“Dionysos, Divine Space and Dopamine: A Cognitive Approach to the Greek Theatre”

Peter Meineck
New York University
Pm57@nyu.edu

The Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus on the southeast slope of the Acropolis in

Athens and the theatron that was erected above it was the major and performance
venue for fifth century Athenian drama. It is quite possible that almost every play
from that period was created specifically for this space.1 I suggest that we can learn a
great deal more about the original reception of the plays in performance by applying
research from the affective sciences to the evidence of material culture and the texts
of the plays themselves. Here I focus on the relationship of the spectator to the
environment within which the theatre was located - in particular the stunning view of
the landscape, sea and sky. I apply the four spatial realms theory of Previc to the
theatre space and following Previc’s research, suggest that the relationship of the
performance space to its view created a deep spiritual experience that cannot be
recreated on the modern interior stage. There was a reason why Plato, Aristotle and
Isocrates all described the theatre as possessing the power “to move the soul”: this
paper is part of a larger study that is seeking to better understand how ancient Greek
drama achieved this.

1
Demosthenes (Against Neaera 76) speaks of an older shrine of Dionysos “en Limnais” (of the
marshes) and Thucydides (2.15.4 ) places this shrine in the old southern city and states that the
“older Dionysia” was still celebrated there (in the last quarter of the fifth century). Pollux (4.121)
is our only source that refers to another Dionysian theatre and calls it the Lenaean and this may be
too late to be of any significant use. Kolb, F., Agora und Theater: Volks- und Festversammlung,
Berlin, 1981, pp. 20-51, attempted to place a Lenaean sanctuary in the Agora but his evidence is
highly debatable and soundly refuted by Slater, N.W., "The Lenaean Theatre", Zeitschrift für
Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 66, 1986, pp. 255- 264.
(1986), 255-264, who sites the Lenaean sanctuary on the banks of the Ilissos River on the
outskirts of the old city. Perhaps Dionysos’ association with “the marshes” is an expression of his
affiliation with liminal regions, borderlands, mountains, unsettled areas and the countryside. The
question remains open, although at some point it seems as if both the Lenaea and the Dionysia
were held at the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus.
 This is an exciting time for those of interested in the theatre of ancient Greece, recent
studies have begun again to probe the important questions of origins and influences,
epigraphic evidence is shining new light on the organization and financing of the
theatre and new ongoing archaeological surveys of the site of the Theatre of
Dionysos in Athens are starting to reveal some fascinating new information. My
current book length project is to combine this new material with a cognitive
approach to the theatre. I am interested in the reception of ancient drama, but in this
case, the reception of the original audience, and while we can never hope to fully
recapture the performance of a live event, the affective sciences can offer classicists
and historians another set of tools to help understand these works in their live
theatrical and festive context. My entire project first sets out to describe the methods
practices, advantages and limitations of neuroscience and behavioral studies;
explode a few common “neuro-myths” that seem to plague the relationship between
those of us working in the humanities and neuroscientists; set out a bio-cultural
approach based around theories of embodied cognition; and taking my lead from the
work of several cognitive archaeologists, gently explore if we can detect signs of
ancient Greek/Athenian cognition in ancient material culture and texts. I then focus
on the experience of fifth century Athenian theatre looking specifically at the
cognitive function of masks; space; movement; music; narrative; color and props and
even catharsis.

Here, I am going to demonstrate this approach by focusing on the

neuropsychological work of Fred Previc on bodily relationships to three-dimensional
space and the Greek theatrical performance space. I am deliberately not using the
term “Theatre of Dionysos” as it is not found in the fifth of fourth century, rather
“the theatron at the Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus”.2 This also more accurately
represents the relationship between performance, sanctuary and ritual.

