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1st Annual Postgraduate Symposium, 2001:

Greek Drama in Modern Performance

Introduction, by David Wiles (Professor of Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London)

A symposium was organised on June 19/20th 2001 to bring together an international group of postgraduate students working on the reception and reperformance of Greek drama. The organisers were Eugenia Arsenis and George Sampatakakis. The first day was held at Royal Holloway, the second at the Archive. All the presentations were given by postgraduates.

This was the first formal collaboration between the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama - now the main international centre for studying the reception of ancient drama - and the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London - where there is an MA programme in Greek Theatre Performance and a substantial body of research students at work in that field. As an event, the symposium is symptomatic of the importance that Greek theatre now has in the European repertory, and the importance of reception within all arts disciplines.

The convergence of archival research and the realisation of contemporary performances was another feature of the occasion. At Royal Holloway, three students who are incorporating practice as part of their Ph.D., gave demonstrations of work in progress, and several other contributors are in fact practitioners. While some students are gearing their work to the analysis of contemporary theatre, another group is geared to the creation of contemporary theatre. A distinction can also be made between those who refer back to the performance conventions of antiquity, and those for whom it suffices to concentrate on remakings of Greek plays the modern period. Some anchor their work in a study of form, others in ideology.

The importance of Greek theatre today can be explained in many ways: the spiritual need to reritualize a realist theatre, a cultural need of Europeans to define their collective historical identity, the postmodern need to find a cultural reference point that allows meaning to be created through intertextuality - or should one say interperformativity, the political and aesthetic need of theatre-makers for distance is a world where screens bombard us with too much immediacy. However it be explained, the papers collectively were evidence of that great contemporary importance. It is hoped that this will not be a one-off event, but be repeated in an appropriate form in future years.

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Productions Today

Dafni-Doxa Metaxa, 'Three Performances of Electra by Sophocles on the Greek stage of the 20th Century: A Transition from a Classical and Modern to a Post-Modern Approach'
All major theatre practitioners in Greece and elsewhere have tried to re-read and re-perform ancient Greek drama hoping to elucidate different aspects of its diachronic quality. In my presentation, I will trace the evolution of Electra's staging during the last 25 years of the 20th century, focusing on Minos Volanakis', M. Marmarinos' and D. Mavrikios' productions. In my brief retrospective, I will try to map the multiple angles and approaches to tragedy, from its faithful reconstruction to a fresh reading, a post-modern reading or even a misreading. Contemporary revivals of the classical text will be discussed in association with the play's plot, aesthetics and ethos as well as aspects of modern Greek politics, culture and society. In conclusion, I will investigate how Greek directors and actors deal with their cultural property by means of translation, production and reception of a classical Greeek play such as Electra.

MA in English and American Literature (Stanford University)
PhD (current) in Theatre Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Email palsothes@otenet.gr

Chris Vervain, 'Making Masks for Greek Tragedy' (including demonstration)
Conditioned by the conventions of modern theatre we tend to view the mask as a sort of homogenous entity when considering the differences in masked as against unmasked Greek tragic performances. However a brief consideration of some notable examples of modern masked productions reveals immense variety and moreover that the type of mask used will constrain the performance choices to be made. The modern mask maker and director of masked Greek Tragedy can gain invaluable insights from a study of ancient models. The evidence that we have suggests that in the golden age of fifth century theatre in Athens the tragic masks reflected in their idealised beauty, the contemporary classical style of sculpture. One aspect of this is a lack of any one pronounced facial expression, often misleadingly described as "neutral", a term that implies a certain lifelessness. The classical face rather manifests subtle variations in emotional tone according to different circumstances and is better described as "multivalent". A related idea is that classical masks may have lacked "characterisation" and instead have borne the features of socially defined types. These are amongst the areas of debate that may benefit from a new approach in the form of practice based research.

