Culture and Nuclear Fission. When the ancient actor stepped out of the chorus to comment on the action it was the equivalent of cultural nuclear fission. Authority responded, first with regulation and then with violence.
What have been the consequences for the arts of active participation in that moment of cultural nuclear fission, when culture first collided with power? In our age of digital liquidity, when a story, fable or lie, is transmitted around the globe in milliseconds, we are going to slow down a bit here and take time to consider a tale from the ancient world. In this way, I am hoping we might be able to face our sense of ‘pre-apocalyptic survivalism’ historically - and even consider how social solidarity (remember that?) could lead us towards a sense of hope and a renewed belief in ourselves as humanist innovators. So here is the tale. Once upon a time…
Thespis - the actor/character
There is little of more significance in the history of culture than the moment we began to write things down. The Greeks learned to write sometime after 700BC when they borrowed the alphabet from their Near Eastern Phoenician neighbours and adopted it to their own use.
Few facts about Greek theatre history can be clearly established but tradition credits the actor Thespis with the innovation of drama. Aristotle2 states that tragedy emerged out of improvisations by the leaders of the dithyrambs – a hymn sung and danced by a group in honour of Dionysus. It seems that the actor Thespis was key to that innovation in 534BC and consisted of him or someone adding a prologue and impersonating a character (in other words ‘acting’) to what had been a narrative previously only sung and danced by a chorus and its leader.
Let’s imagine that moment, when Thespis stepped out of the chorus and started to comment, introduce and lead debate, as the ancient equivalent of nuclear fission - the reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei and releases a very large amount of energy.
The word atom, is also part of this tale. It is derived from the ancient Greek word atomos, which means "uncuttable". But now we know the atom can be cut, split into electrons, proton and neutrons. We know too that electrons are elementary particles with no internal structure, while protons and neutrons are composite particles composed of elementary particles called quarks. Yet, for the sake of our story, let’s agree that the equivalent of these early 20th century discoveries in atomic physics happened in the performing arts 2300 years ago – with the splitting of the chorus and the emergence of the actor who played a character. The big bang of the dithyramb, and the emergence of the actor who depends not on song and dance but the spoken word and written texts, quickly led to drama and its composite particles - tragedy and comedy.
If writing was introduced to the Greek world sometime after 700BC then written records relating to performative activities such as theatre and festivals continue to be rare until that date which I have already mentioned - 534BC. This purported date of the birth of drama is also the date the Athenian government is recorded as granting official sanction and financial support to theatre - when Athens apparently constituted the contest for the best tragedy presented at the City Dionysia, a major religious festival.
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