Review Assignment

Topic: Ancient Greek Theater

Research Process

On November 8, 2007 I began my research using the first database I learned about in class which was the Academic Search Premier. I entered the term Ancient Greek Theater into the search box and got only 8 results. Then I tried using another term which was Ancient Greek Theat* thinking that I would get more results and to my surprise instead of getting more results I got the exact same results. Out of the 8 results I found only one interesting. It was an article which presented information on the planning of the Greek government to close two of its ancient theaters for repair. The bibliographic data for that article is Ancient Greek Theaters to Close. New York Times, 7/17/2006, Vol. 155 Issue 53643, pE2-E2, 1/9p; (AN 21908009).

I wasn’t that satisfied with my first attempt so I tried doing what you did in the sample review exercise. I kind of thought it was wise to gain a general understanding of the topic. This time I used Britannica Online to learn more about my topic. This time I got 129 results. And here’s what I found out from the article:

· "theatre" also spelled theater

· The word is from the Greek theatron, “a place of seeing.”

· A theatre usually has a stage area where the performance itself takes place.

· Since ancient times the evolving design of theatres has been determined largely by the spectators' physical requirements for seeing and hearing the performers and by the changing nature of the activity presented.

And the bibliographic data for that article is MLA style: "theatre." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 14 Nov. 2007 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9110172>.

And from what I’ve learnt in class about finding out if the source is reliable or not, I’m pretty confident that this article is based on facts and should be reliable considering the source is an authorized encyclopedia like what you’ve told us before in class.

Next I tried searching in the Historical Abstract database hoping I would get closer to what I’m looking for since it’s related to history but found nothing useful at all. Later I tried accessing in J STOR. The reason why I chose J STOR was because I think going through journals would give me the idea and more depth of my topic. So I typed in Ancient Greek Theater. It gave me 8057 results. My first impression when I saw the results was “wow!” I really couldn’t believe it that after searching for quite sometime and not getting the desired results now there’s so many. I took a look at the first few pages and I found a few interesting journals. One of them was The Entrances and Exits of Actors and Chorus in Greek Plays Margarete Bieber
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9114%28195410%2958%3A4%3C277%3ATEAEOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

It talks about how the chorus and the actors enter and exits and where are they staged on the stage. So through this journal I kind of got the idea about the positioning in a Greek play.

Then I considered using the advance search. I put in the term greek theater AND greek theatre by using these terms I got 4770 results. Even though I got lesser results from the previous search I was still positive about finding something. Out of all I chose this one. Review: The Greek Stage Author(s) of Review: William Allan
Reviewed Work(s): Drama und Theater: Ausgewählte Schriften zum griechischen Drama by H.-J. Newiger
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-840X%281998%292%3A48%3A2%3C265%3ATGS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A

I then decided to search in the Haystac for books on the Ancient Greek Theater. At first I tried typing in theater just to see how many results I would get. I was just curious about how many results would show up by just using the word theater so that I could compare and see with the other results once I had narrowed down the term. By using just theater I got more than 3000 results. And just to see what results I will get with these terms I entered them individually. Theater, "theater", "theat*", greek theatre, greek theater, preclassical, classical, hellenistic and ancient greek and theatre/theater. It was really fascinating to see all the different results I was getting.

Then when I narrowed down my search term to ancient greek theater/theatre and I got only 12 results. One of it was A short introduction to the Ancient Greek theater
Ley, Graham Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1991

LOCATION Book Stacks
CALL NO. PA3201 .L47 1991

I went ahead and checked out the book from the library and I found out a lot of interesting things about my topic from this book. There were a few visuals in it which was really helpful for me in order to imagine how must have it looked like during the ancient times. This book talks about Greek Drama, The Organization of the Festivals, Lesser Dramatic Performances at Athens ,The Writer, The Theater ,Stenography Masks, Costume, and Properties, Chorus ,Actors ,Reading Texts as Scripts, The Playing Space, The Audience, Delivery ,Distance and Physical Action,ChoralSong and Choral Action , Parody, Translation and Adaptation and Appendix: Chronology of the Surviving Plays. So by going through this book I really got to know more in details about what greek theater is all about.

Then I tried clicking on another link which was Illustrations of Greek drama,
Trendall, A. D. (Arthur Dale), 1909-
[London] Phaidon; [New York, Distributed by Praeger Publishers, 1971]
The reason why this book came into my notice was because it was kind of old. The previous book I looked at was from 1991 and like this one is from 1971. So I just wanted to look for myself what differences and similarities are there in these 2 books. And it was for sure that the 2^nd book looked way much older to the 1^st one I found. And like it talks about the Greek drama and shows the illustration of it, which I thought was very unique and interesting.

Finally, I decided to do what I do best. And that was search in World Wide Web. To be honest with you, I still prefer using the World Wide Web for my research because somehow I’ve just been too used to it. But like as I was doing this assignment I kind of got used to the different databases but still I guess it will take time since I’ve never been exposed to this type of privilege before. And like hopefully now that I have it for another 4 years I will try to use it as frequently as I can so that I become familiar with it. So I looked up my search terms on www.google.com and www.yahoo.com. In google I tried manipulating the words around but at the end I ended up using the term ancient greek theater and got 1,540,000 results. I was really overwhelmed by the results I got. But when I searched the same term in yahoo I got 5,730,000 results. I scanned through both the results and both the search engine had pretty similar topics. But I don’t understand how come yahoo out numbered google by so much.

Through the World Wide Web I found out about the origin of the Greek drama. I learned about how the Ancient Greeks from the 5th century BC onwards were fascinated by the question of the origins of tragedy and comedy. They were unsure of their exact origins, but Aristotle and a number of other writers proposed theories of how tragedy and comedy developed, and told stories about the people thought to be responsible for their development. Here are some excerpts from Aristotle and other authors which show what the ancient Greeks thought about the origins of tragedy and comedy.

By doing all this, I’ve definitely learned more about my cluster. This quarter I’m taking Ancient theatre so it was really interesting finding out about how it all started and what all are there in Greek theater. And when reading a book for my class, I kind of understand more and visualize where would the actors in the play be standing or like where the chorus will entering and exiting from.

My two topic questions are: How is an ancient Greek play staged? What are the roles of women in Greek theater?

And I guess the other database that I could probably use to search more information from is the Anthropological Literature Online source. I’m sure it will be useful to me because it is a specific database that deals with anthropology.