Hey there. I'm Mike Rugnetta, this is Crash Course Theater, and today we're traveling to ancient Greece to uncover the origins of Western drama. Right, Dionysus?
He's… He's still hung over. My dude, this is your episode. You gotta get up!
If we believe the ritualism theory from last episode, then eons of religious or quasi-religious rituals eventually birthed drama. But how?
Well, it has to do a bunch with our grape-loving friend over here. By the 6th century BCE, Dionysus had become a very popular God in Greece, especially among the ladies.
According to some maybe true, maybe not reports, women participated in a ritual where they'd run through the countryside, tear apart some animals, and then, come home. It's fun right?
And if you want to know more about it, you can check out The Bacchae by Euripides. It is great. Whether or not that happened, we do have good evidence that in the 6th century BCE, some less wild rituals celebrating Dionysus spread through Greece.
One of the most popular involved a procession from Eleuthera to Athens, where worshipers lofted a giant phallus and sang songs called dithyrambs in praise of… you know who.
And one theory about those dithyrambs actually is that eventually they evolved into theater, when singers started acting out the action instead of just singing it.
Aristotle and his followers think that sooner or later, a singer stepped out of the dithyramb chorus and started acting out individual characters. This actor was called Thespis.
Like, actually, that was his name, and that's where we get the noun thespian. According to stories, Thespis learned to switch between characters, and to enhance the effect, he got the bright idea to use masks.
