You can download or listen to audio recordings of APGRD events on our website, or you can subscribe to them on the University of Oxford's Podcasting site or on iTunes. Videos are hosted on the APGRD YouTube channel. To make them easier to browse, all recordings have been arranged into the following categories:
- Lectures and in-conversations with creative practitioners (directors, actors, playwrights etc.)
- Readings and Performance events
- Lectures by leading scholars
- The annual Classics and English Lecture
- Classics Faculty Reception Seminars 2020
- What is Tragedy? Oliver Taplin and Joshua Billings dialogues
- What is Translation? Oliver Taplin and Lorna Hardwick dialogues
- Archive only recordings
Visit the APGRD Podcast for more conversations between members of the APGRD, scholars, and creative practitioners, and check our Events section to find out about upcoming events.
Creative practitioners talks
Tom Morris in conversation with Helen Eastman
Oct 2020: Tom Morris, the Artistic Director of Bristol's Old Vic, was recorded in an online conversation with Helen Eastman (Theatre Director/APGRD Advisory Board Member) in this virtual version of an APGRD Public Lecture.
We Are Not Princesses: APGRD/TORCH panel discussion
June 2019: Nur Laiq (TORCH Global South Visiting Fellow) discusses We Are Not Princesses, a documentary film about four Syrian women living as refugees in Beirut as they come together to tell their stories through the ancient Greek play, Antigone, with producer Hal Scardino and Professor Fiona Macintosh (APGRD Director).
Download or listen to the audio on the event's page
Wayne Jordan on Sophocles' Oedipus
Feb 2017: Director Wayne Jordan in conversation with Fiona Macintosh about his acclaimed version of Oedipus, staged at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 2015.
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The Globe Theatre's Oresteia (2015)
Nov 2015: Director Adele Thomas and playwright/translator Rory Mullarkey discuss their production of Aeschylus' Oresteia at London's Globe in October 2015, with an introduction by Oliver Taplin.
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Marina Carr in conversation with Fiona Macintosh
Oct 2015: Fiona Macintosh talks to playwright, Marina Carr about her new adaptation of Hecuba, and her long-standing relationship with Greek tragedies.
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Helen McCrory in conversation with Edith Hall
May 2015: Edith Hall (KCL) talks to actor, Helen McCrory about her role in the critically acclaimed production of Medea at the National Theatre in 2014.
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Gwyneth Lewis on Writing Clytemnestra
March 2015: award winning poet, and playwright, Gwyneth Lewis, talks about her 2012 play Clytemnestra, which premièred at at Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, in April 2012.
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Ian Rickson in conversation
Nov 2014: director Ian Rickson discusses his production of Sophocles' Electra at the Old Vic, in a new translation by Frank McGuinness and starring Olivier Award nominee Kristin Scott Thomas.
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Two rounds of the Cambridge Greek Play - lecture
Helen Eastman, director of the 2013 Prometheus / The Frogs, talks about directing and producing the Cambridge Greek Play in an APGRD Public Lecture from February 2014.
Jonathan Kent in conversation
Oct 2013, theatre and opera director, Jonathan Kent, appeared at the APGRD in conversation with Fiona Macintosh, talking specifically about his work with Greek drama. An abbreviated version of this conversation was published in a Special Issue of PMLA (2014) on tragedy.
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Frank McGuinness in conversation
Nov 2009:Fiona Macintosh in conversation with distinguished playwright Frank McGuinness about his work in adapting Greek tragedies for modern theatre, particularly Antigone and Medea.
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Antigone at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, 1986 - interviews with original cast and director
During her doctoral research, Katerina Gotsi undertook interviews with key Irish actors and directors. To read transcripts of interviews with Colm Ó Briain, Anne Byrne, and Kevin McHugh go to the Katerina Gotsi interviews page
Readings and Performances
Odyssey Book XIV
Dec. 2020: A performance of Odyssey Book 14. Filmed as part of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies' Odyssey 'Round the World project. Directed by Estelle Baudou (Marie-Curie Research Fellow at the APGRD), with Giovanna Di Martino (APGRD associate), and performances from Oxford postgrads, at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies.
