Opsis ὄψις is the Greek word for spectacle

Spectacle

In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view,...

 in the theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and performance

Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

. Its first use has been traced back to Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

's Poetics

Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...

. It is now taken up by theatre critics, historians, and theorists to describe the mise en scène

Mise en scène

Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...

 of a performance or theatrical event.

Origins

Opsis comes from the ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 for "appearance, sight, view" .”. The English word optic

Optic

Optic may mean:* optic, a British term for a device for dispensing fixed amounts of alcoholic spirits* Optics, the study of the behavior and properties of light* An optical element or component, such as a lens, prism, or mirror...

 is derived from this word.

Aristotle and the Greeks

Aristotle's use of the term opsis, as Marvin Carlson points out, are the "final element of tragedy" as outlined by Aristotle, but "receive no further consideration". Aristotle discusses opsis in book 6 of the poetics, but only goes as far as to suggest that "spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet" .

Contemporary Theatre Theory

In Theories of the Theatre by Marvin Carlson, the word opsis is replaced with the English equivalent "spectacle," but gives opsis/spectacle as much focus as Aristotle does in the Poetics; however, in Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis Opsis is listed in the "terms" section, and defined as:

that which is visible, offered to the [gaze], hence its connections with the notions of spectacle and performance. In Aristotle's Poetics, spectacle is one of the six constituent parts of tragedy, but ranks below others considered to be more essential ... The place in theatre history assigned subsequently to the opsis, to what we would now call the [mise-en-scene], determined the mode of transmission and the overall meaning of the performance. Opsis is a spectific feature of the performing arts.

J. Michael Walton, in The Greek Sense of Theatre: Tragedy Reviewed, challenges the traditional assumptions about Ancient Greek theatre. He states that “the visual aspect of the Greek theatre has for so long taken second place to the spoken word...it is still the common belief that what was said in the Greek tragedies was more important than what was seen.” Walton's thesis suggests that Ancient theatre lacks evidence of original productions, but that the written text, in comparison, is more accessible, and as a result, has caused Ancient theatre critics to relegate spectacle/mise-en-sene/opsis to less important aspects of theatre than the spoken word.

Ronald W. Vince, suggests that while it may

seem logical simply to recognize opsis as stage spectacle or the mise-en-scene and so include it -- if anywhere -- in the vocabulary of performance theory. But there is implied even in Aristotle's use of the term a possible interpretation which would link opsis with the art of writing plays as well as with the art of staging them. .

Further reading

Modern Mask http://modernmask.org/issue_iv/modernmask_theatre/opsis.html

Gregory Michael Sifakis, Aristotle on the Function of Tragic Poetry