2
Thucydides (8.93.1) does mention a “theatron of Dionysos” but it is at Munychia, a hill in the
Piraeus, not the Acropolis in Athens. The term theatron and its use in Greek texts and inscriptions
has been analyzed by Frederiksen, who concludes that although the term can be applied to any
seating area intended for spectators such as oedea, stadiums and meeting places the majority of
times where the term is found it refers to a place for the performance of dance and drama;
 The image of the classical Greek theatre as a huge stone edifice wrapped around a
circular orchestra stubbornly prevails. It’s hard to compete with the sheer visual
beauty of Epidauros, described by Pausanias as the most beautiful in Greece and
clearly an influence on the Athenian Lycurgan theatre built in the late fourth century.
The theatron in Athens was excavated after the discovery of Epidauros and Dörpfeld
felt certain that there must have surely been a circular orchestra there. The brilliant
Jane Harrison was convinced and the imagination of the generations of scholars,
artists, performers and students (including me) perceived Greek drama as a circular
shared experience between actor, chorus and audience. The controversy continues,
but most now suggest that this was not the case.3 There is no evidence for a circular
orchestra in Athens or any other fifth century theatre space. This is important
because once we stop conceiving the Greek performance space in architectural terms
(the original profession of Dörpfeld), we can begin to locate Greek drama within the
context of the City Dionysia and the environment of the Sanctuary of Dionysos.

Then what is our current “best informed guess” on what the performance space at the
Sanctuary of Dionysus Eleuthereus actually looked like in the mid fifth century
BCE? The site itself has recently undergone a new survey headed by Christina
Papastamati-von Moock for the Greek Ministry of Culture and some of the findings

Frederiksen, R., "The Greek Theatre. A Typical Building in the Urban Centre of the Polis?" in
Even more studies in the ancient Greek Polis, ed. T.H. Nielsen, Stuttgart, 2002, pp. 65-124.
3
For surveys of the history of the scholarship concerning the archaeology of the theatre of
Dionysos see Scullion, S., Three studies in Athenian dramaturgy, Stuttgart, 1994, pp. 3-66) and
Ashby, C., "The Case for the Rectangular/Trapezoidal Orchestra", Theatre Research
International, vol. 13, 1988, pp. 1-20. Scullion (38-41) objects to a rectilinear orchestra on the
grounds that the natural bowl shape of the cavea would favor a circular form and make straight
rows of seats nonsensical. However the cavea of the south east Acropolis slope is not as acute a
curve as Scullion proposes as can be seen in the plan by Dimitris Tsalkanis
(http://www.ancientathens3d.com/katathmeg.JPG). Wiles, D., Tragedy in Athens: performance
space and theatrical meaning, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 63-86, has been a passionate advocate of a
circular orchestra. Wiles builds his assumption of a circular orchestra on the premise that the
dithyrambic kuklios choros proves that the orchestra must have been circular. Not so. Simply
watch any circular dance performed in Greece today, most of them take place in the town square.
 have started to appear.4 One of them is the discovery of post-holes on the upper
Acropolis slope marked with the impression of wood grain. This implies that the
seating was wooden throughout the fifth century, apart from some premium stone
seats in the front of the theatron. The wood grain imprints may also indicate that the
wooden posts were permanent, as their constant removal would not have left these
marks. Papastamati-von Moock suggests that although the theatron was wooden,
there was an attempt to replace the seating with stone risers around 430 BCE that
was abandoned because of the strains of the Peloponnesian War (although that did
not halt the Parthenon or Temple of Athena Nike). She also has sided with those who
advocate for a rectilinear orchestra but suggests that the evidence of internal
retaining walls for the theatron might indicate that as the theatron was enlarged it
started to wrap around the orchestra and perhaps start evolve into the semi-circular
theatrons we see in the fourth century. She also dates the foundations of a scene
building that Dörpfeld dated to the fourth century as belonging to this “Periclean”
(430’s) building program. These foundations include a small level outcrop (“T”) that
has positioning marks for the mechane – the stage crane that is frequently used in the
plays of Euripides and Aristophanes, which also date from this period.

