Here the spectators were once relieved of their political disagreement through the art of representation: View of the ancient amphitheater of Epidauros
Image: Interphoto
Theater was born in ancient Greece. But what is it doing there today? Shaken by a pedophilia scandal and paralyzed by party politics, it has lost its former strength.
Griechenland – the home of theatre. Here began what would change the world forever. An art form that combined the festive ritual with raising political awareness. The theater did not serve the purpose of thoughtless entertainment in its childhood days, but the strengthened sense of community in the polis. What began in the sixth century BC under the Peisistratids and, after their fall, developed into a competition between citizen choirs, was soon anchored as a recurring festival tradition in the collective consciousness of the polis of Athens. According to Plato, the main purpose of tragedy and comedy was to regenerate the mind, the organ that the Athenians (they thought) used most. According to Aristophanes, the Greek theater was primarily there to educate the citizens.
In any case, the characterization “political” must have meant something far more fundamental than what the Roman emperors later used under the rubric “bread and circuses” as a folk-psychological tactic to win the favor of the masses. The theater in Athens was “political” primarily for civic reasons. In the joint experience of a mythical or even historical subject, the contrasts and conflicts of everyday life receded a bit for a while, the Athenians involved in politics got to see the larger picture of their being and becoming, they experienced what held them together and made them extraordinary.
