Classics and Contemporary Theatre

2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-244
Author(s):  
Helene Foley
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Status ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Status Of Women

Any discussion of ancient Greek and Roman drama on the contemporary stage must begin with a brief acknowledgment of both the radically increased worldwide interest in translating, (often radically) revising, and performing these plays in the past thirty-five years and the growing scholarly response to that development. Electronic resources are developing to record not only recent but many more past performances, from the Renaissance to the present.1 A group of scholars at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford—Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh, Oliver Taplin, and their associates Pantelis Michelakis and Amanda Wrigley—are at the forefront, along with Lorna Hardwick and her associates at the U.K.'s Open University, in organizing conferences and lecture series; these have already resulted in several volumes that aim to understand the recent explosion of performances as well as to develop a more extensive picture of earlier reception of Greek and Roman drama (above all, Greek tragedy, to which this essay will be largely confined).2 These scholars, along with others, have also tried to confront conceptual issues involved in the theatrical reception of classical texts.3 Most earlier work has confined itself to studies of individual performances and adaptations or to significant directors and playwrights; an important and exemplary exception is Hall and Macintosh's recent Greek Tragedy and British Theatre 1660–1914.4 This massive study profits from an unusually advantageous set of archival materials preserved in part due to official efforts to censor works presented on the British stage. Oedipus Rex, for example, was not licensed for a professional production until 1910 due to its scandalous incest theme. This study makes a particular effort to locate performances in their social and historical contexts, a goal shared by other recent studies of postcolonial reception discussed below.5 For example, British Medeas, which repeatedly responded to controversies over the legal and political status of women, always represented the heroine's choice to kill her children as forced on her from the outside rather than as an autonomous choice. Such connections between the performance of Greek tragedy and historical feminism have proved significant in many later contexts worldwide. Work on the aesthetic side of performances of Greek drama, including translation, is at an earlier stage, but has begun to take advantage of important recent work on ancient staging, acting, and performance space.6

scholarly journals Greek Tragedy, Agonistic Space, and Contemporary Performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephe Harrop
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Contested Spaces ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Spatial Practice ◽  
Recent Case Study ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Site

In this article Stephe Harrop combines theatre history and performance analysis with contemporary agonistic theory to re-conceptualize Greek tragedy's contested spaces as key to the political potentials of the form. She focuses on Athenian tragedy's competitive and conflictual negotiation of performance space, understood in relation to the cultural trope of the agon. Drawing on David Wiles's structuralist analysis of Greek drama, which envisages tragedy's spatial confrontations as a theatrical correlative of democratic politics, performed tragedy is here re-framed as a site of embodied contest and struggle – as agonistic spatial practice. This historical model is then applied to a recent case study, Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women as co-produced by Actors Touring Company and the Lyceum, Edinburgh, in 2016–17, proposing that the frictious effects, encounters, and confrontations generated by this production (re-staged and re-articulated across multiple venues and contexts) exemplify some of the potentials of agonistic spatial practice in contemporary re-performance of Greek tragedy. It is contended that re-imagining tragic theatre, both ancient and modern, as (in Chantal Mouffe's terms) ‘agonistic public space’ represents an important new approach to interpreting and creatively re-imagining, interactions between Athenian tragedy and democratic politics. Stephe Harrop is a Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool Hope University, where her research focuses primarily on performances and texts adapted from, or responding to, ancient tragedy and epic. She is co-author of Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

The Serpent Son (1979): A Science Fiction Aesthetic?

2018 ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Tony Keen
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Production Methods ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Clear Statement

This chapter discusses the aesthetics of the BBC’s 1979 production of Frederick Raphael and Kenneth McLeish’s The Serpent Son, an adaptation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, which critics at the time associated with science fiction. Certainly, the design of costumes, sets, props and lighting, together with the direction and camerawork, gave this trilogy a non-realist studio-bound visual style familiar to contemporary British television science fiction series, such as Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and The Tomorrow People. By examining elements of the mise-en-scène, this chapter assesses whether this was a deliberate choice. It argues that, whilst the similarities are there, the aesthetic is as much the result of production methods employed at the time by the BBC, and general non-mimetic approaches to the production of Greek drama on screen, as it is any deliberate attempt to recall the science fiction genre. But the choice of a non-realist aesthetic for Greek tragedy is also a clear statement about the producers’ view of the connection between the modern audience and ancient Greek texts. This is the dominant visual aesthetic of productions of Greek tragedy on British television around this time, many of which employed similar distancing effects.