This new research could eventually change the way we think about the fifth century
Athenian theatre space. They may well have been a big change in the staging
conditions of the theatre at this time and this could have fundamentally affected the
way in which the audience received those plays. A larger and more elaborate scene
building, perhaps with three doors, rather than one, a small stage and more elaborate
stage machinery: the mechane for “flying” actors and the ekkyklema, which might
have evolved from a simple wheeled platform to a fully functioning on-stage
revolve. So we may have two theatres in the fifth century: an early Aeschylean stage
that develops around the time of the reforms of Cleisthenes c500 BCE and then the

4
Papastamati-von Moock, C. “The Wooden Theatre of Dionysos Eleuthereus in Athens: Old
Issue, New Research” in The Architecture of the Ancient Greek Theater, International
Conference, 27-30 January 2012 at R. Frederiksen - E. Gebhard - A. Sokolicek (eds.), The
Danish Institute at Athens (forthcoming).
 Periclean performance space suggested by the latest research. This form of the
theatre was then in use until the large scale stone rebuilding by Lycurgus in the
330’s BCE.

It used to be thought that the Theatre of Dionysos sat around 16,000 people and this led
many scholars to posit that the theatre was a fundamentally democratic space, capable of
accommodating the majority of the Athenian demos (adult male citizens). Again, this
may not be true. A reconstruction of the theatre as a pi-shaped space by Hans Goette
based on the available archaeological evidence at that time (2007) basically lines up with
Papastamati-von Moock’s theories, which have established the limits of the fifth century
theatron. This would place the audience at around 5-6,000, considerably smaller than was
previously thought. We should assume that a large number of the audience (possible as
many as 1000) were foreign visitors: If this was the case, then the audience is even
smaller – about the same size as the capacity of the space where the democratic assembly
met – the Pnyx hill, which also accommodated around 5000 people. This new
archaeological research may force us to completely re-think our ideas about Greek drama
and civic participation – though 5000 seats is still a large space by any standard, it not
possibly accommodate the entire male population of Athens.

Papastamati-von Moock found potsherds dating to 430 BCE in the foundations of the
western retaining wall. This strongly suggests that the theatron was expanded and was
brought around on three sides of the orchestra. So, while the Athenian theatre may not
have been the place where the circular orchestra was invented, it may well have
anticipated it in its own attempts to increase audience capacity and acoustics. Its
important to bear in mind that dance and choral song can still be effective in spaces with
limited acoustic qualities, but narrative drama needs to be heard just as much as it needs
to be seen. If the wings of the theatron were erected around 430 (about the time of
Euripides’ Medea) then prior to that date the theatron may have been a frontal space,
with the rows of benches lines up in straight line, like a modern sports stadium. This
configuration would certainly benefit mask acting and acoustics as well as choral
movement, as there would have been no bad seat.
Perhaps the development of the theatron around 430 BCE had a profound effect on Greek
drama. The skene, upstage center was the strongest visual point, even for those seated on
the side, as a result the actor’s performance starts to become more centralized and the role
of the chorus diminishes slightly. This is certainly true of the works of Euripides and
even some of Sophocles’ later plays. Eric Csapo has also pointed out an interesting fact
that may relate to this; prior to 440 BCE we have found no artistic representation of
actors, only choruses, and the prize for acting was not instituted until 440 BCE. Also,
there is no doubt that the rise of the actor in the Hellenistic period is linked to a growth in
the size and prominence of the stage and skene. By the time of the hugely popular comic
playwright, Menander, in the last quarter of the fourth century, the choral parts are not
even included and we simply have the notation ”choral interlude”. The
processional/choral driven theatre of the early to mid fifth century – the theatre of
Aeschylus - has become a theatre of actors – the mythological account of Thespis,
stepping out and answering the chorus, is reflected in the development of the theatre
space itself.

So, the form of the theatre at the time of Aeschylus’ Oresteia (458 BCE) was probably a
theatron consisting of a frontal arrangement of wooden benches arranged up the slope of
the Acropolis overlooking the Sanctuary of Dionysos. Between the theatron and the
sanctuary was a rectilinear playing area of beaten earth - the orchestra. Left and right of
the orchestra were the eisodoi – the “side roads” used for all entrances and exits until the
development of the scene building (skene) some time around the 450’s. The theatron
faced south, which as we will see, helped to enliven the masks and in late March when
the festival took place the weather would have been mild and comfortable and the south
facing theatron would have been a warm place to sit. From the benches that formed the
ikria the spectator had a stunning view across the old southern city, the plains and
mountains of Attica, the sea and of course the sky. We can get some idea of this by
looking at old photos of Athens in the nineteenth century, before the urban sprawl,
showing the Acropolis rises sharply from the plain of Attica to a height of 490 feet above
sea level and 300 feet higher than the surrounding land. So, sitting in the theatron at the
Sanctuary of Dionysos would have seemed like you were seated in the sky, and this is the
spatial area that neuropsychologist, Fred Previc has described as “ambient extrapersonal
space” – the place where, according to Previc, humans tend to locate the divine.

