ABSTRACT
The Rule of Three Actors, generally believed to apply to all tragedy in the fifth century and possibly comedy as well, is best explained in terms of creating a level playing field among competitors. Since all theatrical performance in Athens was typically part of dramatic competitions at festivals for Dionysus, providing notionally equal resources to competitors makes sense. The playing space in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens consisted of the orchestra, the area immediately before the skene, and the skene roof. The Athenian theatre also had resources for special effects. The central axis of the performance area therefore notionally travelled from the audience through the thymele to the central door of the skene to a hidden interior space that could be revealed with the ekkyklema. A number of environmental factors beyond the control of the didaskalos crucially shaped the theatrical experience. The performance venues in Republican Rome were fundamentally different than those of Classical and Hellenistic Greece.
