The Gods In Sophocles Oedipus The King

When dwelling upon the main developments of the theatre, one turns to look at the origins of its birth, therefore focusing upon the Ancient Greeks. A lot of the theatre in which is established today comes from the activities of Greek Worship. The Greeks worshipped their Gods, including ‘the worship of Dionysus; the God of fertility and wine.’ (Gascoinge; History of Theatre, 2001 ongoing.) The Greeks worshipped their Gods through the use of sculpting, painting, music and literature, alongside this they incorporated dance, music and drama. As many of the Athenian’s were illiterate, Greek Theatre was used to explain to the communities the literature in which was written, allowing them through ‘reading artistic signals’ (Michael Walton, J; The Greek Sense of Theatre, Pg.4) to understand ‘the world about them, their fellow men and their Gods.’ (Michael Walton, J; The Greek Sense of Theatre, Pg.4)

Sophocles was one of the playwrights within 430BCE. Sophocles wrote approximately 120 plays in total however, only 7 survived, one in which is the Greek tragedy ‘Oedipus’. ‘Oedipus’ is considered to be Sophocles’ ‘masterpiece’. Sophocles writes upon personal and complex themes, in which represent things which happen in everyday life, we can see this within ‘Oedipus’, when it is mentioned ‘And to our suffering
Over time these contributions have been taken and adapted to create the theatre that many people know and love today. However, unlike in Ancient Greece; there are more than two styles of theatre today and not just by the means of the theatre types, for example; a proscenium theatre or theatre in the round, but the acting styles as well, such as Naturalistic, Non-Naturalistic, Epic theatre, Absurdism etc. These are seen as a collaboration of the developments of the theatre through out the different time periods and the practitioners of different