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The Origins Of Drama And Theatre

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Ali Truax
Shelley Graff and Michael Smyth
Senior Project - Background Paper 1
28 June 2014
The Origins of Drama and Theatre Theatre is an art that transcends time and builds a new world for the audience atop the stage. A play is defined as “a dramatic composition” or “the stage representation of an action or story” (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary). This refers to drama being performed live by actors on a stage. Ancient Greece is accredited to inventing theatre and drama. In Greece during that time, at the height of popularity, were the stories of the well known flawed heroes and their journeys.

Ancient Greece Comedy was a popular type of play in Ancient Greece, only second to Tragedy. These types were described in many details in Poetics, by Aristotle. He expressed that a comedy is “an imitation of inferior people - not, however, with respect to every kind of defect: the laughable is a species of what is disgraceful. The laughable is an error or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction” (Aristotle 9). In plainer words, Aristotle is saying that as long as no one becomes hurt, it can be funny, and that everyday misfortune is, or can be humorous. Comedies are also plays that deal with common folk, and common events. (Simpson). Tragedy is almost the exact opposite. Tragedy comes from the word “tragoidia,” which means “goat song.” In Ancient Greece, the goat was an animal that was widely associated with Dionysus (Powell 68). Tragedy is, according to Aristotle, “an

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