The dramatic action of the plays does point to the presence of a skene or background scenery of some description, the strongest evidence of which is from the Oresteia that requires a number of entrances and exits from a palace door.[17] Whether this was a temporary or permanent wooden structure or simply a tent remains unclear since there is no physical evidence for a skene building until the Periclean phase.

Fiechter's reconstruction of the Lycurgan theatre. View from the north.

The stone auditorium offered seating that “with a cushion, would be tolerable, though still somewhat cramping for a long day’s sitting” [Pickard-Cambridge 140]

Though gladitorial contests in the theatre did not cease, the Athens seemed to have agreed with Dio Chysostumus that it was no longer the proper venue for religious activities.  The performances given in honor of Dionysos were eventually moved to the theatre of Herodes Atticus.

The type of entertainment that took place in the Romanized theatre was of a decidedly different flavor than the tragedies and comedies of the earlier periods.  The theatre became a venue for gladiatorial contests. Dio Chrysostumus chastised the Athens for this saying that “in their theatre under the very walls of the Acropolis, in the place where they put up their Dionysos in the orchestra, so that often a fighter is slaughtered among the very seats in which the heirophant and the other priests must sit”

Roman Reconstruction – 1st to 4th Century CE

Every mainland Greek city of note built a theatre, and every Greek colony followed suit. Athens was at the epicenter with its Theatre of Dionysus: it was the first theatre built in Greece, the first theatre to stage the plays of Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes, and the model for hundreds of stone theatres the Greeks and Romans would eventually build.