Alice Oswald: Moon Viewing
Midnight 30 Nov 2020: A film made during lockdown to accompany Alice Oswald's global postal poetry performance; in collaboration with TORCH, DANSOX, and the English Faculty. For details of this unique lockdown event, see the event page
Emily Wilson: The Odyssey
Nov 2017: A public reading: Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania), discusses and reads from her new translation of Homer's Odyssey.
Download or listen to the audio on the event's page
Josphine Balmer: A Reading
Nov 2017: poet, classical translator, research scholar and literary critic, Josephine Balmer, reads from her latest collection, The Paths of Survival, inspired by the surviving fragments of Aeschylus's lost tragedy, Myrmidons. Followed by discussion with Josephine Balmer, Laura Swift, and Oliver Taplin.
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APGRD Artist in Residence: Crossing the Sea - lecture-performance
Paul O'Mahony and Out of Chaos theatre company were APGRD Artists in Residence in October 2017, working on the development of a new version of the Aeneid, entitled Crossing the Sea. The residency culminated in a public lecture-performance on the 27 October, in which they presented their work-in-progress. The recording of this WIP lecture-performance is available on YouTube.
APGRD Artist in Residence: Likely Terpsichore? (Fragments) - site-specific dance
During a six-month residency at the APGRD (Jan-June 2017), choreographer and dance artist Marie-Louise Crawley developed a site-specific dance piece, Likely Terpsichore? (Fragments), in the gallery spaces of the Ashmolean Museum. Based on four female figures from Ovid’s Metamorphoses - Galatea, Myrrha, Philomel and Medusa - the piece took the foundational principles of ancient pantomime as its starting point.
Trackers of Oxyrhynchus' choruses performed
At an event celebrating the 25th anniversary of Tony Harrison's Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, three original cast members (Colin Campbell, Conrad Nelson, and Lawrence Evans) re-created two choruses from the production.
Annual European Festival of Latin and Greek
Since 2017, the APGRD and members of the Classics Faculty have participated in the synchronised, global, mass readings of ancient texts in original translations, as part of the Festival Européen Latin Grec. Watch our contributions - Odyssey Book 5, Metamorphoses Book 10, and Iliad Book 6 - on YouTube
Lectures by leading scholars
Tragic Form in Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire
Feb. 2021 Naomi Weiss (Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University) on Kamila Shamsie’s retelling of Sophocles' Antigone, in the award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). APGRD Public Lecture; streamed on YouTube with a live Q&A.
The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro: New Visions of Tragedy in 21st-Century America
Jan. 2021: Rosa Andújar (KCL) on the award-winning Chicanx adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy by writer, theatre director, social activist, and MacArthur Fellow, Luis Alfaro. APGRD Public Lecture; streamed on YouTube with a live Q&A.
A People's History of Classics
Nov. 2020: Edith Hall (KCL) and Henry Stead (St Andrews) discuss their new book, A People's History of Classics, in this virtual version of an APGRD Public Lecture; streamed on YouTube with a live Q&A.
Theatre as a space of Spiritual Contemplation
Oct 2019: Alena Sarkissian (Czech Academy of Sciences) discusses Greek Tragedy at the National Theatre of Prague during the Nazi occupation (1939 – 1945).
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Homer and the Discovery of the Pacific
May 2019: Henry Power (Exeter) discusses Homeric resonances in the work of Alexander Pope, John Keats, and Thom Gunn.
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The Dancer and the Übermarionette: Duncan, Craig and Modernist Performance
Feb 2019: Olga Taxidou (Edinburgh) discusses the work of Isadora Duncan and Edward Gordon Craig in this APGRD / DANSOX public lecture.
