The thing that most caught my eye about Bursting the Grape was actually not the play itself, although the description of the "Warm Temperate Biome" was highly intesting, especially that the audience stood in front of a cliff. It was actually the word Maenads that caught my eye. The word itself was subtly familiar, yet I couldn't quite grasp what exactly it was.
Upon more research, I found it was a female follower of the God Dionysus. The more I researched, I found an article on Didaskalia. It had to do with the question of if women were actually on stage or not in performances at those times. Generally, it is thought that no, all women parts were played by men. But what I found was that women did in fact participate a little. A few researchers believe that some women took part in "walk across roles" or statues. Their reason for believing this is because there are painting on canvas and vaeses of performances where men are playing the leads, yet there are women (naked, of course) standing on the sides. Another reason for the belief of minor parts for women is at the end of Eumenides, Athena says,
'For may the eye of all the whole land of
Theseus come out, a glorious band
of children, women, and a troop of elder women...'
It is believed that there may have been an actual troop of women.
I found this interesting because I have always thought that back in those times, women were not at all allowed on the stage. Finding this out gave the "female actress" side of me a little smug smile!
I agree with you the idea of the biome is incredibly fascinating; It's hard to imagine what an environment like that can do to enhance or hinder a performance for the actors and how it would affect the audience as well.
ReplyDeleteWOOT Feminism! Good find Sophie, I think it's great that women participated in theatre! Especially since it was such a cornerstone of the Greek culture and religion. Knowing women were able to contribute and participate is very comforting and it makes a lot of sense.