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Question
#16864. JodiB
asks:
What was the early Greeks' name for their first plays?
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fosse4
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Like Senior Moments I haven't found a definitive answer but the main stage of the theatre was called the Orchestra (where the chorus acted) - above which was a balcony on which the main players played their parts.
Feb 27 02, 4:16 PM
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Stevo
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Like the others, I am not absolutely sure, but you need to remember that what we think of as plays started off as competitions, mainly of poetry and comprising Prose, Lyrics and Dancing. I have seen the word 'Tetralogia' used in this context, so it may be what you are looking for. The word theater comes from Greek and means to view. All of the lines in the plays were written in a form of poetry and were mainly comedies or tragedies. (N.B. Plays dealing with tragedy were started in the 6th century by a man named Thespis, from whom we get the word 'thespian.') A tragedy began with the proagon (a ceremony explaining the subjects of the plays,) followed by the entrance of the chorus onto the orchestra singing an ode, called Parodos. The chorus sang between the spoken parts of the play other songs called Stassima in ensemble or divided into two groups (Hemechoria). There were other songs performed by one actor (Monodia) or two (Diodia). Parodos, stassima, monodies and diodies composed the lyric part of tragedy. The prose began with Prologos, the part before the entrance of the chorus and the plot developed with the Epeissodes and finished with the Exodus.
Feb 28 02, 3:36 AM
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