Greek Theater - It's a Tragedy

Parados - the chorus makes its first entrance and gives perspective on what the audience had learned in the prologue. The parodoi are distinguished from the entrances to the stage from the skene, or stage building.

Episode - the counterpart of the modern act or scene, in which the plot is developed through action and dialogue between the actors, with the chorus sometimes playing a minor role. There are several episodes in Greek theater (typically 3-5) in which one or two actors interact with the chorus. They are, at least in part, sung or chanted. Speeches and dialogue are typically iambic hexameter: six iambs (short-long) per line, but rhythmic anapests are also common

Stasimon - a choral ode following each episode in which the chorus responds to and interprets the preceding dialogue. A stasimon is composed of strophes and antistrophes and performed by the chorus in the orchestra.

Aristotle determines that tragedy, like all poetry, is a kind of imitation (mimesis), but adds that it has a serious purpose and used direct action rather than narrative to achieve its ends. He says that poetic mimesis is imitatiion of things as they could be, not as they are -- i.e. of universals and ideals -- thus poetry is a more philosophical and exalted medium than history, which merely records what has actually happened.

The aim of tragedy, Aristotle writes, is to bring about a "catharsis" to the spectators. This catharsis arouses the sensations of pity and fear and purges them of these emotions so that they leave the theatre feeling cleansed and uplifted, with a heightened understanding of the ways of gods and men. This catharsis is brought about by witnessing some disastrous and moving change in the fotunes of the drama's protagonist.

Hamartia - error or frailty that brings about protagonist's misfortune.

Tragic flaw - excess of pride, ambition, passion,or some other character trait that leads directly to disaster. It is a literary device that can be defined as a trait in a character leading to his downfall, and the character is often the hero of the literary piece.

Hubris - overweening pride. Greek hybris, in ancient Athens, was defined as the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade. The word’s connotation changed over time, and hubris came to be defined as overweening presumption that leads a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos.

Catharsis - purgation of the emotions of pity and fear. Catharsis represented the the purification of the emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art. In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator. ... Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader.

Peripeteia -a reversal, the point when the hero's fortunes turn in an unexpected direction. An action performed by a character that has the opposite of its intended effect, e.g. the messenger's attampts to relieve Oedipus's anxieties about his relationship to his father and mother.

Anagnorisis - recognition. e.g. Oedipus discovers the terrible truth that he has killed his father and married his mother. In a literary work, the startling discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge. It is discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as an essential part of the plot of a tragedy, although anagnorisis occurs in comedy, epic, and, at a later date, the novel as well. Anagnorisis usually involves revelation of the true identity of persons previously unknown, as when a father recognizes a stranger as his son, or vice versa. One of the finest occurs in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King when a messenger reveals to Oedipus his true birth, and Oedipus recognizes his wife Jocasta as his mother, the man he slew at the crossroads as his father, and himself as the unnatural sinner who brought misfortune on Thebes.

Orchestra - the circular area at ground level which was enclosed on three sides by the U-shaped theatron. The word Orchestra stems from the Greek orchēstra, which was located in front of the proscenium in which the dancers and instrumentalists performed.

Thymele - an altar to Dionysus located in the center of the orchestra. Sacrifices to Dionysus were made on the thymele it was sometimes used as a stage prop during plays.

A Skene was a stage building that served as a dressing room. Skene, (from Greek skēnē, “scene-building”), was originally a hut for the changing of masks and costumes but eventually, additionally, became the background before which the drama was enacted.

Strophe is a poetic term originally referring to the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. The term has been extended to also mean a structural division of a poem containing stanzas of varying line length.

Antistrophe, in Greek lyric odes, the second part of the traditional three-part structure. The antistrophe followed the strophe and preceded the epode. In the choral odes of Greek drama each of these parts corresponded to a specific movement of the chorus as it performed that part. During the strophe the chorus moved from right to left on the stage; during the antistrophe it moved from left to right.

In the theatre of ancient Greece, the chorêgos was a wealthy Athenian citizen who assumed the public duty, or choregiai, of financing the preparation for the chorus and other aspects of dramatic production that were not paid for by the government of the polis or city-state.

A Chorus, also referred to as a Greek chorus, in the context of Ancient Greek tragedy, comedy, satyr plays, and modern works inspired by them, is a homogeneous, non-individualised group of performers, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action.