Peripeteia and anagnorisis are fancy Greek words, but we are all quite familiar with the concepts. Anyone who has watched the eighties television show The A-Team is quite familiar with peripeteia. Every episode, the A-Team thinks they have the bad guys stumped, but then the tables are turned (the first peripeteia), and the team is captured. Of course, the bad guys always lock them up in a warehouse full of welding equipment, and the A-Team …showed first 75 words of 654 total…

…showed last 75 words of 654 total…have a spoken Prologue and Exode that frame all the choral songs and the Episodes that are inserted between choral songs. We might think of the choral songs as being like the refrain in a pop song, and the spoken bits as being like the verses. The spoken bits advance the action and deal with the particulars of the play, while the choral songs frame the action and discuss the overall themes of the play.