The spoken parts of a Greek play [excluding the chorus] were played by professional paid actors. The three-actors rule ket the costs of the production down, as the actors themselves were paid for by the state, The participants of the chorus were played by amateurs [ordinary citizens], the training of the chorus and the costumes of the participants were paid for by a prominent and rich citizen.
Extract from
Reperformances And The Transmission Of Texts by P.J. Finglass
https://bit.ly/2EOrUgA
Publisher: De Gruyter
Year: 2015
DOI identifier: 10.1515/tc-2015-0016
Repository@Nottingham
Year: 2015
DOI identifier: 10.1515/tc-2015-0016
Repository@Nottingham
"The very earliest re-performances, of classical tragedy will usually have involved the poet who composed the work. Today the roles of playwright, director, and producer are separate and almost always undertaken by different people; in classical Greece, all these functions were played by the same man [the didaskalos] . In the early days of tragedy there was only one actor, the playwright himself [Thespis?]. The origin of the professional actor lies in the decision, attributed to Aeschylus, to introduce the second actor, who ex hypothesis could not be played by the first. actor/playwright; Sophocles is said to have introduced the third. The playwright continued to be one of the actors for a while; Sophocles is said to have been the first dramatist who recused himself from this role on the ground of his weak voice. Over time, however, the two roles separated thanks to growing specialisation; the qualities required to be a good writer of poetry only partly overlap with the qualities needed by a good actor, and a man who could devote himself to only one of these tasks was likely to produce work of a higher quality and thus attract greater appreciation from his audience."
A Word of Warning
When translating Greek drama into other languages, translators may choose to follow the three-actor rule or to adapt it for modern audiences. Some translators choose to stick to the original three-actor rule in order to maintain the integrity of the text and the historical context in which it was written.
Others may choose to deviate from the rule, either by adding more actors to the performance or by having actors play multiple roles. This can be done for various reasons, such as to make the play more accessible to contemporary audiences, to highlight certain themes or characters, or to create a more dynamic and visually interesting performance.
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C. DELIVERY-SPEECH, RECITATIVE, AND SONG
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