Why was the theater in ancient Greeks important in their culture?

Answer 1

First off, I'd like to challenge the implicite assumtion that theater was important in greek culture, or at least that it was more important to greek culture than any other art form in ancient Greece (such as sculpture, music, poetry, and literature, to mention some we today believe existed).

I'll admit I studied theater science almost two decades ago, and I have not studied either history or art, so my point of view will be limited to theater history, and theater in general here. (With a lot of assumtions, and a semester of psychology in the back pack ;o)

However, looking at the functions of theater in ancient greece (or any culture) there are a few things that stands out from other forms of art. Theater is one of only a few art forms that are "live". When you watch it anything can happen, or go wrong, and in a small sense it does; every performance is unique. You can't put down a theater performance and come back to it later, or pause it, or rewind it. It happens right now, and every time you blink you miss some detail! It's immediate in a way literature, prose or even film, can never be.

Live music and dance are other forms of art (present in ancient greece) that share this quality.

In ancient greece there was also an element of religion in theater. Theater was not a ritual, and I don't think it's believed theater even came from ritual - rather that it grew out of the tratidion of travelling "bards" or storytellers whose visits gradually transformed into a more elaborate stage performance (perhaps two of those guys came to the same village at the same time and decided to battle it out "8-mile style" and then a few other guys joined, and the local choire decided to step in and voila - theater? - on possible religious sources of theater; I'm unclear where these bards/storytellers came from, perhaps they got kicked out of the local monestary, but I'm not privy to that information.)

However, many greek plays contains religious elements. The crime of showing hubris (arrogance towards the gods) being one of the more common themes. In a socio-political sense these themes could be viewed as a "power tool", a way to instill and maintain obedience to the gods/authority. Or you'll end up killing your father and screwing your mother, like Oedipus. Talk about threatening! ;o)

Theater isn't the only art from where religion is a theme. Odysseus/Ulysses (epos) got his ten year trip in part as revenge for having blinded the cyclops Polyphemus, son of Poseidon (god of the sea). (However, the return to Ithaca, Odysseus home, is delayed by a lot of other things as well, such as human foolishness, wine and sex, etc).

Theater also share elements with story telling art, such as fulfulling psychological needs in the audience; the opportunity to look into the psyche of other people, or just sympathize with them.

The catharsis effect is one of the psychological effects that is believed to be caused by watching drama. (However, modern psychology questions if such an effect exists or not). The term "catharsis" comes from Greek.

This effect could be described as a cleansing of the air or purging of "unhealthy" energies. Some other activities for reaching catharsis might be primal screaming, or jogging "it" off. One might assume this cleansing was believed by the ancient greeks, to be good for your health.

In theater this effect could be described as fearing for the characters when the drama comes to a closure - will Medea get away from Jason? (Or, in reverse, will Jason be able to revenge the death of his children?), then once it's over exhaling and shaking it off, feeling good about only having to deal with everyday problems many times removed from such problems as having killed your father, bedded your mother, etc.

There are psychological differences between theater, prose, songs, and other story telling arts. For instance, the effect of reading a book (inventing settings, characters, sounds etc in your head), being different from the effect of watching a live theater performance (seeing setting, character, sounds etc made flesh and blod on stage).

One might think theater made it possible for the lowly masses to get some culture, but as far as we know today theater performances were only for free citizens of greece (excluding women, slaves, and most likely children). Then again, we might assume not every greek citizen knew how read, or read well enough to battle through the Illiad or something similar, so theater might have appealed to a boader audience. Yet again, so would have music and other verbal art froms, and sculpture or painting would have been just as accessible to the illiterate as to the literate.

Many greek plays contain universal elements we can all relate to, both psychologically and socially, but greek theater share that with myths, folk tales, even modern Fairy Tales (and of course they share it with prose, music, film and a lot of other art forms as well).

Greek theater was among the very first (today known and preserved) samples of stories performed on a stage in front of an audience, and there is little doubt greek theater has made a lasting impression on other cultures (modern as well as ancient), perhaps ancient greece even invented theater.

In essence, I'd say theater was no more or no less important to greek culture than any other form of art present in ancient greece. Culture, however, was important in greece, and the culture of ancience greece is obviously important today.