Fred Previc was a researcher with the United State Air Force Research Laboratory in San
Antonio, Texas. He headed up the Spatial Disorientation Countermeasures Task Group,
which was given the job of providing research to help reduce the amount of aircraft
crashes due to pilot disorientation. This is when a pilot becomes completely cognitively
disengaged from his or her position in space and then looses control of the aircraft
because they do not know how to orientate themselves in the air in relation to the ground
- this is commonly known as “loosing the horizon”. Pilot disorientation was cited in the
death of John Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren, in a small Piper
Saratoga light aircraft in 1999. Kennedy was flying from a private airport in Essex
County, New Jersey to the Atlantic island of Martha’s Vineyard just off the coast of
Massachessets. He was intending to land at the small airport on the island and drop off
Lauren and then fly on to the Kennedy family compound at Hyannis Port near Cape Cod
for a family wedding. They never made it to Cape Cod. After a fruitless multi-day search,
radar data showed the plane descending rapidly into the Atlantic. On reviewing the
possible reasons for the crash, the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) noted that
instead of hugging the shoreline of Rhode Island Sound and Buzzards Bay, which would
have provided visible night navigation by lights on the ground, Kennedy took a short cut
and veered off on a flight path that took him directly over a large expanse of the Atlantic
Ocean. At night it would have been very difficult to distinguish sea from sky and the
NTSB concluded that the crash was most likely due to “spatial disorientation”.5

Previc’s work was intended to understand why these crashes were happening and to help
devise instrumentation and pilot training to counter them. What he developed was a
revolutionary way to examine the relationship of the body in space. Previc knew that
spatial disorientation was a cognitive state connected to the body’s relationship to the

5
NTSB Accident Report NYC99MA178; NTSB, 2000-12-12.
space around it and he devised a system of 4-realms of 3-dimensional space to more fully
understand this phenomenon. These realms break down as follows:

 Peripersonal space - the field in which cognitive processing of items

within our physical reach takes place, such as holding and manipulating
objects.
 Focal extrapersonal space - the area immediately beyond our physical
reach where eye movements are used for visual scanning and object
recognition.
 Action extrapersonal space - assists humans to orientate themselves
within topographically defined space. This is the way in which we use
landmarks to navigate and place ourselves within a wider spatial context
than in the more immediate peripersonal or focal exptrapersonal fields.
 Ambient extrapersonal space - the spatial field furthest away from our
own bodies—the sky, distant mountains, the horizon -- the place where
Previc’s pilots were becoming disorientated and crashing their planes.

Rush Rehm has suggested that the performance space be viewed in terms of “landscape
architecture” in that it is composed of three basic elements – the hillside of the Acropolis;
a flat area (the orchestra); and the skene.6 I wish to go further, and suggest that the two
long wing entrances (the eisodoi) are incredibly important to the structure and visuality of
the plays and that the space’s surrounding views - those that have occurred as part of the
prior procession through Athens, or visualization lodged in the social memories of the
spectators, as well as those that are physically apparent in the bodily eye, are vital
features in the presentation and reception of fifth century tragedy.

