Athenian Tragedy part 2

How were these plays performed?

Attic drama is always part of a religious festival.
Tragedy performed at the City Dionysia (annual festival, March/April)
- procession, followed by five days of competition of choral poetry, tragedy and comedy.

Three days of tragedy competition between three poets and their choregoi (financial backers).
Each poet provided three tragedies and a satyr play, which would be performed during one day.
The three tragedies could form a trilogy (thematically connected plays – e.g. Aischylos’ Oresteia: Agamemnon, Libation bearers, Eumenides - 458 BC), but they did not have to be connected.
The satyr play was shorter, and less serious: usually showed a mythical story with gods in a comical situation, chorus dressed as satyrs. Unlike comedy it adhered more closely to the form of tragedy. None completely preserved. Best preserved example: Sophokles, Ichneutai (the Tracking Satyrs).

The drama competition is between the poets, who wrote the plays, trained the actors and chorus (which took months) and perhaps even sometimes acted in their plays.

The Choregos was the man who paid for the production. A choregia was a liturgy (just as the trierarchy) – wealthy men were obliged to take on this function.

Paying for plays was very expensive – pay for the chorus, expensive lavish costumes (purple, gold) and decorations of the stage.

Choregoi whose plays won set up monuments only one survives:


The monument of Lysikrates in Athens, probably set up in 335 BC.