varied in many ways of construction and design. The technical advances in

acoustics and construction were enormous. The placement of the seating and

construction of the stage and even sizes of the theatres varied from

theatre to theatre. They varied from open-air to roofed, both columned and

free-spanned roofs. The versatility of uses of these auditoriums varied

from holding sports events to speakers and plays.

Some of the main architectural points of a theatre were the pit or

orchestra, cavea, skene, stage, and the parodoi. The pit or orchestra was

usually a circle marked out by a stone perimeter directly in front of the

stage for spectators to use. The cavea was the seating which was usually a

range of steps or terraces for the spectators to view the performance from.

Generally, the natural slope of the hill was used and the pit was located

at the bottom of the hill. The skene was a stage, dressing room, and

usually a backdrop all in one, it was generally a building built of stone

immediately behind the stage that extended to both sides of the stage with

two to three doors in it to provide access to the stage. The parodoi were

thousand people but there were problems with sight lines to the stage in

the roof were made almost exclusively of timber. The maximum span between

auditorium. The theatre was remodeled and renamed to the Hellenistic

wooden panels between them where paintings were placed during plays to

columns was twenty-four feet from center to center to accommodate the

Some topics in this essay:
Dionysus Athens, , Thersilion Megalopolis, Eccleesiasterion Priene, Pericles Athens, Hall Mysteries, Hellenistic Theatre, sight lines, Picard Cambridge, hundred bc, slope hill, natural slope hill, century bc, stage parodoi, skene stage, twenty-four feet, pit orchestra, sixty percent, thousand people,