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How theatre really began

January 2, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Somewhat over two thousand years ago, in ancient times in Greece, Thespis was strolling from a performance by the Chorus of their Coral Ode, not a song, not a chant but rather a toneless mumbling of voices in unison, in his opinion.

‘Mumbling, indeed,’ thought he to himself. ‘ There must be a more interesting, more delightful ways to spend time at the theatron than all that.’

In a gloomy mood and looking for diversion, Thespis happened upon a group of his friends, sitting together under the shade of a mighty and ancient oak tree, said to have been

planted by the command of Zeus himself.

Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles were at their leisure and there were cups and a jug of wine to bring joy to the day.

They hailed him with great joy and called him to join them.

“A jug of wine is here and more than one cup for the sharing,” Aeschylus invited him.

“Tell us where you are coming from,” Sophocles asked him.

Thespis groaned, “To hear the Chorus mumble through their tiresome intonations.” 

“Ah! Rites, indeed,” Euripides exclaimed. “Do they have the rights-” putting pressure of the different word with the same sound to make his joke- “to ruin a perfectly good day with such tedium?”

His fellows laughed. 

“It’s the cloaks, the piety -” began Thespis.

“The droning of antique and demanding passages -” added Sophocles 

“And the painful hour of sitting through such dull entertainment!” declared Thespis.

The light of recognition dawned on all four at the once: “But it’s not entertainment,” they said amongst them.

“But there could be!” one exploded the idea – “It could be!” they repeated excitedly.

A boy stood by watching them. He laughed and laughed at the gentlemen suddenly so excited about – well, he didn’t know what. He began to approach them to hear better what they were saying.

One of them saw his approach and called him over. 

“Come, boy – you should be part of this.”

Another handed him a coin, saying, “Here, boy, take this to the vintner and bring us back more wine – do you know us?”

The boy nodding his “of course” laughed at the question. Everyone knew these men!

“Then he’ll know what we like – hurry there and hurry back – we have work to do!”

Soon, they collected among them reed pens, a rough ink and papyrus, keeping the boy running in the afternoon sun.

A woman from a shop brought them water, which the boy enjoyed but which they dismissed, preferring the wine. The four men were each famous poets, writers – this exercise of scratching down their thoughts with whatever tools were at hand was nothing new to them but the new writing of stories in new forms was to be new to the whole world!

Aeschylus was the first to declare a plot – of terrible pain and villainy, of thieves and those who betray the trust of the innocent. Of the gods interfering, some for good, some for mischief. The others gathered around him, cheering him on, adding their own cruel suggestions, pointing to this and that word- was it upsetting enough?

“I will take the stage to myself,” Thespis proposed, as if a sacrifice but it was a revolutionary idea – for one man to tell a tale for a spellbound audience!

“More wine!’ one of them commanded. “By Zeus, we will dazzle the world with this novelty.”

Thespis did take the stage – the first to stand individually and speak alone in clear tones to tell the sad and terrible hurt of the tale they had contrived, while his audience were fascinated devotees.

Yet, was more to come, for Aeschylus brought in a second voice and that invented exchanges between the two on stage. In the telling, they became the characters they had written. Now, they were the perpetrators of the pain in the tragic stories they had penned.

The wonders of the craft carried them and their ardent audiences away.

A third actor was added by Sophocles to stir the pot harder and create bigger elements of descension. Soon the stage seemed full of desperation and foul deeds and the audiences wept for the heroes and hissed their cruel foes until one day…

It was not the usual glad sun that saw the friends sat under the mighty oak. They were felling a little dull with the cloud overhead until the boy came to offer to buy wine. He was nearly back with his errand when he heard a terrific roar of from under the oak,

Careful not to spill his treasure, the boy hurried to the tree.

They were laughing with great hoots, laughing as if the wine could never improve their mood.

“On such a dull day as this,” said Euripides, taking the jug, “we have changed the world again. In a single moment, I re-wrote one of the lines Sophocles put down and made it funny! Now, they will laugh between the tears and we will try to know ourselves better though both!”

And that is how modern theatre came from a jug of wine under an ancient oak tree.

Happy New Year.

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