"Alan Hughes presents a new complete account of production methods in Greek comedy. The book summarises contemporary research and disputes, on such topics as acting techniques, theatre buildings, masks and costumes, music and the chorus. Evidence is re-interpreted and traditional doctrine overthrown. Comedy is presented as the pan-Hellenic, visual art of theatre, not as Athenian literature. Recent discoveries in visual evidence are used to stimulate significant historical revisions. The author has directly examined 350 vase scenes of comedy in performance and actor-figurines, in 75 collections, from Melbourne to St Petersburg. Their testimony is applied to acting techniques and costumes, and women's participation in comedy and mime. The chapters are arranged by topic, for convenient reference by scholars and students of theatre history, literature, classics and drama. Overall, the book provides a fresh practical insight into this continually developing subject"--

"Theatre is a mimetic art, composite and ephemeral. Directed by an underlying aesthetic, conscious or intuitive, theatrical imitation may be culturally determined or intellectually constructed. Performers deliberately imitate the 'other', whether human or animal, divine or spirit, allegory or force of nature. This mimesis is a compound, a variable array of associated arts, which may include music, dance, song and speech, supported by oral or literary composition. And every performance occurs in a unique, irrecoverable moment of time. Greek theatre is no exception. Ancient performances cannot be revived, but we have learned a good deal about their form and circumstances. This is a book about performance practice, the art of comic theatre in classical Greece. Historically, comedy has been examined less thoroughly than tragedy, in part perhaps because the extant texts are fewer and less representative, and documentary evidence comparatively scarce. While thirty-three extant tragedies are attributed to the three most celebrated poets, we have only eleven comedies by Aristophanes, and one by Menander, with some substantial fragments. The works of their rivals have disappeared"--