The relationship of the ancient Athenian audience to Previc’s ambient extrapersonal

space with their expansive view of the sky and topography of southern Attica from their
seats is one of the fundamental differences between the ancient Greek and modern
Western theater-going experience. It is still remarkable today to sit on the south-east

6
Rehm (2002) 37-38.
slope of the Acropolis overlooking the sanctuary of Dionysos and get the sense of
looking out at the vastness of the sky. It certainly seems that all of the fifth century
theatres that we know of took full advantage of the relationship between spectator and
ambient extrapersonal space.7 The Romans, on the other hand, preferred to deny their
spectators this spatial field, creating the scenae frons to block any exterior view. Today,
most theatres place us in a darkened room and deny us any relationship with the external
environment. Occasionally and accidently, the closed relationship between the world of
the play in the theatre and the world outside is ruptured by a passing siren or some other
such loud noise. We tend to find this jarring - an interruption - and it can take us out of
the experience if the play for a while. A ringing mobile phone does the same thing. When
we are in the theatre we usually don’t want the outside world to permeate its walls. The
opposite was true in the theatron at the Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus: there was no
division between inside and outside; the world and the play and the world of Athens were
deliberately visually, aurally and olfactorally blurred, as was time and place, myth and
reality, the world of humans and the realm of the divine.

Previc maintains that it is one’s relationship to this concept of “ambient” or distant space
where one can experience “out of body” feelings such as disorientation, dizziness and a
sense of the divine. He notes how language itself orientates itself along vertical postural
lines connected with our relationship to ambient extrapersonal space. Terms such as “on
high” or “exalted” are frequently used in English to describe the divine, with the
language of “highness” being usually positive and the opposite pole of the vertical axis:
below, negative. This spatial division is certainly true of Aeschylus’ Oresteia where the
Olympian gods are placed above, while the distinctly chthonic Furies are darker and
visually disgusting.

The horizon and the sky dominated the ambient extrapersonal space of the Greek theatre
spectator and the sense of religiosity and spirituality that pervades Greek drama was
greatly cognitively enhanced by the dominance of the sky in the visual field of the

7
Bosher, G.K. 2006, Theatre on the Periphery: A Social and Political History of Theater in
Early Sicily, PhD Thesis, The University of Michigan, 151-160, tables 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3
audience. Previc has also suggested that ambient extrapersonal space plays an important
role in the neurochemistry of religious activity. Dopamine is released in the brain during
spiritual activity and the ventral dopaminergic pathways activated are most closely
aligned with the action extrapersonal system of perceptual-motor interactions. These
pathways have been shown to be biased toward ambient extrapersonal, distant and
especially, upper spatial fields which are also associated with hallucinations and dreams.8

We hear a lot about dopamine in the press connected with addiction or feeling good.
Dopamine is a neuraltransmitter produced in several different areas of the brain as a
neurohormone regulated by the hypothalamus, located below the thalamus and above the
brain stem, adjacent to the amygdala. While dopamine is certainly connected to the
reward system (we eat chocolate - we get a little dopamine - we feel good), it has also
been suggested that dopamine is also involved in reward anticipation and learned
behavior and that the release of dopamine in the brain helps is process new experiences
and learn which are good or bad for us.

Dopamine also helps transmit communication between nerve cells and to muscle cells
responsible for movement, motivation, appetite and attention. For example Attention
Deficit Disorder has been linked to low levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex and
the loss of motor function with Parkinson’s Diseaese may also be linked to depleted
levels of dopamine. Working memory is also dependent on dopamine, which is released
in the prefrontal cortex to provide a kind of “gating” system to regulate the contextual
processing of working memory. As one recent important study at Columbia University
asked “How is it that someone can spend hours playing a video game, seemingly
oblivious to everything else in the environment, but then instantly jump to answer the
phone as soon as it rings, and become equally absorbed in the telephone conversation?
One of the greatest challenges in cognitive neuroscience is to understand the brain

8
Previc, F., “The role of the extrapersonal brain systems in religious activity” in
Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 2006, pp. 500–539.
mechanisms that allow us to steadfastly pursue goals and yet flexibly and adaptively
switch between these as circumstances demand.”9

In a 2005 study Previc and his team posited a strong link between higher order cognition
or abstract thought and perceptual motor-actions in three-dimensional space. 10 Previc’s
four spatial realms are perceived by humans on a vertical axis and this is due to the way
in which the we visually process our environment. Grasping and reaching in peripersonal
space mainly occurs in the lower visual field, below eye level (we look down) but what
Previc describes as “the slope of the visual world away from the person” or extrapersonal
distant space is located in the upper visual field (we look up).

