• The chorus sang and danced their parts.
• The chorus language was in a dialect called Doric: rather, it was the playwright's imitation of Doric dialect.
  
• The actors mostly spoke, declaimed, delivered their parts.
  
• The language was in the Athenian dialect of the audience.
• Here and there the actors sing with the chorus: as at Libation Bearers 306-478
• Hence the play consisted of a woven tapestry of song/dance and spoken parts.
  
• Silence
• Aeschylus was known for having characters be silent on stage seemingly forever, and then deliver lines to dramatic effect: for example, Cassandra in Agamemnon.
• There were, apparently, only ever a maximum of 3 actors on the stage (not counting the chorus)
  
• There were "entrances" and "exits" at either side of the stage, and actors and chorus made regular "entrances" and "exits"
• Typically, the sequence was actor exit, then choral song, then actor entrance (so that the actor could change costume)
• All wore what we might call robes.
• Some variety for different characters.
  
• And all wore masks.
• Masks that revealed each character: remember, one actor often played more than one character.
• The masks were probably made of linen, and there seem to have been recognizable character type masks.

By Unknown artist - &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; class=&quot;external text&quot; href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=17434145&amp;amp;context=set-415211&amp;amp;size=l&quot;&gt;antmoose, 4June 2005&lt;/a&gt;; English Wikipedia, original upload 25 June 2005 by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wetman&quot; class=&quot;extiw&quot; title=&quot;en:User:Wetman&quot;&gt;Wetman&lt;/a&gt;, same filename, Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=389699">Link</a>

• The chorus
• Often the chorus is an integral character in the action and plot of the play
• They are not always meta-characters, or above/outside the play somehow.
• Even when they don't play an active role in the plot, they offer a particular viewpoint, which should not be taken as the authoritatively correct or right view. It is not that of an omniscient narrator either.
• Comedy was different
• The comic chorus frequently broke the "fourth wall" and talked to the audience directly, in the voice of the playwright!
  
• Tragic conventions
• Men could play all characters: female characters, all ages, etc.
• Violence and death rarely occurred on stage
• A messenger would come report such things, which might be heard occurring off stage
• Ajax is an exception: he commits suicide on stage
  
• But corpses were brought on stage.
• not real corpses: actors playing corpses
• Gestures
• Supplication: kneel and touch the beard and a knee of a person, or grab their knees.
• There are others: remember how far away many audience members were and also that the actors wore masks and danced and sang
  
• Props
• not many
• Orestes has an urn in Sophocles' play Electra
• There is a bow in Sophocles' Epictetus
• Devices
• a wheeled low cart called an enkyklema could be used to bring out a corpse, for example
• a crane-like device, a machina, used to bring in a god or other character, the device that delivered the so-called deus ex machina onto the stage.
  
• Stage
• There was an altar and characters took refuge at it.
• There was an "orchestra" for dancing (not for an orchestra in the modern sense)
• There was a raised stage
• There was a backdrop: in later stone theaters, it was often 3 stories
  
• The Skene
• the Skene is the stage and backdrop of it
• In the Oresteia, for example, it was imagined to be, say, the palace of Argos in the Agamemnon and Libation Bearers.
• then it becomes a temple of Apollo at Delphi in Eumenides, and then it becomes the Areopagus in Athens by the end of the play.
• Audience
• Probably included some women, but perhaps not, or perhaps not many or not most
• Most citizens would probably go to the theater
• 10,000-15,000 spectators
  
• It is religious
• But not as dogma or as spiritual
• It is religious in that the fabric of the society's religion is woven into it and it takes place at a festival that has a religious function and aspect.
• It is civic
• The plays were administered by the city of Athens, its officials
• It is part of one's participation in the city-state

an honorific decree
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2210063

• Each play was produced ONCE, at the start.
• In later times, revivals of some favorite old plays occurred
• also, tragedy began to be exported to other towns fairly quickly