For Early Democracy, Theater Was a Catalyst

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/world/europe/greece-democracy-theater.html

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This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which concluded last week in the Greek capital.

In the Sophocles play “Antigone,” King Creon, after ordering the execution of his niece for betraying him, asks, “Am I to rule for others, or myself?”

Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s lover, in his shock and grief, replies, “A State for one man is no State at all.”

This simple exchange, written around 441 B.C., demonstrates how one character came to challenge the autocracy of another in early Greek theater, and how Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides nurtured the idea of fairness and representation for all during the brief two centuries of Athenian democracy.

Their plays, among the 32 that survive from what are thought to be thousands from this era among many writers, are the earliest representations of how democracy helped change Western civilization.

The idea of democracy was nurtured in the outdoor amphitheaters that dotted the hillsides throughout the many city-states of ancient Greece. But whereas Athenian democracy ended, as did the writings of these three tragedians and famous comic writers like Aristophanes, the seeds were planted, and these works rarely went out of favor in the following centuries and were said to have been quoted regularly, even among the tyrants who crushed Athens, including Alexander the Great.

“The people of ancient Athens really understood the importance of theater as a shaper of the mind and soul,” said Katerina Evangelatos, the artistic director of the annual Athens Epidaurus Festival of music and theater, which completed its season Sept. 10 at an open-air amphitheater at the foot of the Acropolis.

“Comedies were of high importance because they criticized high-standing people in Athens, which really took democracy a step forward. This kind of criticism was not only allowed, it was expected.”

The genesis of theater, like most everything in ancient Greece, was under the auspices of the Gods. Dionysus was the god closely associated with theater, as well as wine and revelry, and many historians believe theater evolved from the choral songs that honored him.

Theater had become a way to unite the warring factions of ancient Greece — the very same divisions that would undo democracy in Athens after Sparta, with its Persian allies, conquered Athens in the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century B.C.

But is theater a democratic invention? Scholars have debated it for centuries. Many believe Greek tragedies were highly politicized and written for the very issue of debate. But it was also a commercial undertaking. The three great Greek tragedians competed for prizes and popularity at the annual Dionysia Festival at the Theatre of Dionysus at the foot of the Acropolis, which is no longer used given its fragile state (the nearby Odeon of Herodes Atticus, built in the second century A.D. after the Romans invaded, is one of the main venues of the Athens-Epidaurus Festival).

Greek theater evolved as democracy evolved, with women and slaves eventually being allowed to attend performances, and admission was often free for those who could not afford it. And the famous Greek chorus became the voice of interpretation and commentary to the story playing out onstage with plot lines of gods mingling with their mortal counterparts, all of them often flawed and vulnerable.

“The playwrights took on the eternal questions of life, ethics, war, peace, wealth, even women’s issues,” said Ms. Evangelatos, who is also a theater and opera director. “It’s a pity we have so few texts left. These texts and the ideas behind them are a lighthouse for us. They’re always there to remind us of how democracy evolved.”

Some in the contemporary world of Greek theater note the relevance of those ideas today. Elli Papakonstantinou, a director and activist known for her avant-garde interpretations of ancient Greek plays, recently staged “Eros,” a staged multimedia version of “Symposium” by Plato. But real life and theater combined in a way she never could have imagined.

Six Ukrainian musicians had been chosen to join an international cast in late 2021 when “Eros” was conceived. But they were unable to leave their country when war with Russia broke out in February.

Then one night in April, she received a phone call that the musicians and two colleagues had fled Ukraine and were driving through Hungary on their way to Athens. They joined the cast of “Eros,” which premiered in Rotterdam in May and was staged in Athens in June, and will tour to the Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theater in Israel in October, then to Genoa, Italy, before embarking on an international tour (dates and countries to be determined).

But the journey that “Eros” has taken, with its series of monologues honoring the God of love against the backdrop of an uncertain world, became a moment of art imitating life.

“They escaped the war, and their journey became a physical testimony to what we were portraying onstage,” Ms. Evangelatos said. “I’ve never experienced anything quite like this.”

The experience, she said, felt like it mirrored how tenuous life must have been for ancient Athenians as they grappled with the ever-present threat of war and the risk of losing their democracy.

“Humanity always needs to remember the possibility of war to appreciate peace, because the structure was there for the different tribes of Athens to coexist harmoniously, but it was very brief,” Ms. Papakonstantinou said. “Sophocles’ plays, for example, are all about the fear of civil war. The threat was always there, even though it was a democracy. Not unlike what the Ukrainians are experiencing now.”

Ms. Papakonstantinou said that despite the parallels between the present day and ancient Greek democracy, what’s changed is the way it is expressed. Ancient Greek theaters were physical spaces where debate and activism were nurtured, but the democratic process has shifted in the past two decades, she said.

“We have real freedoms in the West, but many of our liberties now exclude the physicality of the community because we are now all living inside the internet,” she said. “We no longer gather in physical squares. We use the word democracy, but what is it? It’s a meta democracy.”

But in whatever way democracy evolved over the centuries, its theater roots some 2,500 years ago show the full spectrum of how it — and theater — continues to influence the world.

“Playwrights like Aristophanes were there to make fun of the rulers but also to make our hearts bleed about the tragedy of humankind,” Ms. Evangelatos said. “They were criticizing people and shaping human thought at the same time. That is democracy at work.”