Detail from black and white photograph of female dancers choreographed by Margaret Morris © Fred Daniels Estate
Mask designs by Abd'Elkader Farrah for Oedipus Rex, 1960
The Story Of Orestes, 1886: illustration depicting Clytemnestra's ghost and the Furies
Framed costume design sketches hanging on a wall at the APGRD's Oresteia Exhibition, 2011

Welcome

The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (the APGRD) is a research project based in the Classics Faculty at the University of Oxford. It investigates the performance of ancient texts from Greek tragedy to Roman epic, in any medium and any period, from stage to screen, from antiquity to the present day.

A world-renowned international research centre, the APGRD has been at the forefront of classical reception studies for over twenty years and is a pioneer in classical performance reception - see details of our publications here.

For more information visit the About Us section; or to explore our archives and production databases go to Research Collections.

APGRD News

Penelope’s WebBlack and white sixteenth century Italian engraving of Penelope and Her Maids Weaving

The APGRD is delighted to have joined KCL (under the leadership of Emily Pillinger) in an AHRC-funded network to continue with the development of a new opera based on Penelope by Cheryl Frances-Hoad (composer) and Jeanne Pansard-Besson (librettist/director).

Now titled Penelope’s Web, the project consists of two workshops, the first of which will take place in Oxford from 14-19 April in the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building at St Hilda’s College and will involve students from the Cheney School (Oxford) and young singers from Frideswide Voices at Christ Church. The workshop will include a study afternoon on Thursday 18 April, 2-6pm, with contributions from Lucy Jackson, Justine McConnell, Alex Silverman, Laura Swift and Oliver Taplin and will culminate in a performance on Friday 19 April at 6pm, to which everyone is welcome.

For further details, email: fiona.macintosh@classics.ox.ac.uk
For further details about the June workshop at KCL, from 24-29 June, email: emily.pillinger@kcl.ac.uk
For further details on the project's development please see our Artistic Collaborations page>

Colour photograph of a seated man playing a guitar indoors, behind a microphone, against a plain yellow wallpapered wall.Joe's Odyssey

Our Saturday 20 April workshop, Reworking Epic: Across Time, Media and Cultures, will conclude at 5.30pm with the UK premiere of US singer-songwriter Joe Goodkin’s Odyssey, a modern reinterpretation of the Homeric poem. If you would like to attend only this performance (rather than the day-long workshop), you can do so for free, but please email   to sign up. In the Ioannou Centre lecture theatre, 66 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU.

DAT @ APGRD

A black and white photograph of a seated Maria Callas, in the role of Medea, with a clapperboard shutting in front of her. We are delighted to announce that we have begun phase one of our new Digital Ancient Theatre project, DAT @ APGRD. We are developing an online search interface to locate audio-visual recordings of performances inspired by the ancient Greek and Roman dramas and epics – collating information about recordings from our own extensive audio-visual collections, as well as those held by external archives, repositories, theatre companies, and online streaming services. Read more>

Cold War Classics

one woman and three men pose for a photograph on a sunny day in PragueThe APGRD and Czech Academy of Sciences have together developed a research project on Classics, theatre, and scholarship, 1946-1989. With funding from the Czech Academy, the interdisciplinary research team (from Czechia and the UK) are developing an interactive website, including oral histories.

Tell us about Productions!

In a bid Photograph of numerous programme notes, flyers, and posters related to performances of Agamemnon and the Oresteiato improve the scope of our Productions Database we have created an online portal for anyone to submit information about performances inspired by Greek and Roman sources - any country, any time period, any medium (films and tv, stage or radio plays, ballets or operas etc). If you can help us, please visit our online submissions form >>