Marc Haefele reviews The Art of Ancient Greek Theatre at the Getty Villa

Greek Drama Kings at the Getty Villa
By Marc Haefele

Many Angelenos  felt challenged by this year's LA Opera Ring Cycle of some 15 hours of music drama stretched over four nights.  Dial back 2,400 years, though, and imagine yourself at the  Athens spring drama festival -- each day beginning with hours of poetry readings and chanting circle dancing, surmounted by four 90-minute tragedies or comedies and a cartoon-like Satyr play. Then an all-night hard-drinking discussion of the dramas -- and other deep subjects -- called a symposium. Five entire days of this, every year.

Now that's dedication to an art form.

(This is not the severed head of an ancient drama critic. It's a "fragmentary relief with an actor holding a mask," c 350 BC, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, photo by HR Goette.)

Only a tiny fraction of all ancient Greek tragedy and an even smaller amount of Greek comedy are left to us today. Yet, their influences remain enormous, all the way from the Oedipus Complex to Adam Sandler. The Greeks were the past masters both of what makes us think, and what makes us laugh. Now the folks at the Getty have given us a show, The Art of Ancient Greek Theatre, that shows us how all this wonderful drama began and flourished. Curated by Mary Louise Hart, it's at the Getty Villa until January 3.

Amazingly, the history is mostly told in terms of pots -- wonderful ancient vessels painted with realistically rendered scenes from the old plays we have ... and many that are lost. Kraters, amphoras, and wine coolers showing tragic scenes like Oedipus finally realizing his wife is his mom, or Orestes stabbing his mother in revenge for the killing of his father, Agamemnon. And comic scenes from plays we don't even know -- like this one of Jupiter with his head caught in the ladder he's using to sneak into his lover's second story window. Or of the hatching of Helen of Troy from a giant swan's egg, much like something  from an old Mad Magazine. Other pieces show the choruses and the actors, who were celebrities in their own right, at work and at rest, and the wine god Dionysius, in whose worship all drama originated. Besides the astonishing collection of pottery, there are manuscripts, figurines and statuary illustrating the importance of the dramatic arts until the end of Classical civilization.

How did the average Greek theatergoer feel after a typical festival day -- which typically ended the following morning after an all-night drunken discussion? We've got a perfect description, from the conclusion of Plato's famous account, the "Symposium."

...There  remained only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus was only half awake, and he did not hear the beginning of the discourse; the chief thing which he remembered was Socrates compelling the other two to acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy, and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this they were constrained to assent, being drowsy, and not quite following the argument. And first of all Aristophanes dropped off, then, when the day was already dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to depart; Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum [Socrates] took a bath, and passed the day as usual. In the evening he retired to rest at his own home.

Marc Haefele covers literature and culture for KPCC's Off-Ramp, with John Rabe.