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Thespis of Icaria (present-day Dionysos, Greece
Dionysos, Greece

Dionysos is a residential suburb in northeastern Attica, Greece ? just about 23 km northeast of Athens. Dionysos is almost purely residential, but there are a few shops....
) (6th century BC) is claimed to be the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor
Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
 in a play, although the reality is undoubtedly more complex. In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first actor in addition to the chorus.

According to Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, writing nearly two centuries later, Thespis was a singer of dithyramb
Dithyramb

The dithyramb was originally an Ancient Greece hymn sung to the god Dionysus and was also a term used as an epithet of the god.. Its wild and ecstatic character was contrasted by Plutarch with that of the paean....
s (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrain
Refrain

A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in Poetry; the "chorus" of a song. Poetry fixed forms that feature refrains include the villanelle, the virelay, and the sestina....
s).






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Thespis of Icaria (present-day Dionysos, Greece
Dionysos, Greece

Dionysos is a residential suburb in northeastern Attica, Greece ? just about 23 km northeast of Athens. Dionysos is almost purely residential, but there are a few shops....
) (6th century BC) is claimed to be the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor
Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
 in a play, although the reality is undoubtedly more complex. In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first actor in addition to the chorus.

According to Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, writing nearly two centuries later, Thespis was a singer of dithyramb
Dithyramb

The dithyramb was originally an Ancient Greece hymn sung to the god Dionysus and was also a term used as an epithet of the god.. Its wild and ecstatic character was contrasted by Plutarch with that of the paean....
s (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrain
Refrain

A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in Poetry; the "chorus" of a song. Poetry fixed forms that feature refrains include the villanelle, the virelay, and the sestina....
s). Thespis supposedly introduced a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks.

This new style was called tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
, and Thespis was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, in 534 BC, competitions to find the best tragedy were instituted at the City Dionysia in Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
, and Thespis won the first documented competition.

It is implied that Thespis invented acting
Acting

Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a Fictional character and, usually, Speech communication or singing the written text or Play ....
 in the Western world
Western world

The term Western world, the West or the Occident can have multiple meanings dependent on its context . Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical circumstances....
, and that prior to his performances, no one had ever assumed the resemblance of another person for the purpose of storytelling: In fact, Thespis is the first known actor in written plays. He may thus have had a substantial role in changing the way stories were said and inventing theater as we know it today. In reverence to Thespis, actors throughout western history have been referred to as thespians (cf. International Thespian Society
International Thespian Society

The International Thespian Society is an honorary organization for high school and middle school theatre students located at more than 3,600 affiliated secondary schools across the United States, Canada, and abroad....
).

It must be stressed, however, that there is very little concrete information about Thespis and the origins of Greek theatre, and all of the above may be more legend than reality.

In theatrical myth and superstition
Superstition

Superstition is a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to supposedly irrational beliefs of others, and its precise meaning is therefore subjective....
, Thespis is said to exist now as a mischievous spirit, and when things go wrong in performances it is often blamed on his ghostly intervention. Like many superstitions, this belief ranges in different cases from being considered a humorous legend to being taken very seriously, with various charms and rituals being employed to either invite his approval or defend against him.

See also

  • Aeschylus
    Aeschylus

    Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
  • Aristophanes
    Aristophanes

    Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
  • Aristotle
    Aristotle

    Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
  • Dionysia
    Dionysia

    The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedy and, since 487 BC, Greek comedy....
  • Euripides
    Euripides

    Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
  • Phrynichus
  • Sophocles
    Sophocles

    Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....


Bibliography

  • Buckham, Philip Wentworth, , 1827.
  • Gaster, Theodor, H.
    Theodor Gaster

    Theodor Herzl Gaster was a United Kingdom-born United States Biblical scholar known for work on comparative religion, mythology and the history of religions....
    , "Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East", Henry Schuman Publishing, New York, 1950. ISBN 0877521882.