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The Great Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus at the Sanctuary of Asclepius, the second main venue of the annual Athens and Epidaurus Festival, built as part of a sanctuary to Asclepius (god of medicine), can sit an audience of about 14,000.
One of the world’s first and most famous open-air theaters, the Theater of Dionysus (built on the Athenian hillside), still stands today. To attend a performance, the audience would enter through the theatron (the seating section). The chorus was on a flat area called the orchestra in the middle of the orchestra, there was a raised platform where the performers get to be in the spotlight (called the thymele). If anyone wanted to enter/exit the stage, they had to go through the parodoi. When the actors needed to switch masks they would go the a stage area named the skene. Sometimes, if a god was introduced in the play, actors would be lowered from a device attached to the top of the skene, which was known as deus ex machina, or “god in the machine”.