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The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy

For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to major scenes from two Greek tragedies, and suggest some general conclusions. The article must stand to some extent as a critique of the succession of books that has followed the apparently pioneering study of Oliver Taplin, none of which has made any substantial or sustained attempt to indicate where actors might have acted in the performance of Greek tragedy, though most, if not all, have been prepared to discard the concept of a raised ‘stage’ behind the orchestra. Hippolytus (428 BC) is the earliest of the surviving plays of Euripides to involve three speaking actors in one scene. Both Alcestis (438 BC and Medea (431 BC almost certainly require three actors to be performed with any fluency, but surprisingly present their action largely through dialogue and confrontation — surprisingly, perhaps, because at least since 458 BC and the performance of the Oresteia it is clear that three actors were available to any playwright.