Ambient Extrapersonal space – “skyspace” is where we locate deep thought and

contemplation – the ancient theatre was not insecure about lettings its audience’s eyes
wander, unlike the Roman Stage which denies its audience the view with the scenae
frons, erecting a wall between the theatre and its environment. Most modern theatres go
even further, plunging us into total darkness and forcing us to focus on the action on
stage. We attempt to engage with ambient extrapersonal space whenever we need to
think deeply about something. Notice how people’s gaze direction tends to glace up when
having a specific thought, even when exterior “sky-space” is not in the current visual
field. You can try this simple experiment to illustrate what I mean: Ask somebody to tell
you their favorite food. Then watch their face as you ask the next question – “when did
you last have that?” Most people will spontaneously glance upwards, as they think a little
more deeply their gaze direction seeks out extrapersonal ambient space – the place of
contemplation and of memory.

This autonomic saccade links higher order cognition to extrapersonal space and working
memory. Humans seem to be the only mammal that has the ability to create abstract

9
D'Ardenne K, Eshel N, Luka J, Lenartowicz A, Nystrom LE, Cohen JD Role of prefrontal
cortex and the midbrain dopamine system in working memory updating. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S
A. 2012 Dec 4;109(49).
10
Fred H. Previc, Carolyn Declerck, Bert de Brabander, “Why your ‘‘head is in the
clouds’’during thinking: The relationship between cognition and upper space” in
Acta Psychologica 118 (2005) 7–24.
thoughts and this kind of “distant orientation” is essential to mental vizualition and the
recall of memories that can transcend both spatial and temporal frames of reference. In
physiological terms, the area of the brain responsible for regulating these kind of higher
order eye movements and certain function of working memory is the dorsal lateral
prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) which is situated in front of the frontal eye fields (FEF). The
dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex is a dopamine rich environment and the dopamine located
here is the main neurotransmitter of the focal-extrapersonal space pathways used for
controlling the movements of the eyes when scanning distant space.11 The Columbia
team used fMRI brain imaging while participants performed a simple contextual memory
task involving pressing a button marked “1” when you see the letter “A” appear in a
sequence of letters after an “X” and press a button marked “2” when you see an “X” after
a “B”. This enabled them to isolate the areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in
contextual memory processing and then follow up in those areas and test for dopamine
levels. A week later the same participants were given a transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS) pulse in that same area (effectively a short term lobotomy that renders the area
temporarily inoperable). They then performed the same tests. The pulses to the right
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex adversely affected the participant responses, suggesting that
this area us indeed instrumental in contextual working memory. They then followed up
with fMRI testing of dopamine production and found that the levels were significantly
higher immediately after the participants were presented with the contextual memory
tests. These findings provided evidence that this area of the brain is involved in
representing and maintaining contextual information and that the updating of this
information is linked to phased signaling by dopamine.

So, when we need to create abstract thoughts, recall memories or think deeply we
automatically engage with ambient extrapersonal space and our brain transmits
dopamine. As it stands, this provides us with a neurobiological reason why the expansive
views of classical Greek theatres were so important to both the location of dramatic
performance spaces and the cognitive reception of the plays themselves. But Previc takes

11
Fred Previc, “The Neuropsychology of 3-D Space,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 124 (2), 1998,
pp. 123-64.
his theories on dopamine much further and has argued persuasively that what he terms
the “distal dopaminergic focus” is also instrumental in religious and spiritual
experience.12

Previc also gathers evidence from many studies that have shown how Dopamine is
instrumental in both religious thought and extra-human or “out-of-body” behaviors that
are also often associated with religious experience such as dreams, hallucinations,
schizophrenia and seizures. One study led by Krummenacher in 2002 showed that when a
dopamine precursor I-dopa, that acts like dopamine, was given to people who described
themselves as skeptical, their perceptual sensitivity decreased to the same level of
paranormal believers (this category includes people who describe themselves as
religious).13 Krummenacher posited that paranormal thinkers had higher than normal
levels of dopamine and this produces a distortion of extrapersonal sensory inputs
promoting superstitious beliefs and a characteristic underestimation of the role of
chance.14

