 the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often recognized as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word αισχος (aischos), meaning "shame". According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for
- 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 the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are in fact used to
- Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover 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 festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedies and, from 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 took place
- Euripides Euripides (ca. 480 BC – 406 BC) 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 (pronounced /ˈsɒfəkliːz/ Σοφοκλῆς Sophoklēs, his name was very likely pronounced /sopʰoklɛ̂ːs/; 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,
Bibliography
- Gaster, Theodor, H., Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East, Henry Schuman Publishing, New York, 1950. ISBN 0877521882.
References
- ^ Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, Cambridge : J. Smith, 1827.
- ^ 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,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,Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta (1887), page 832-833.
Categories: Ancient Greek actors | Greek stage actors | History of theatre | 6th-century BC Greek people | Comic poets
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