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Drama was an important literary form in the classical era. Theater was popular ancient Greece. I'm not sure about its origins. Some of these plays have survived to the modern age, but tragically many Greek plays are lost. We have tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from the Greek period. Probably the most famous of these is "Oedipus Rex" (Oedipus the King)--a tragedy about a royal figure who unwittingly killed his own father and committed incest with his mother, then put his own eyes out when he learned of the horrors he had committed. Aristotle wrote a famous critical work, entitled The Poetics, in which he holds up the "Oedipus Rex" of Sophocles as the ideal tragedy, the example to be imitated. Greek dramatists competed with each other in play-writing contests, the winner being highly honored. The plays were often performed at a pagan festival such as the Feast Day of Dionysus. The actors performed using large masks through which they spoke to outdoor audiences seated, usually, in amphitheatres with seats in a semicircle and rising row by row (as in a modern stadium). The masks (in Latin referred to as "personae") functioned as megaphones as well as helping audiences to distinguish characters from each other. Hence our modern term, "Dramatis Personae" (meaning the list of characters in a play), derives from the use of actors using masks during performance. Greek theater faced a number of technical problems, especially the challenge of sound and light. The Greeks thus performed their dramas outdoors in specially designed ampitheaters with semi-circular tiered seating. As far as I know, children were very little involved in Greek drama.
I'm not sure about the origins of drama in ancient Greece.
Drama was an important literary form in the classical era. Theater was popular ancient Greece.
I assume that Atlens had the greatest tradition of drama among the various city states, but I have very little information on the dramatic tradition in other city states. I think most of the famous Greek plays were performed in Athens. But there were also theatres in other parts of Greece as well. Athens was noted for its cultural flourishing and art and literature were supported by the state. We have little information about other important Greel city states.
Children often appear in Greek tragedy. When they do, they are almost always victims. Their characters are mute, although they may well have uttered cries or made other sounds. Even in the commedies they are often used for dramatic affect.
Some of the ancient Greek plays have survived to the modern age, but tragically many Greek plays are lost. We know this because there are references to plays in Greek writing that no longer exist. Also the relatively small number of plays suggests that a great deal has been lost. Others have survived as only fragments. What has survived testifies to the originality and richness of Greek drama. We have tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from the Greek period. We note children in both the tragedies and commedies. Their roles tend to be fairly, but in several cases are central to the dramatic story.
In the "Acharnians", a father from Megara, a city suffering from famine because of an Athenian blockade, brings his two small daughters to sell, presumably as prostitutes. He pretends that he is selling piglets, and the girls make appropriate oinks, but the humor of the scene is that the potential purchaser knows exactly what the father is offering for sale and why.
In the Ajax of Sophocles, Tecmessa uses her son by the hero to attempt to persuade him.
In the "Hercules" and in "The Children of Hercules" of Euripides, we see the children of Megara and Hercules before the hero is set mad and kills them.
In the "Lysistrata", Kinesias, the husband of Myrrhine, one of the women in the play, brings their infant son with him in an attempt to play upon her sympathy, rather like the use of children in Greek tragedy. In later Greek comedy the only children that occur are infants who cry but do not speak.
"Medea" by Euripides is one of the besk known Greek plays. The two sons of Medea are a good example of how Greek dramatists oftem used them as victims for tragic affect.
Probably the most famous Greek plays is "Oedipus Rex" (Oedipus the King)--a tragedy about a royal figure who unwittingly killed his own father and committed incest with his mother, then put his own eyes out when he learned of the horrors he had committed. Aristotle wrote a famous critical work, entitled The Poetics, in which he holds up the "Oedipus Rex" of Sophocles as the ideal tragedy, the example to be imitated.
One of the most interesting scenes involving a child is from a play which is no longer extant, the "Telephus" of Euripides. In it Telephus took the infant Orestes hostage and threatened to kill him if the Greeks did not grant his request. Telephus seems to have held the boy in his arms with a knife at his throat.
Another child victim is Astyanax in "The Trojan Women". He is taken from his mother’s arms in order to be thrown from a tower to his death.
Children appear in the comedy of Aristophanes. There is a scene in "The Wasps" in which a group of young boys leads their fathers through the city and light their way with lamps. In this case, the fathers are impatient and cantankerous, and the boys finally abandon them. These boys have developed speaking parts.