BA in Fine Art (University of Hertfordshire), MA in Text and Performance (King's College London / RADA)
PhD (current) in the Department of
Theatre and Drama, Royal Holloway, University of London (supervisor: David Wiles)
Email chrisvervain@btinternet.com

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Cultural Traditions

Ioanna Remediaki, 'Sophocles' Antigone in Modern Greek Theatre: A Journey into Language (1863-2001)'
This report attempts to study the translations of Antigone performed from 1863 to date. The Ancient Greek Drama on the Modern Greek stage is translated within one and not across languages. This translation is a multiple dialogue with:
- The original text. In the case of Antigone we refer to the language of Sophocles, to the fine balance between opposing tensions, to the exact and effective expression of basic human questions. The play has been translated thirteen times, more than any other play of Sophocles, and has been performed almost continuously since 1863.
- Modern-Greek language. Before the establishment of the spoken standard Greek, the translations often flirted with an archaic-like language, ignoring the actual evolution of the language itself. That official language considered being the most suitable one to render the original text, according to the current political and ideological deliberations.
- The historical coincidence. How and why Antigone is translated either at the newly established State of the 19th century or in the period of the Minor Asian disaster of 1922, or during and after the Military Dictatorship (1967-1974). How does the translation handle on every occasion what is termed 'National and Cultural Heritage' or how it is influenced by foreign models and tendencies, or imitates them?
- The theatrical code, which differs radically from the literary one. The language is 'physical' and must be translated into a 'physical' one. It could be said that a theatrical translator is also a first director. This leads to the remark the every performance should have its own translation, which finally tends to occur on the Modern Greek stage the latest years.

BA in Classical Literature (University of Thessaloniki), MA in Theatre Studies (University of Athens)
PhD (current) on the performed translations of Sophocles' plays in Greece and the ideology of language at the University of Athens (supervisor: Walter Puchner)
Email remediaki@yahoo.com

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Angie Varakis, 'Karolos Koun and Peter Hall: An Examination of the Use of Masks in Modern Aristophanic Productions'
The views of two modern directors, and stage designer Photopoulos, on the use of mask in Aristophanic plays are discussed. To both Koun and Hall the use of masks is vital to and inseparable from the spirit of ancient Greek drama. Koun stressed the ritualistic essence of the mask and its alienation effect while Peter Hall believes in the mask's ability to contain the anarchy of the comedy's spirit and power to make it less offensive by concealing identity. Koun's division of Aristophanes' plays in three main categories (oneiric, country, city) lead to a similarity of mask images in plays belonging in the same category. In designing the masks for productions of city plays (Koun's Women at Thesmophoria 1986, Hall's Lysistrata 1993) Photopoulos kept in mind this division. Originally, Koun in staging oneiric (Birds 1959) and country (Acharnians 1976, Peace 1978) plays made extensive use of folk elements including images from the popular Greek Shadow theatre Karagiozis. Thus Aristophanes became popular to the audiences of the time but when Koun realised that his folkloric approach had 'itself' become a 'traditional' mode of performance, his approach and selection of plays (Women at Thesmophoria) changed to something more urban in order to become more relevant to Greek audience of the 80's. Accordingly the masks became reminiscent of half mask in western world carnivals, refined and not grotesque. "The Mask of Karagiozis no longer appeared only his gaze was left", as Koun himself noted. It is interesting to contemplate what the mask would look like in order to make relevant and appealing Aristophanes' plays to the audience of a unified and globalised culture.

First degree (University of Patras), MA in Drama and Theatre Studies (Royal Holloway, University of London)
PhD (current) on the use of masks in modern Aristophanic productions at Royal Holloway, University of London (supervisor: David Wiles). Holder of an IKY Scholarship
Email a.varakis@rhul.ac.uk

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The Gesamtkunstwerk

Eugenia Arsenis, 'Mendelssohn's Antigone: The Relation of Music and Text in the Context of Hegel's Aesthetic Theory'
The paper is focused on the relation of music and text in Mendelssohn's Antigone and examines the parallels that are drawn between the work and the Philosophy of Art of the 19th century with main emphasis on Hegel's aesthetic theory. The socio-political conditions in which the musical work was developed are also considered. With Mendelssohn's Antigone music and text equally coexist for the first time in a vocal/musical work. Fidelity to the text - as it is the first time an original text of Greek tragedy was used in theatre - and autonomy of music - a product of the latest aesthetic evolutions - attempt to hold equal significance within the work. Music, a non-textual probably less comprehensible medium becomes an element of at least the same importance with the actual text. Philosophy and more specifically the philosophy of art played a determinative role in the realization of the significance of music. Mendelssohn's music 'shouldered' the responsibility of proving that it is not only the text that captures the core of drama. And this was just the beginning ...

