Euripides’ Medea was first performed in at the City Dionysia Festival in Athens in 431BC, nearly 2,500 years ago.
What would it have been like to have attended the original production? It’s difficult to know for sure. There is not enough historical evidence to present a definitive picture and scholars argue over the exact details. There is, however, one thing we can know for sure. The experience of watching a play in the theatre in ancient Greece was very different from watching a play in a theatre today.
Today you can go to the theatre almost any night of the week. In ancient Athens, plays were only performed during late winter and early spring. This may have been because of the hot Greek climate. The theatres were outdoors and the plays were performed in daylight. The actors wore heavy costumes and masks, and performing in the Greek theatre required strenuous physical and vocal exertion, which would have been impractical in hot weather. Each play was usually only ever performed once.
Greek theatres were huge. The theatre of Dionysus in Athens could hold 15,000 spectators. The audience sat on seats carved out of a hillside. These seats encircled a round playing area called the orchestra where the chorus performed. At the back of the orchestra was the skene. This was a stone building, a hut or tent that acted as a dressing room and was where the actors made their entrances from and their exits to. The actors performed in front of the skene, perhaps on a raised platform. On either side of the orchestra were the parados, two stone passage ways through which the chorus made its entrance and exit. There was some form of stage machinery that facilitated special effects – such as the entrance of a god or Medea’s escape in Helius’ chariot – but we are unsure as to exactly what this machinery was or how it worked.
Plays were performed as part of religious festivals, such as the City Dionysia. Priests sat on the front row of the theatre in throne-like seats. The festival lasted seven days and celebrated the beginning of spring. Alongside the performances of the plays, there were grand processions, animal sacrifices, good citizens were honoured and slaves were freed. The event may have been a religious one, but the atmosphere was far from solemn. Greek audiences were talkative and unruly. If they disliked a play, they would drum their heels on their benches, jeer loudly and throw fruit.
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