The Mystery of Ancient Greek Theatre by Molly

The Mystery of Ancient Greek Theatre by Molly - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

There are so many historical figures that I would love to talk with and learn about on a personal level. From Margaret Sanger to Cleopatra there are so many influential people that I would love to even just shake hands with. However if I could have dinner with just one historical figure I would want to dine with Euripides. A playwright in the 5th century B.C., Euripides is still prominent and important today. Of all the playwrights from that time period only Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Aristrophanes have work that survived the test of time. Of all the plays I have ever read Euripides’ Medea is my favorite. He was a genius and I really appreciate his writing style and strong female characters.
Ancient Greek theatre is still studied at length today and it is something I have been interested in for a long time. Unfortunately, because over two thousand years have passed there are virtually no known facts about Ancient Greek theatre. Everything is just conjecture, nothing is known for sure. All that survived the time period were a handful of plays and some physical aspects of the theaters. It would be amazing to talk to Euripides because he was actually there in the time period and actively participating in the theatre.
If I could eat dinner with Euripides and have the opportunity to talk to him about the theatre of Ancient Greece I could learn so much for the theatre community. Finally there would be solid answers, we would know if women were allowed to attend the theatre and what the costumes actually looked like. It is so hard to be interested in a topic that you can’t be sure about. Everything I’ve learned about Ancient Greek theatre is just the ideas of scholars who believe they know what was happening thousands of years ago. Talking to Euripides would be so satisfying not just for me but also for everyone who has studied theatre. Ancient Greek theatre was so influential on the development of theatre; it would be amazing to know more about the foundation of modern Western theatre.
I would want to know how the plays were actually performed, was it three actors wearing different masks like we assume or was it different? I want to know so many things, for example, how many people were actually in the chorus? Academics guess that the number of people in the chorus could have been anywhere from 12 to 50. That is a huge range, and I want to know what the actual number was. There are just so many questions that I have and there are no definite answers, it is infuriating. We have no way of knowing how the shows were staged or performed because there are no stage directions in the original scripts. Euripides did not need to write stage directions into his plays because along with writing the plays he also directed and acted in them. He simply would have told the actors what he wanted so there was no need to write it down. However, because he didn’t write the stage directions down we now have nothing to go off of but the dialogue spoken by the characters.
The first thing I would ask him about at our dinner would be my favorite play, Medea. I want to know everything about that play, from the original stage directions to the writing process behind it. My dream is to one day play Medea in a big stage production, if I could get acting and character tips from the playwright my life would be complete.
Theatre is my life and I love learning about it as much as I can. The knowledge that I could gain from Euripides is immense. There isn’t another historical figure I can think of that would benefit the theatre community and myself as well as Euripides could.