Mythbusting the Ancient Theater
Thursday, May 10, 2018, 4:00 pm
Curtin Hall Room 866
It is often asserted that the Greek theater was in decline in the postclassical period. This model assumes that Roman cultural influence drive drama off the stages of the Greek world, while pantomime (a silent, masked dance) “replaced” spoken drama. This paradigm of the trajectory of the ancient theater was developed in the early modern period, and continues to exert a surprising level of influence today. In this talk, Dr. Skotheim will “bust” this myth about the ancient theater history, and showing how consideration of the material evidence can change our perspective on the role of drama in postclassical Greek and Roman society.