Previc has also suggested that dreams and hallucinations “represent the triumph of the
extrapersonal systems over body orientated or peripersonal systems.”15 Many of these
consist of the experience of falling, flying or distant landscapes, and we use terms like
“out of body experience” or “beside himself” to describe them. Both rapid and upward,
eye movements accompany many of these states. Extreme upward eye movements, such
as eye rolling, are associated with spiritual and religious behaviors such as meditation,
hypnosis, trance-like states and seizures. Greek tragedy has several famous depictions of
characters besides themselves in some form of trance-like altered mental status, such as
Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes; Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ Cassandra; Euripides’
Agave and Phaedrea - to name a few. In these cases eyes are often described as “blazing”

12
Previc, F., The Dopaminergic Mind in Human Evolution and History, Cambridge, 2009.
13
Krummenacher, P., Mohr, C., Haker, H., & Brugger, P. Dopamine, paranormal belief, and the
detection of meaningful stimuli. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 22(8), 2010, pp. 1670-1681.
14
Blackmore, Susan, and Tom Trościanko. "Belief in the paranormal: Probability judgements,
illusory control, and the ‘chance baseline shift’." British Journal of Psychology 76.4 (1985): 459-
468 &Brugger, P., and R. E. Graves. "Right hemispatial inattention and magical ideation."
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 247.1 (1997): 55-57.
15
Previc (1998).
or “fiery” and in Euripides’ Herakles, the hero’s eyes are described as “rolling in his
head” (931) as he attacks his own children in a fit of delusional insanity. Previc also
points out that upward eye movements promote the EEG “alpha rhythm” - the brain wave
associated with the meditative state. Additionally, in several cultures there are meditative
and spiritual techniques that place a focal concentration on the “third eye”- the area of the
forehead between and above the eyes – meaning that the viewer must engage with the
face by looking up.16 It is notable then that many representations of Dionysos show the
god with a “third eye” usually in the form of a circle of small pained dots in the center of
his forehead. We also frequently find a third-eye on the face of the gorgon.

Previc’s theory posits that religious and spiritual behavior “are largely a product of the
extrapersonal brain systems that predominate in the ventromedial cortex and rely heavily
on dopaminergic transmission” and that “religion appears to be biased towards distant
(upper) space and time”. This can help us to understand a little more of the religiosity of
experiencing a Greek drama. This extends further than the procession of the god that
opened the festival and the ever-present animal sacrifices happening in the sanctuary in
full view (and smell) of the audience seated in the theatron above. There is also the
relationship of the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus to the liminal realm of Dionysos
both in its name and its physical view. But the view offered something else, something
that is denied to most modern theatre goers today – it allowed them to both watch the
play before them and deeply contemplate what they experienced as their relationship to
the theatrical event constantly shifted between Previc’s four spatial realms. The mask
operated in a similar way in this space: a striking visual object in a fluid visual field that
oscillated between peripheral and foveal (focused) vision. The masked actors would
themselves have been viewed in foveal vision while the chorus remained constantly in
the periphery providing a dynamic bi-modal form of spectatorship. This dynamic sense of
fluidity was reinforced by the eisodoi where the states of “on-stage” and “off stage” were
ambiguous and continual, and never fixed in any single place or time. All of this was

16
Leskowitz, Eric. "The “Third Eye”: A Psychoendocrine Model of Hypnotizability." American
Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 30.3 (1988): 209-215 & Schuman, Marjorie. "The
psychophysiological model of meditation and altered states of consciousness: A critical review."
The psychobiology of consciousness. Springer US, 1980. 333-378.
dominated by the theatre spectator’s visual relationship to the ambient extrapersonal
space of the landscape, sea and sky - a space where thoughts were not constrained by
scenery or walls; where spirituality could flourish; and minds could be changed.

