Theatrical Devices

    Ekkyklema

Ekkyklema (‘a wheeled-out thing’) is a platform on wheels rolled out through a door in the skene (see drawing on left), used to indicate that whatever is on the platform (actors and props) is supposed to be viewed as an interior scene .  The platform was circular or semicircular and may have revolved on a pivot (see drawing the right). For example, this device was probably used  to represent Phaedra suffering on a couch inside her palace in Euripides' Hippolytus.

Another means of informing the audience about action that has taken place inside the stage building (or anywhere else off-stage) is the messenger speech, in which the action is verbally described rather than visually represented. In general, this was the preferred method for presenting a violent death, since it was not customary for a character to be killed in full view of the audience. For example, Aeschylus in a lost play chose to keep Ajax’s suicide hidden from the audience and described it in a messenger speech.  Sophocles, however, chose to ignore this custom and had Ajax kill himself onstage.  This suicide in plain view must have been a great shock for the audience. A famous and effective example of this kind of messenger speech in Euripides’ Medea describes the horrible deaths of King Creon and his daughter.

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