Plays were written for a yearly festival, in honor of the god Dionysus, and were either Comedies or Tragedies.
All the actors were male, and they all played multiple roles, so a mask was used to show the change in character or mood.
Therefore the two masks are now used as the symbol for theatre. The Greeks invented the epic and lyric forms and used them skillfully. They also invented drama and produced masterpieces that are still deemed as dramas crowning achievement.
Attendance at the festival performances was regarded as an act of worship. Performances were held in the great open-air theater of Dionysus in Athens. All of the greatest poets competed for the prizes offered for the best plays.
Of the hundreds of dramas written and performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors have survived: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The earliest of the three was Aeschylus, who was born in 525 BC. He wrote between 70 and 90 plays, of which......

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Title: Ancient Greek Theater
Approximate Word Count: 661
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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