The Masks of Greek Tragedy as Point of Departure for Modern Performance

2001 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Vervain ◽  
David Wiles
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Valuable Point ◽  
New Comedy

In this article, David Wiles and Chris Vervain stake out the ground for a substantial programme of continuing research. Chris Vervain, coming from a background in visual and performance art, is in the first instance a maker of masks. She is also now writing a thesis on the masks of classical tragedy and their possibilities in modern performance, and, in association with the University of Glasgow, working on an AHRB research programme that involves testing the effect of Greek New Comedy masks in performance. David Wiles, Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, has published books on the masks of Greek New Comedy and on Greek performance space, and lectured on Greek masks. Most recently, his Greek Theatre Performance: an Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2000) included an investigation of the classical mask and insights provided by the work of Lecoq. He is now planning a book on the classical Greek mask. Wiles and Vervain are both committed to the idea that the mask was the determining convention which gave Greek tragedy its identity in the ancient world, and is a valuable point of departure for modern practitioners engaging with the form. They anticipate that their research will in the near future incorporate a symposium and a further report on work-in-progress.

Stage by Stage: The Birth of Theatre. By Philip Freund. London: Peter Owen, 2003; pp. 811. $79.95 cloth; Women and Humor in Classical Greece. By Laurie O'Higgins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. xviii + 262. $70 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-324
Author(s):  
Mark Ringer
Keyword(s):  
Past Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
The Past ◽  
General Readership ◽  
Comprehensive Survey

Both Philip Freund's The Birth of Theatre and Laurie O'Higgins's Women and Humor in Classical Greece deal with Ancient Greek drama. Freund, a theatre historian, attempts a fairly comprehensive survey of both Greek and Roman drama as well as its influence on postclassical theatre, with particular emphasis on the past century. O'Higgins, a classicist, offers what at first glance appears a far narrower exploration that might only be of interest to other classicists. Of the two writers, it is O'Higgins who crafts a readable study that resonates well beyond its ostensibly narrow subject, whereas Freund's book, geared toward a more general readership, is hampered by serious problems of presentation and organization that compromise his more ambitious work's usefulness.

Translating Greek plays for the theatre today

Target ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna Hardwick
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Reciprocal Influences ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Performance Creation

This essay discusses the relationship between form, language, rewriting and performance in the contemporary staging of ancient Greek drama, with special attention to the range of working practices of the translators, rewriters and theatre practitioners that are involved in the performance creation process. The discussion is framed by questions about the reciprocal influences of research in translation studies and in classics and about how both can best engage with the insights offered by performance praxis.

scholarly journals Poetic Language and Corporeality in Translations of Greek Tragedy

2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Stephe Harrop ◽  
David Wiles
Keyword(s):  
Physical Performance ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Short History ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Bodily Expression ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Level ◽  
And Performance

The translation of ancient tragedy is often considered at a linguistic level, as if the drama consisted simply of words being written, spoken, and heard. This article contends that translation for the stage is a process in which literary decisions have physical, as well as verbal, outcomes. It traces existing formulations concerning the links between vocal and bodily expression, and explores the ways in which printed texts might be capable of suggesting modes of corporeality or systems of movement to the embodied performer; and sketches some of the ways in which the range of possible relationships between language and physicality might be explored and understood, drawing upon recent practice-based research into the work of three modern poetic translators of Greek tragedy. Stephe Harrop is a theatre practitioner and academic whose work explores the links between text and physical performance. She originally trained as a dancer, and currently teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London. David Wiles is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway. His research interests include Greek theatre, masked performance, and drama in translation. His most recent publications include A Short History of Western Performance Space (2003) and Mask and Performance in Greek Tragedy (2007).

scholarly journals Andronikos I Komnenos: A Greek Tragedy

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry J. MAGOULIAS
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
The Aesthetic

<span style="line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt">The Annals of Niketas Choniates depict Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (1183-1185) in certain aspects of his lifestyle as a mirror image of his first cousin, Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143-1180). The life and death of Andronikos I Komnenos provide us with a window into the aesthetic, moral, intellectual, religious, economic and emotional world of Byzantine society in the 12th century. It was thanks to the Byzantine empire that the ancient texts were preserved and transmitted. Ancient Greek culture and reason, in particular, continued to inform Christian values while, at the same time, both could be in radical conflict. The tragic reign of Andronikos as presented by Niketas Choniates conforms to Aristotle's principles of classical drama, but there is a fundamental disagreement between the author of the Poetics and the historian as to what constitutes tragedy, which underlines this conflict.</span>