BA in Drama and Theatre (Royal Holloway, University of London), MPhil (Philosophy Department, University College London)
PhD (current) on the relation of music and text in Greek tragedy in the context of Philosophical Aesthetics of the 19th and 20th centuries in the German Department of Royal Holloway, University of London (supervisor: Andrew Bowie and Robert Vilain). Holder of an IKY Scholarship
Email e.arsenis@rhul.ac.uk

In addition to directing for theatre, she has also composed music for theatre (including Euripides' Hypsipyle, directed by David Wiles for the Classical Association Conference).

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Yana Zarifi, 'Transposing the Chorus - Euripides' Hippolytos 732-741' (including demonstration)
We, today, do not have the choros culture of the ancient Greeks. Java, on the other hand, gives us a living instance of the traditional and culturally central combination of mask, song, dance and drama: dances continue to be performed at socially significant occasions and at religious festivals by ordinary members of the community and Javanese dance still has an educational function in comportment and in physical training as it once did in classical Greece. With these parallels between Java and classical Greece in mind, I adapted Euripides' Hippolytos as Indonesian dance-drama (first performed at the Cambridge Triennial Conference in 1998 and recently at the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama in Paphos), keeping the choral odes in the original Greek and setting them to Javanese dance. In this paper, I concentrated on a choral passage from the Hippolytos (732-741), where the chorus sing of escape, flight, travelling in the sky over water, and where they evoke images of wedding, death and lamentation. The demonstration began with a metrical reading of the text, followed by the music and song that preserved the original metre. A video extract featuring the Javanese choreographer, Untung Hidayat, illustrated the interrelationship between imitative dancing and text. Finally, a video recording of the choral passage in question danced and sung by a full chorus in the performance of the Hippolytos at the Royal Holloway Noh Studio in January 1999, showed how the combination of song-music-dance, formality and imitativeness may be integrated in a way that allows us to transcend the narrow limits of our own aesthetic experience. I also tried to show that the effect of transposing the Greek chorus into the different and more distant context of Javanese culture may be one of enrichment rather than alienation. The layers of meaning created by the synthesis of mournful music, bodily movement imitating birds flying, words speaking of escape combined to form the Gesamtkunstwerk.

BSc in Sociology (London School of Economics), MA in Classics (University College London)
PhD (current) on 'Performance as Research on the Ancient Greek Chorus' at Royal Holloway, University of London (supervisor: David Wiles)
Email YanaSistovari@aol.com

Theatre director of ancient Greek drama that privileges the chorus, music and dance. Greek theatre productions include a long list of Greek plays for schools - especially Camden School for Girls and also King's College Medea in Bharatanyatah Indian classical dance 1996, Aristophanes' Plutus 1999 at Exeter, London, and Austin Texas, Euripides' Hippolytos as masked Indonesian dance drama in Cambridge 1998-2001, Interface international festival in London, Noh Studio, and in the International Theatre Festival at the ancient Odeion of Paphos, Cyprus. Recently (London's Cockpit Theatre, October 2001) produced and co-directed Aristophanes' Peace, which had a successful performance in Texas. I work closely with Farrah (hon. RSC designer), and Jamie Masters, composer. My next production will be Euripides' Bacchae in 2002-3.