I conclude with two anecdotes that seem to illustrate the importance of environment and
theatrical cognition. I remember being very excited to attend a production of a Polish
Macbeth presented by St. Anne’s Warehouse in the DUMBO (Down Under the
Manhattan Bridge) area of Brooklyn. This strip of East River front land of old
warehouses and wharfs between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge offers incredible
views of Manhattan, particularly at night. The production was mounted in a Civil War era
warehouse at the foot of Brooklyn Bridge called the Tobacco Factory. This roofless
structure was specially prepared with frontal risers for open-air summer performances of
the play. The actors’ own voices could not compete with the low frequent rumble of
traffic crossing the bridge above and so the audience were equipped with personal ear
phone head sets to hear the actors who were wearing body microphones. This should
have made for a compelling evening of contemporary Shakespeare. The production was
fine with some innovative touches and the headsets made one feel as if one were
watching a movie on a plane, often a deeply personal experience (have you ever been
moved by a movie on a plane, which you watched later on the ground and were shocked
how bad it was?) except it was outside and their was a gently breeze. The problem was
that however fine this show may have been it simply could not compete with the
magnificent and iconic sight of the N train making its way over the bridge before
descending back into the subway tunnel at Canal Street, or the glinting skyline of
Manhattan, or the tug boats hauling their barges up the East River. What was made very
clear that evening is that, despite the best efforts of modern technology, a play made for
the inside cannot compete for our attention with a compelling view and win. No, the
production must make that external environment part of the fabric of the play itself.
Greek plays did and to understand them we need to place them in their original, visually
dynamic environment – even if we then translate and adapt them to suit the theatres we
frequent today.
This was brought home to me very early on in my theatrical life. In 1990, the first
professional company I was involved with, a group of former students from University
College London called the London Small Theatre Company, has been invited to represent
the UK at what was billed as “the first theatrical competition held in Greece since ancient
times”. This was a European festival of ancient drama held at the ancient stadium at
Delphi in Greece. For some reason (something to do with the funding) all participants
had to be under 30, which was particularly disappointing for the actor in the one man
Philoctetes from Italy who was summarily disqualified when it was discovered that he
was actually 32. Though the sanctuary at Delphi does contain a large stone Hellenistic
theatre, it was not in a state that could safely accommodate an audience, though it had
been used in the 1930’s for theatrical productions of ancient Greek plays. This theatre has
a magnificent view out across the harbor town of Itea and the sea and sky beyond. Instead
the festival was held in the ancient stadium, nestled at the foot of Mt. Parnassus. What
was fascinating about the spirit of this multi-national gathering was that every director
and actor you spoke to from each participating country claimed ancient Greek drama as
somehow their own, that these plays had become part of the theatrical and cultural fabric
of their own communities, whether they were from the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark,
Spain and of course, Greece.

Our offering was a tiny six-person version of Aristophanes Clouds, craftily directed by
Fiona Laird with each member of the six-person cast also forming part of a rather
wonderful a cappella group who sang the witty choral odes, Fiona Laird had penned from
the Greek original. Our challenge was how to put this little chamber piece of a play into
a huge outdoor space and make it work. It was the environment that provided the answer.
The show took place at night and this did allow us to focus the audience’s attention on
our little circular canvas floor cloth (later stolen by the custodian to catch his olive
harvest). But when the chorus of Clouds were hailed to approach “down from Mount
Parnes” we turned the theatre lights on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, projecting huge
cloud patterns on to the tall slopes and then lighting up the trees in the valley below. I
will never forget the audible and collective gasp of the audience as they experienced this.
At the end of Clouds Socrates’ school is burned to the ground. This production had a
small cartoonish bomb thrown by a frantic Strepsiades. So, the large sound system was
turned into the mountains and a plosive sound was made into a microphone. It was as if
Apollo himself was striding down the mountainside – everything shook and stadium
trembled. Probably not the best thing to do too often at an incredibly important ancient
site, but it made for a terrific finale. The environment and the incorporation of it into the
production as a whole made that little production of Clouds work in that space. As for the
competition, we came third, not bad out of 12 and the Dutch Baccahe, that beat us to the
second spot, was really quite superb and also used the environment incredibly well. The
winners: the Greeks, of course.