Thespis (/ˈθɛspɪs/; Greek: Θέσπις; fl. 6th century BC) of Icaria (present-day Dionysos, Greece), according to certain Ancient Greek sources and especially Aristotle, was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play (instead of speaking as him or herself). In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus.
Thespis was a singer of dithyrambs (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrains). He is credited with introducing a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks.
This new style was called tragedy, and Thespis was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, in 534 BC competitions to find the best tragedy were instituted at the City Dionysia in Athens, and Thespis won the first documented competition. Capitalising on his success, Thespis also invented theatrical touring; he would tour various cities while carrying his costumes, masks and other props in a horse-drawn wagon.
Thespis, 6th century BC Greek actor
Thespis can also refer to:
Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of Thespis was ever published, and most of the music has been lost. Gilbert and Sullivan went on to become the most famous and successful artistic partnership in Victorian England, creating a string of comic opera hits, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, which continue to be popular.
Thespis premièred in London at the Gaiety Theatre on 26 December 1871. Like many productions at that theatre, it was written in a broad, burlesque style, considerably different from Gilbert and Sullivan's later works. It was a success, for a Christmas entertainment of the time, and closed on 8 March 1872, after a run of 63 performances. It was advertised as "An entirely original Grotesque Opera in Two Acts".
The story follows an acting troupe headed by Thespis, the legendary Greek father of the drama, who temporarily trade places with the gods on Mount Olympus, who have grown elderly and ignored. The actors turn out to be comically inept rulers. Having seen the ensuing mayhem down below, the angry gods return, sending the actors back to Earth as "eminent tragedians, whom no one ever goes to see". Gilbert would return to this theme twenty-five years later in his last opera with Sullivan, The Grand Duke, in which a theatre company temporarily replaces the ruler of a small country and decides to "revive the classic memories of Athens at its best".
Track 9 of _Season's End_
On top of the world like a flag on a mountain
Feeling so high you can feel so alone
Unable to breathe at the height that you flew
Staring on clouds with no view of below
On top of a girl like a dream in a hotel
Falling towards something out of control
Unable to miss like the man in the tram
Crashing his car in Amsterdam
He did it without knowing
Didn't feel a thing
Just wrecked it and kept going
The space around the stars
Is something that you know
A billion miles of darkness
Left you feeling low
Everything about you
So perfectly restrained
But everything inside you
Bites you
Everybody in the whole of the world
Feels the same inside
Everybody in the whole of the whole of the whole of the world
Everyone is only everyone else
Everybody's got to know
Everybody lives and loves and laughs and cries
And eats and sleeps and grows and dies