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Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage
Jan 2019: Melinda Powers (CUNY) discusses modern American adaptations of Greek tragedies.
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Gestures and Postures: the construction and reception of the tragic in Jean-Georges Noverre's dance-drama Agamemnon Vengé
Nov 2018: Nicole Haitzinger (Salzburg) discusses Noverre's use of gesture and the tragic in this APGRD / DANSOX public seminar.
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The Politics of Greece's Theatrical Revolution, ca. 500 - ca. 300 BCE
April 2018: An APGRD Public lecture: Peter Wilson (Sydney) discusses the relationship between Greek theatre and politics.
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Tragedy's Endurance
March 2018: Erika Fischer-Lichte (Freie Universität Berlin) speaks on the subject of her recent book, Tragedy's Endurance.
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Classics and Social Justice
Oct 2017: Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz (Hamilton College) tells us about her work bringing Classics into prisons.
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Bodies and texts: Attitudes towards tragedy from the Second Sophistic to Late Antiquity
Nov 2016: An APGRD public lecture by Ruth Webb (Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille III).
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The annual Classics and English Lecture
"The Mask of a Very Definite Purpose": Edith Wharton and the Classics
May 2019: Isobel Hurst (Goldsmiths) delivers the 5th annual Classics and English Lecture, on Edith Wharton and the Classics.
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From Cult to Classic: Reimagining Medea before and after Euripides
May 2018: Ben Morgan (Oxford) delivers the 4th annual Classics and English Lecture; Morgan discusses the figure of Medea and reads from his new book of poetry.
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The Other Muse: Latin and English Poetry in the Seventeenth Century
Feb 2017: Victoria Moul (KCL) delivered the 3rd annual joint Classics and English Lecture. A recording of this talk is available to watch for research purposes, in person, at the archive. See below for details of archive only recordings
E.M Forster's "Tragic Interior"
May 2016: David Scourfield (Maynooth) gave the 2nd annual joint Classics and English Lecture, on E. M. Forster's interactions with the classics, particularly Aeschylus' Agamemnon.
Download or listen to the audio on the event's page
Classics Faculty Reception Seminars 2020
The 2020 Reception Seminar series - Classical Literature and the Mind of Europe - was held online. The seminars took place at 11.30am every Monday during Michaelmas Term (12 Oct. to 30 Nov.). Recordings of the papers have been uploaded to a dedicated playlist (APGRD YouTube).
Oliver Taplin and Joshua Billings: What is Tragedy?
Recorded Jan 2010, four 15 minute audio dialogues exploring tragedy with Oliver Taplin (Emeritus Professor of Classics and co-founder of the APGRD) and Joshua Billings (Assistant Professor of Classics at Princeton):
Part 1: Defining Tragedy
Part 2: What does Tragedy do for People?
Part 3: Does Tragedy Teach?
Part 4: Is Tragedy still Alive?
Oliver Taplin and Lorna Hardwick: What is Translation?
Recorded in July 2010, four 15 minute dialogues exploring translation with Oliver Taplin and and Lorna Hardwick (Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Classical Receptions in Late Twentieth Century Drama and Poetry in English project):
Part 1: Is there a Core to Translation?
Part 2: Is there ever a Faithful Translation?
Part 3: Can Poetry be Translated?
Part 4: Who Translates and for Whom?
Archive Only Recordings
Recordings of some past events cannot be released publicly. These recordings can only be listened to for research purposes, on request and in person at the APGRD. See the Visit Us page to arrange an appointment. Archive only recordings include:
A Play after Euripides' Andromeda (2019)
- Performing Pindar (2019) - the development of this project in 2020 can be seen on YouTube
- 25 Years of the Actors of Dionysus (2018)
- Victoria Moul - The Other Muse: Latin and English Poetry in the Seventeenth Century (2017)
- Alice Oswald - a reading (2016)
- Cathy Marston - Choreographing the Katabasis (2015)
- Kae Tempest - in conversation (2014)