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.

Censoring the Uncensored: the Case of ‘Children in Uniform’

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Deeney
Keyword(s):  
New Work ◽  
Women Playwrights ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

British theatre between the two world wars has been a neglected area of interest for contemporary scholars and theatre historians, but a growing body of work in this field has of late begun to challenge the orthodoxies. Much of the new work has focused on the reclamation and repositioning of the work of ‘forgotten’ women playwrights and commercially successful gay playwrights such as Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. Here, John Deeney examines how the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of Christa Winsloe's lesbian-themedChildren in Uniform, and the commercial and critical success of its production at the Duchess Theatre in 1932–33, invites a reassessment of the possibilities open to women playwrights for exploring ‘deviancy’; and how contemporary theoretical positions too frequently ignore the challenge of the historically and culturally specific. John Deeney is Lecturer and Course Director in Theatre Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He is the editor ofWriting Live: an Investigation of the Relationship between Writing and Live Art(New Playwrights Trust, 1998) and a contributor to the forthcomingWomen, Theatre and Performance: New Histories/New Historiographies(Manchester University Press) andBritish Theatre between the Wars(Cambridge University Press).

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).

Performing Ancient Drama in Mask: the Case of Greek New Comedy

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-264
Author(s):  
Chris Vervain
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Comedy ◽  
Ancient Drama ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
New Comedy

Chris Vervain is a mask maker who has for a number of years trained and directed in performing masked drama. On the basis of research she has undertaken, using her own masks, on how to perform the ancient Greek plays, in this article she questions some of the modern orthodoxies of masked theatre, drawing specifically on her experience with Menander's New Comedy. With David Wiles, she contributed ‘The Masks of Greek Tragedy as Point of Departure for Modern Performance’ to NTQ 67 (August 2001) and, with Richard Williams, ‘Masks for Menander: Imaging and Imagining Greek Comedy’ to Digital Creativity, X, No. 3 (1999). Some of her masks can be seen at www.chrisvervain.btinternet.com. She is currently working towards a doctorate on masks in Greek tragedy at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Performing Ancient Drama in Mask: the Case of Greek Tragedy

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Vervain
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Ancient Drama ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
New Comedy

Chris Vervain is a mask maker who has for a number of years directed masked Greek drama. On the basis of the research she has undertaken using her own masks, in this article she considers some of the practical issues involved in a masked staging of the plays today, drawing specifically on her experience of directing the Bacchae and the Antigone. Here she extends the discussion started previously in ‘Performing Ancient Drama in Mask: the Case of Greek New Comedy’ in NTQ 79 (August 2004). Earlier, with David Wiles, she contributed ‘The Masks of Greek Tragedy as Point of Departure for Modern Performance’ to NTQ 67 (August 2001). In 2008 she completed a doctorate on masks in Greek tragedy at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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).

All about Eve: Apple Island and the Fictions of Lesbian Community

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 (37) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
Doctoral Candidate ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Lesbian Community ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University ◽  
Cultural Feminism

We continue our occasional series on the actuality and the ideology of lesbian performance with a study of Apple Island, a performance space in Madison, Wisconsin. Many of the productions of this ‘women's cultural and art space’ could, suggests Stacy Wolf, be categorized as performance art: she looks at these in the context of other modes and definitions of cultural production, and at the ‘complex interplay of identity and knowledge’ which constructs Apple Island's potential spectators. Looking at both positive negative critiques of its work, she concludes that the activity through which its refusal of political and performative divisions is best exemplified is the weekly class-cumperformance of country western line dancing, and suggests through folkloric analogy how this helps to define or redefine the meaning of cultural feminism. Stacy Wolf is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Drama and a lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also published articles in Theatre Studies, Women and Performance, and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.

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

‘It's Never about Me, It's Always about You’: Generosity in Zarrilli's Training Space

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-347
Author(s):  
ALISSA CLARKE
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
The Other ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Training Community ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University ◽  
Global Training ◽  
The Relationship

In his extraordinary essay ‘The Metaphysical Studio’, Phillip Zarrilli advocated for the actor's psychophysical exploration of risky uncertainties and unknown possibilities in the ‘spatio-temporal realm between presence and absence, between “what is” and “what is not” – this liminal realm between’. It was typical of Zarrilli that when he received confirmation that his cancer had returned for the third and final time, he both responded pragmatically and perceived the experience as a philosophically interesting inhabitation of ‘that liminal place between’. Just as ‘The Metaphysical Studio’ emphasizes the actor's investigation of ‘the relationship between that “self” and “others” – the other “selves” that inhabit me; those I might wish to inhabit; the other as “Character”; the interpersonal you-as-other;’ it was also typical that Zarrilli sought to take care of many of the ‘others’ connected with him. These others included a sprawling global training community of students, practitioners and scholars. In a final video call alongside his life and work collaborator Kaite O'Reilly and with more than thirty-five students from around the world who had studied his intercultural performer training at the University of Exeter, Zarrilli stressed, ‘it's never about me, it's always about you’. This stress on ‘you’ was rooted in his emphasis on participants gaining ownership of the training and assimilating it into their own practice, along with a core focus on the other and the collective. During the call, Zarrilli signalled the importance of consistently working within the studio and performance space on strong interpersonal relationships, which ‘can arise when people are learning how to be generous with their energy, with what they can give, with how they can be present to each other. And again, we need more of that in the world’. It is unsurprising that those who participated in Zarrilli's training experienced how that focus on intersubjectivity developed a joyful international and intergenerational community, underpinned by politicized intentions around accessibility, generous group awareness, an ethics of care, and an ability to share the space, which could also be carried into the wider world.

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