In this first episode of a three-part series on the origins and significance of Greek drama, Michael Scott travels to Greece to explore the origins of the genre and its intimate connection to politics and democracy.
He looks in particular at the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles, who were not just professional dramatists but politicians and statespeople as well. Through their influence drama was conceived not just as a form of entertainment but a means of bringing people together in collective rituals as well as communicating moral lessons about the importance of democracy based on sublimating individuality for the common good. Drama fulfilled a function similar to the newspapers today; it dealt with common issues while offering opinions and moral instruction.
The argument was a cogent one; but it tended to over-emphasized in a program where all the expert commentators originated from outside Greece. Apart from Scott himself (based at the University of Warwick), all the other professors were either from Cambridge or King's College, London, with one German witness based in Athens. One could argue that, on the basis of this program, the whole subject of Ancient Greece has been colonized by northern Europeans, who appear to have much more authority about the subject than their Grecian counterparts.
Yet perhaps this was the ideological purpose of a documentary which was conceived according to western binaries (audience/ actors, statespeople/ polis, theater/ outside world). Little or no mention was made of the ritualistic power of drama to involve everyone in an event that transcends such oppositions and had the power to stimulate spiritual as well as imaginative thought. Greek drama was not Brechtian drama based on Verfremdungseffekt, designed to prompt objective thought; it was something appealing to all social classes and all type of people as a manifestation of popular culture. It was a pity that this documentary overlooked this transformative power altogether.