Greek theatre or Greek drama is a theatrical tradition that was very popular in ancient Greece between 600 and 200 BC. Athens, the political and military power in Greece during this period, was the centre of ancient Greek theatre. Greek tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays were some of the earliest theatrical forms in the world. Greek theatre and plays have had a lasting impact on Western drama and culture.

Some themes of the theatre in the world can be traced back to ancient Greece. It developed from a country side festival, held for the god Dionysus. In Athens this developed into a more serious event, known as the City Dionysian.

According to legend, Greek tragedy as we know it was created in Athens,  530 BCE by a man known as Thespis. He was the leader of the dithyrambs performed in and around Attica (Greece). Thespis took the next step in the evolution by separating himself from the chorus and speaking, not singing, his character. He was inspired to this by the unique environment in Athens at that time. The city was at its peak for Greek art, literature, religion, politics and economics. The legendary statesman Solon had recently brought order to the split in class population of Athens. His main technique of public persuasion was poetry he wrote and, possibly, performed himself. Using the dynamic, iambic, and trochaic, the two techniques form two of the main pieces of tragedy that we see in the earliest plays of Aeschylus and could only have come to him from Solon through Thespis, who most likely experienced the great man's innovations firsthand

Thespis produced tragedies on themes and subjects later destroyed in the golden age such as the Danaids, Phoenician Women and Alcestis. He was the first poet we know of to use a historical subject. His Fall of Miletus, produced in 493-2, told the story chronologically of the fate of the town of Miletus after it was conquered by the Persians. Herodotus reports that "the Athenians made clear their deep grief for the taking of Miletus in many ways, but especially in this: when Phrynichus wrote a play entitled "The Fall of Miletus" and produced it, the whole theatre started to cry! They fined Phrynichus a thousand drachmas for something so personally and was told that they could never show the performance of that play ever again.  This proves the powerful effect tragedy had on the Athenians.