Greek dramatists competed with each other in play-writing contests, the winner being highly honored.
The plays were often performed at a pagan festival such as the Feast Day of Dionysus. The actors performed using
large masks through which they spoke to outdoor audiences seated, usually, in amphitheatres with seats in a semicircle and rising row by row (as in a modern stadium). The masks (in Latin referred to as "personae") functioned as megaphones as well as helping audiences to
distinguish characters from each other. Hence our modern term, "Dramatis Personae" (meaning the list of characters in a play), derives from the use of actors using masks during performance. Greek theatrical productions faced a number of technical problems, especially the challenge of sound and light. The Greeks thus performed their dramas outdoors in specially designed ampitheaters with semi-circular tiered seating. This was necessary because lighting would have been a problem inside a building. The semicircular arrangement of course ided in both viewing the stasge and in the acoustics. Also it would have required a huge construction to accomodate a large audience. As far as I know, children were very little involved in Greek drama.
The question arises as to who performed the roles of children of both sexes. We do not know how the children in Greek plays were depicted in the Greek theater, or by whom. Women were portrayed by men or perhaps smaller men or boys, their gender indicated by the color of the masks used. We do not know if boys actually played the parts of children. Scholars apparently know almost nothing about the actors who represented these children on the stage. Women and girls did not appear at all on the stage in the ancient world. If children acted at all in these plays, they would have been boys or men. Almost certainly, small boys (say, aged 8 or 10) did not appear on the stage. Boy actors were probably teenagers.
We know very little about the actors in classical drama. We do know that only males performed on the Greek and Roman stage. This means that men played the female roles. We are guessing that men of small stature may have been chosen for these roles, but we do not know this for a fact. The association of actors with loose living (which seems to be constasnt throughout history) is is one of the
reasons that women were not allowed to perform, but of course theatre was a public affair, and women, generally speaking, were thought of mainly as mothers, home-makers, and persons who should not make any
display of themselves in public. Actors needed strong, loud voices to be heard as there no electical amplification. The ideal of a woman's voice was quiet, reserved, and the opposite of talkative or garrulous. So acting was totally unsuitable for a woman, being too immodest and loud-speaking.
Age may have also been addressed through footwear. Adult actors (playing adult men and women) would have worn shoes that raised their stature considerably so that they would have looked quite a bit taller and larger from a distance. The costumes were designed to make them look like very big human beings in order to emphasize their grandeur and importance (especially in the tragedies). When children were portrayed, the actors probably wore shoes that didn't increase their height and costumes that didn't exaggerate their actual sizes so that they would look smaller in comparison to adults. Anyway, this is what classical scholars think was the case. The actual evidence, however, is rather scanty.
I thought that another complication here is that actors did not mouth the dialog lines ehich were voiced by actors off stage. A reader tells me that this is incorrect, the voices were on stage, not spoken off stage. The Greek actors actually spoke through their masks which were arranged so as to amplify the sound like a megaphone.
We also know little about these individuals and how differences in voices (men, women, and children were handled.) Here there was not such a poblem with children because they were largely mute in Greek drama. Women did, however, have lines and in many cases important lines. Greek drama was very stylized and conventional, and there was probably not much attempt to depict differences in pitch and timbre as these related to gender or age. The voices were not intended to imitate the voices of a woman, man, or child naturalistically.
Nor do we know much the status of the actors. We do not know, for example, if some may have even been slaves. A reader writes, "Actors were not exactly lower class, but their profession, being confined only to men and older boys, had a certain reputation for loose living." I think it is fair to say that actors in Greek drama had none of the high status associated with the dramatists then or modern actors. If they did, surely that would be reflected some where in the surviving historical record. (There are referebces to notable Roman actors, but we know of none to Greek actors.) We do not even know whether slaves were used as actors. The masks probably prevented actors from becoming major figures.
I'm not sure about audiences. I think some women may have attended the theatre, but I suspect that the audiences were dominantly made up of adult men.
In a few cases we have representations on Greek vases of famous scenes from Greek tragedy in which the background of the vase shows the sort of stage set that we would associate with the Greek theater. In particular, such a vase shows the scene of Medea killing her two sons. The background of the vase would indicate that the painter has in mind a dramatic production rather than just the story of the myth. As usual for ancient art, when children are represented in such images they tend to be portrayed not as real children but as miniature adults.
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