Israeli Theatre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
The State ◽  
Study Research ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
Important Development ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Reading Study

This chapter reviews the state of Israeli theatre today, seventy-two years since the production of Racine’s Phaedra at Habima Theatre, and sums up its notable achievements, and the myriad forms, styles, artists, and institutions that together provide fertile ground for Israeli theatre’s encounters with classical drama. An overview of the seventy-two years of reception of Greek tragedy in Israeli theatre (1945–2017) demonstrates clearly that the most important development appears to be that local theatre makers have relinquished previous preconceived ideas about classical Greek drama and performance and of Aristotle’s theatrical doctrine, in favour of personal reading, study, research, and decoding of the classical works. It also presents the young and talented artists that are bringing the results of their studies and experimentations to the translation, writing, directing, and acting of classical drama to the Israeli stage, and using that drama to deliver innovative and challenging productions for today’s audiences.

Reinventing the Past: Mendelssohn's Antigone and the Creation of an Ancient Greek Musical Language

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASON GEARY
Keyword(s):  
Original Poetry ◽  
Wind Band ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ludwig Tieck ◽  
Male Chorus ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ancient Music ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn

ABSTRACT In 1841, Sophocles's Antigone was performed at the Prussian court theater with staging by Ludwig Tieck and music by Felix Mendelssohn. Commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, this production aimed to re-create aspects of Greek tragedy by, among other things, using J. J. Donner's 1839 metrical translation and having an all-male chorus sing the odes. Mendelssohn initially experimented with imitating the purported sound of ancient music by composing primarily unison choral recitative and limiting the accompaniment to flutes, tubas, and harps; but he quickly abandoned this approach in favor of a more traditional one. Yet despite his overall adherence to modern convention, he did employ several strategies to evoke ancient Greek practice and thus to meet the unique demands of the Prussian court production. Highlighting important distinctions between verse-types in the original poetry, Mendelssohn retained a vestige of his initial approach by composing unison choral recitative to indicate the presence of anapestic verse while turning to melodrama for the lyric verse of the play's two main characters. In addition, he reproduced the poetic meter by shaping the rhythm of the vocal line to reflect both the accentual pattern of Donner's translation and, in some cases, the long and short syllables of Sophocles's Greek verse. Owing largely to the irregular line lengths characteristic of Donner's text, the music is marked by conspicuously asymmetrical phrases, which serve to defamiliarize the otherwise straightforward choral styles being employed to convey the various moods of Sophocles's choruses. In the opening chorus, Mendelssohn alludes to the familiar sound of a Mäännerchor accompanied by a wind band, thereby suggesting the ode's celebratory and martial associations while recalling his own Festgesang written for the 1840 Leipzig festival commemorating the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's printing press. The listener is thus presented with a thoroughly recognizable musical idiom and yet simultaneously distanced from it in a way that underscores the historical remoteness of ancient Greek tragedy.

Ancient Greek Tragedy as Performance: the Literature–Performance Problematic

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Mario Frendo
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Performance Criticism ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
A Performance

In this article Mario Frendo engages with the idea of ancient Greek tragedy as a performance phenomenon, questioning critiques that approach it exclusively via literary–dramatic methodologies. Based on the premise that ancient Greek tragedy developed within the predominantly oral context of fifth-century BCE Greece, he draws on Hans-Thies Lehmann's study of tragedy and its relation to dramatic theatre, where it is argued that the genre is essentially ‘predramatic’. Considered as such, ancient Greek tragedy cannot be fully investigated using dramatic theories developed since early modernity. In view of this, Walter J. Ong's caution with respect to the rational processes produced by generations of literate culture will be acknowledged and alternative critiques sought, including performance criticism and performance-oriented frameworks such as orality, via which Frendo traces possible critical trajectories that would allow contemporary scholarship to deal with ancient tragedy as a performance rather than literary phenomenon. Reference will be made to Aristotle's use of the term ‘poetry’, and how performance criticism may provide new insight into how the Poetics deals with one of the earliest performance phenomena in the West. Mario Frendo is lecturer of theatre and performance and Head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta, where he is director of CaP, a research group focusing on links between culture and performance. His research interests include musicality in theatre, ancient tragedy, and relations between philosophical thought and performance.

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