Drama in the classroom: classrooms on stage

This contribution considers interaction between the theatre and the classroom. It begins with Callias' Alphabet Tragedy--a play whose opening section reimagines theatrical space as a class in session. A chorus made up of the letters of the alphabet teaches a cast of females students --and with them the theatre audience--how to spell. The paper goes on to discuss the intersection of theatrical and educational spaces from three angles. (1) Conflations of chorus and schoolroom in the early Classical period are explained in terms of competing notions of education--choral training on the one hand, and literate education on the other. (2) The widespread conceit of the playwright as teacher is found to be at odds with the ubiquitous representation of failed learning within comic plays. (3) The use of dramatic texts as teaching aids is connected to our evidence for theatrical performances within ancient classrooms. Interaction between the spaces of theatre and school appears in our earliest references to literate education in Ancient Greece, and extends well into Late Antiquity.