Dionysus

The Festival of Dionysus (Dionysia)  Tragedies were produced as part of a religious festival thrown every year in Athens, Greece to honor one of their favorite gods Dionysus, the god of wine and theater. Everything shut down for 5 days.

 Playwrights would write tragedies for a prize. Three of them would compete each year in the contest. Awards were given to the playwright who presented the best series of three dramas (we still have festivals like this! Sundance Film Festival, for example).  The reason the tragedies, comedies and other forms of poetry were performed at festivals dedicated to Dionysus was specifically because of his role as the god of wine, from which it was believed creative talent sprang. That belief went beyond the writers of the plays and applied also to the belief that wine was the source of the talents of the thespians, the singers and dancers of the chorus and the musicians as well. http://glitternight.com/2012/02/10/ancient-greek-comedy-pytine-423-bce/ [|Acting and Greek Theatre][|Honoring Dionysus] [|Dionysus] [|Dionysus - born Dec 25]