Traditional and Modern Drama

Oedipus Rex - a play by Sophocles, is full of gripping examples of dramatic irony, and a lot of elements in this book will be considered complex for a modern audience. Greek theatre is a lot different in many ways than what the society sees on stage and television nowadays. The main difference is that the actors were all men; and in order to play a female role, they had to wear these masks with exaggerated and pronounced mouths and eyes. We want to see the facial expressions on actors’ faces; but masks would probably be more suitable, considering the fact that there were over 14,000 vulgar people in an outdoor theatre, and the majority of them were not able to see or hear anything at all. The masks also allow you to hide your face and it was possible for one person to have several roles if they did not have enough actors per play. Even though, traditional theatre is “the mother” of modern drama, they are still not going to be similar due to the change in the society in general. People were really barbarous, disrespectful and selfish; the actors always had to do something crazy and interesting to get audience’s attention. Nowadays, people are willing to pay lots of money to see a play, yet a lot of them cannot afford this luxury entertainment.