Week 4: Daily #5

5. Explain how the origins of theatre in Athens are tied to both religion and politics. Check out  this resource.

The ancient theatres in Athens were a vital part to the entertainment in Greece. Not only did they provide entertainment for Athenians, but they even tied in to religion too. Many plays that went on at the theatre usually involved gods or goddesses. The actors who would play a god or goddess were usually hung up by a crane with a harness. The type of play usually played at the theater was a tragedy. Each author even wrote the script for a tragedy in honor of the god Dionysus. It was believed that Dionysus assigned the author a chorus and actors for the play that he wrote. Ancient Greek theatre developed from ancient religious festivals in Athens and all of Greece. There is even a theatre in Athens named after Dionysus called the theatre of Dionysus.

Athenian theatres tied into politics because some of the tragedies played by the actors involved people that were known in society, like Sophocles and Euripides. Also, the people in Athens helped pay funds that would go towards the ancient Athenian theatres. These funds would help improve the theatre with new equipment and improve the overall structures of these theatres. So the democracy in Athens greatly helped to improve theatres all over Athens. Also, actors who performed well in the tragedies would become known to the audience. Then, the democracy could possibly look up to that person as a political leader and elect him to be a leader of the government. These are ways how politics tied in with the Ancient Greek theatres in Athens.