ekkuklema

Ekkuklema (Greek: ἐκκύκλεμα; also spelled ekkuklema) was a wheeled wooden platform used in ancient Greek theatre to present the aftermath of a violent act by rolling a corpse or tableaux from inside the stage building (the skene) out onto the visible stage. The device was typically a flat, sometimes hinged, platform mounted on wheels and concealed within the skene or behind a closed door. After a scene of violence occurred offstage, stagehands rolled the ekkuklema through a doorway or trap to reveal the body to the audience. This mechanism enabled dramatic effect while avoiding the appearance of graphic violence onstage, reflecting the era’s constraints on stage depiction and the communal expectations of tragedy.

The ekkuklema is most closely associated with ancient Greek tragedy, including works attributed to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, though surviving drama provides only indirect evidence. Its use diminished as theatre evolved and stage machinery changed, but the concept influenced later theatrical devices that reveal events offstage or in a concealed location. In modern scholarship, ekkuklema is discussed as part of the repertoire of classical stage machinery and as a historical solution to the problem of representing death within the limitations of ancient performance spaces.

Variant spellings include ekkyklema and ekkuklema. The term is sometimes encountered in translations and scholarly discussions of Greek theatrical practice.