Theatre, Performance, and Audiences: Ways of Spectating in Antiquity

This paper argues that Catullus’ Carmen 63 and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura 2.597-660 represent two imaginative views of Rome’s Magna Mater festival that couch themselves in the architecture of her sanctuary on the southwest corner of the Palatine Hill, in particular the Scalae Caci and Via Tecta passages leading up to the temple complex from the Velabrum and Circus Maximus. Both authors focus on the processions of the galli, the eunuch priests of Magna Mater, as they move through changes in physical status and location.

In a climactic scene in Plautus’ Mostellaria, Tranio draws Theopropides’ and Simo’s attention to a painting of a crow assaulting a pair of vultures (832-840). Like the proverbially cunning crow, the slave is getting the better of his vulturine superiors. The picture is both an element of Tranio’s trickery and an illustration of the subverted power dynamic that results. It also offers a metatheatrical comment on the problematics of viewing and visualization in theatrical space. Theopropides is utterly confounded by Tranio’s description: he sees no painting whatsoever.

Despite limited evidence, recent scholarship on Corinthian theater has addressed the architectural development of its Hellenistic theater (Scahill 2015) as well as its role in the transmission of drama between the Greek mainland and West (Green 2014); however, the city’s distinct theatrical identity, shaped by its dramatic conventions, spectators, and cultural impact requires scholarly attention.

In Euripides’ Electra, Agamemnon’s daughter refuses to participate in the Heraia of Argos. She is still mourning her father and her dress is inappropriate for the religious festival: “look at my filthy hair/these tatters that are my clothes” (Eur. El. 184-185 trans. Kovacs). The theme of the young girl who can not celebrate a festival because of the poor state of her dress may seem quite familiar to a modern reader. Nevertheless, reading tragic texts out of their performance context, we miss a part of the efficacy of Electra’s statement.

Gregory Nagy’s theory of poetic mimesis as a ritual embodiment of ideal personae (e.g. Nagy 1994, 1996, 2013) has proven to be extremely valuable for understanding not only the performative aspects of ancient Greek poetry, but also the strong ties poetry had to ancient theatrical dramas. This model, however, has little that is specific to say about the experience of audiences. In my view, more may be said on this subject, and one should also take into account the different modes of spectating.