The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy

Ramus ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Ley ◽  
Michael Ewans
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
Considerable Experience

For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to major scenes from two Greek tragedies, and suggest some general conclusions. The article must stand to some extent as a critique of the succession of books that has followed the apparently pioneering study of Oliver Taplin, none of which has made any substantial or sustained attempt to indicate where actors might have acted in the performance of Greek tragedy, though most, if not all, have been prepared to discard the concept of a raised ‘stage’ behind the orchestra. Hippolytus (428 BC) is the earliest of the surviving plays of Euripides to involve three speaking actors in one scene. Both Alcestis (438 BC and Medea (431 BC almost certainly require three actors to be performed with any fluency, but surprisingly present their action largely through dialogue and confrontation — surprisingly, perhaps, because at least since 458 BC and the performance of the Oresteia it is clear that three actors were available to any playwright.

scholarly journals Translating Commonplace Marks in Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-84
Author(s):  
Carla Suthren
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
The Moment

This essay locates the moment at which commonplace marks were ‘translated’ from printed classical texts into English vernacular drama in a manuscript of Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta, dated 1568. Based on a survey of the use of printed commonplace marks in classical drama between 1500 and 1568, it demonstrates that this typographical symbol was strongly associated with Greek tragedy, particularly Sophocles and Euripides, and hardly at all with Seneca. In light of this, it argues that the commonplace marks in the Jocasta manuscript should be read as a deliberate visual gesture towards Euripides. In this period, commonplace marks evoked printed Greek rather than Latin tragedy, and early modern readers might bring such associations to the English dramatic texts in which these marks also appeared, including the First Quarto of Hamlet (1603).

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.

Hamartia in Aristotle And Greek Tragedy

1975 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. W. Stinton
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
The Many ◽  
Moral Defect ◽  
Wrong Action

It is now generally agreed that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13 means ‘mistake of fact’. The moralizing interpretation favoured by our Victorian forebears and their continental counterparts was one of the many misunderstandings fostered by their moralistic society, and in our own enlightened erais revealed as an aberration. In challenging this orthodoxy I am not moved by any particular enthusiasm for Victoriana, nor do I want to revive the view that means simply ‘moral flaw’ or ‘morally wrong action’. I shall try to show that the word has a range of applications, from ‘ignorance of fact’ at one end to ‘moral defect’, ‘moral error’, at the other, and that the modern orthodoxy, though not as clearly wrong as the moralizing interpretation it displaced, restricts Aristotle's meaning in a way he did not intend, and does lessthan justice to his analysis of classical drama.

Africanizing Greek Mythology: Femi Osofisan’s Retelling of Euripides’the Trojan Women

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Ingy Aboelazm
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Iraqi War ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
The People ◽  
Shed Light

Nigerian writer Femi Osofisan’s new version of Euripides' The Trojan Women, is an African retelling of the Greek tragedy. In Women of Owu (2004), Osofisan relocates the action of Euripides' classical drama outside the walls of the defeated Kingdom of Owu in nineteenth century Yorubaland, what is now known as Nigeria. In a “Note on the Play’s Genesis”, Osofisan refers to the correspondences between the stories of Owu and Troy. He explains that Women of Owu deals with the Owu War, which started when the allied forces of the southern Yoruba kingdoms Ijebu and Ife, together with recruited mercenaries from Oyo, attacked Owu with the pretext of liberating the flourishing market of Apomu from Owu’s control. When asked to write an adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, in the season of the Iraqi War, Osofisan thought of the tragic Owu War. The Owu War similarly started over a woman, when Iyunloye, the favourite wife of Ife’s leader Okunade, was captured and given as a wife to one of Owu’s princes. Like Troy, Owu did not surrender easily, for it lasted out a seven-year siege until its defeat. Moreover, the fate of the people of Owu at the hands of the allied forces is similar to that of the people of Troy at the hands of the Greeks: the males were slaughtered and the women enslaved. The play sheds light on the aftermath experiences of war, the defeat and the accompanied agony of the survivors, namely the women of Owu. The aim of this study is to emphasize the play’s similarities to as well as shed light on its differences from the classical Greek text, since the understanding of Osofisan’s African play ought to be informed by the Euripidean source text.

The Other Entrepreneurs - Migrant Economies as Spaces for Social Innovation?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-271
Author(s):  
Claudia Lintner
Keyword(s):  
Social Innovation ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Migrant Entrepreneurship ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Migrant Entrepreneurs ◽  
The One

This article analyses the relationship between migrant entrepreneurship, marginalisation and social innovation. It does so, by looking how their ‘otherness’ is used on the one hand to reproduce their marginalised situation in society and on the other to develop new living and working arrangements promoting social innovation in society. The paper is based on a qualitative study, which was carried out from March 2014- 2016. In this period, twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with migrant entrepreneurs and experts. As the results show, migrant entrepreneurs are characterised by a false dichotomy of “native weakness” in economic self-organisation against the “classical strength” of majority entrepreneurs. It is shown that new possibilities of acting in the context of migrant entrepreneurship are mostly organised in close relation to the lifeworlds and specific needs deriving from this sphere. Social innovation processes initiated by migrant entrepreneurs through their economic activities thus develop on a micro level and are hence less apparent. Supportive networks are missing on a structural level, so it becomes difficult for single innovative initiatives to be long-lasting.

Reading and Interpreting Variants inCome and Go,Va-et-vientandKommen und Gehen

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Pascale Sardin
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Famous Paper ◽  
Textual Variants ◽  
Insight Into

This paper focuses on textual variants in Come and Go, Va-et-vient and Kommen und Gehen and considers these variants as thresholds (Genette, 1997) into these works. This paper aims to show how Beckett's self-translating process, which was prolonged and complicated in the case of his plays when he directed them himself, produces a number of possible textual confusions, but also how these complications constitute insight into the Beckettian text. Indeed variants and rewritings point to moments in the writing and rewriting process when Beckett met ‘resistant vitalities’ mentioned by George Steiner in After Babel (1975). To illustrate this, I study Beckett's first ‘dramaticule’, Come and Go, by examining its pre-texts, the French translation, and Beckett's production notebooks for Kommen und Gehen. In these texts, I explore the motifs of death and ocular anxiety, as studied by Freud in his famous paper on ‘The Uncanny.’ I show how the Freudian uncanny actually reveals the parodic archaism of Beckett's drama, as a parallel is drawn between the structure of Beckett's play and Greek tragedy. Beckett's sometimes ‘messy’ rewritings in Come and Go, Va-et-vient and Kommen und Gehen served the performing intuitive perception in us of death, an issue explored here through the trope of femininity. Furthermore, comparing Beckett's Come and Go and Va-et-vient makes it easier to see Beckett progressing towards what Deleuze called a ‘theatre of metamorphoses and permutations’ in Difference and Repetition – a monograph published in France the very year Come and Go was first produced (1966).

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