Origins of Acting

Thespis (6th Century B.C.E.) of Icaria (present-day Dionysos, Greece) is thought to be The First Actor, the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play (instead of narrating as himself or herself).

Greek Theatre Mask from about the 1st Century A.D.

In the 6th century B.C.E., when the tyrant Pisistratus, who then ruled the city, established a series of new public festivals. One of these, the 'City Dionysia', a festival of entertainment held in honour of the God Dionysus, featured competitions in music, singing, dance and poetry. When the head of state requests something, you do it. After an Athenian military man and tyrant Pisistratus came to power in 560 B.C.E., he instituted many artistic and cultural innovations. He expanded the offerings at the City of Dionysia by having plays performed. It’s said that Pisistratus asked Thespis and his troupe to perform in that initial drama festival in 534 B.C.E. Most remarkable of all the winners was said to be a wandering bard called Thespis.

According to tradition, in 534 or 535 B.C.E., Thespis astounded audiences by leaping onto the back of a wooden cart and reciting poetry as if he was the characters whose lines he was reading. In doing so he became the world's first actor, and it is from him that we get the word for actor, 'thespian'.

The "Inventor of Tragedy" was born in Attica, and was the first prize winner at the Great Dionysia in 534 B.C.E. He was an important innovator for the theatre, since he introduced such things as the independent actor, as opposed to the choir, as well as masks, makeup and costumes.


According to Aristotle, Thespis transformed the presentation of stories forever by emerging from the Greek chorus and acting an individual role. Greek tragedy is said to have been descendant from dithyrambic poetry, which was the choral presentations of Greek myth that included movement. With Thespis, the chorus played its role, while the first actor played various roles by switching masks. Greek tragedy would not add another principal actor to the stage until some 50 years later in the fifth century when playwright/actor Aeschylus first wrote tragedies to be performed by two actors and a chorus.

Thespis walked around Athens pulling a handcart, setting up a kind of one-man plays, where he showed the bad behaviour of man. His contemporary, Solon resented him, with the explanation that what he showed on stage soon would be acted out in reality as well. According to Plutarch, an Athenian lawmaker and leader, Solon went to see Thespis perform. It’s noted by Plutarch that this was when Thespis had first started acting and tragedy was a new form. Solon was elderly and living a leisurely life and in addressing Thespis after his performance he asked, 'if he was not ashamed to tell so many lies before such a number of people'; and Thespis replying that it was no harm to say or do so in a play, Solon vehemently struck his staff against the ground: "Ah,” he said, "if we honor and commend such play as this, we shall find it some day in our business.” That’s the first recorded criticism of an actor that we have on hand, and it was made, ironically, by a politician.

Although we’ll never know if Thespis was the first actor on the stage, we are more certain that he was the first actor in a scripted drama to appear on the Athenian stage. However, we can’t even be certain about this. We do know that Thespis won first prize in 534 B.C.E. for the best tragedy in the initial City of Dionysia festival and that he was influential enough to be written about by Aristotle in The Poetics, which is the first document we possess focusing on dramatic criticism. Whether or not he was actually the first actor on the stage doesn’t matter; Thespis was influential enough to be considered a groundbreaking force in the Ancient Greek theatre.

Thespis' wagon, relief of the Giotto's Belltower in Florence, Italy, Nino Pisano, 1334–1336