Ancient Greek drama featured between one and three actors. In his “Poetics,” Aristotle claimed that Aeschylus (525-456) introduced the two-actor format, and Sophocles (497-407) later added a third actor. During a festival, a single actor might need to perform a dozen roles, so masks were used to suggest a change between characters. The masks were heavy and covered the entire head of the actor. Additionally, actors wore comic props during satyr plays (short, comic plays), such as cod pieces and goat horns.
Greek drama was performed in open-air and in theaters constructed from stone. The Theatre of Dionysius was constructed in 500 BC, on the southern slope of the Athenian Acropolis, as a tribute to the god of wine, fertility, and theater. The theater sat over 17,000 citizens and hosted theatrical festivals twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. The acoustics of ancient Greek theaters were accomplished, as audience members in the back row of the stadium could hear a whispered line, even without modern amplification technology. One of the most well-known surviving ancient Greek theaters is the Theater at Epidaurus, constructed in the 4th century.
Each spring and again each fall, Athens hosted competitions between new plays at the Theatre of Dionysius. Each playwright submitted three tragedies, usually related, as well as one satyr play and a comic play, and the productions were funded by independent the Athenian government. The competitions were judged by a panel of three. Ironically, the works of competition winners have not survived, while Euripides, who claimed only five victories among the ninety-seven plays he submitted, has over seventeen complete surviving plays.