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Theory and Practice

Themelis Glynatsis, 'Enas eros tou penthous: Ancient Greek Tragedy in Contemporary Context, a propos Yorgos Cheimonas' Tragic Speech and Contemporary World Drama'
The approach of this paper towards ancient Greek tragedy in a modern context follows faithfully Cheimonas' literary phenomenology concerning the ancient dramatic genre. Cheimonas' theory separates the 'tragic being' into two catgories, the manifest and the latent, and subsequently descibes how the Greek tragic poetry manages to merge on the one hand highly sophisticated linguistic clusters and on the other a primal, mythic content. The fundamental thesis of the paper is that analytical and performative approaches to Greek tragedy have reached a plateau, a condition which demands a radical rethinking of the genre. It is proposed that instead of making random theatrical experimentations and futile over-analytical dissections of the texts themselves, one needs to shift one's attention towards an organic approach to the genre, view it as a condition, a process, rather than a static text. In other words, the paper suggests, one should become more attentive to the constituent elements of tragedy, not from a structuralist or hermeunitical perspective, but from a more sensory orientation. The primal emotionalism and morality on the one hand, and the strict linguistic confines on the other need to be entoned so as Greek tragedy can function as a total, valid theatrical spectacle.

BA (Kent), MA (Nottingham)
PhD (current) on 'Language in Antonin Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty"' (supervisors: David Bradby and David Wiles) at the Drama Department, Royal Holloway, University of London
Email themelis_g@hotmail.com

He has contributed to the following performances: July 1998, Blood Wedding, by Lorca (director, choreographer, performer), Old University, Athens; December 1998, The Just, by Camus (actor), University of Kent; March 2001, The Soldier's Tale, by Stravinsky and Ramuz (narrator), University of Surrey; May 2001, chamberplayMEDEA, (director and adaptator), King's Head Theatre, London; June 2001, chamberplayMedea (director and performer), Royal Holloway.

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Jane Montgomery, 'Carnal Art and Electra'
What are the boundaries of representation in tragic performance? Where does the actor draw the line between 'representing' and 'becoming' her character? Exploring the relationship between Sophocles' Electra and interventionist body art, this paper draws parallels between the 'unmasking' process of Orlan's 'Omnipresence' and the visceral experience of acting Electra. Detailed analysis of Electra's performative 'eidos' moves to an examination of abjection in the text, and its relationship to live performance.

PhD (current) on Sophocles' Electra and its relationship to performance theory at the University of Melbourne (co-Classics / Drama supervision with Dr Chris Mackie and Dr Denise Varney)
Email janemonty@aol.com

Leventis Visiting Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Director of the 2001 Cambridge Greek Play, Electra.

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Kathleen Riley, 'Mr. Heracles: A Case Study in Heroism'
The single male heroic figure of Herakles is quite unusual among the characters of the extant Euripidean corpus and Euripides' tragic treatment in the play of the heroic male identity marks a turning point in the literary tradition of the Herakles myth. In dramatizing the darkest and most difficult episode of the myth, namely Herakles' madness and murder of his wife and children, Euripides charts Herakles' progression from the conventional and inadequate heroic impulse to a new and morally more demanding response to human suffering. He also explores the tension between the expectations and conditioning of the heroic culture and those of civilian life, the gap between oikos and polis, by giving equal emphasis in the play's first half to Herakles' role as alexikakos and saviour to Hellas and to his love for, and sense of duty to, his family. Born in Yorkshire, Simon Armitage has produced several collections of verse and a prose memoir. He was also Britain's official Millennium Poet. Mister Herakles, his first stage play, was commissioned by the West Yorkshire Playhouse where it opened in February 2001. The focus of Armitage's reworking of Euripides' text is an analysis of the cultural psychology of masculinity and militarism and, in particular, the problem of trained killers adapting to civilized and civilian society. The militarism which pervades the play is overt although highly eclectic, with images borrowed and condensed from history and popular culture and reflecting the fragmented focus of the military in the post Cold War era. Herakles kallinikos is variously transformed into an astronaut, an English squaddie and a Vietnam soldier. Armitage has reproduced the breach in the original drama between heroic and domestic values and the dislocation of the male warrior in a society based on co-operative values. The character of Madness in Armitage's version activates in Heracles a violence that is intuitive and has been honed by years of killing on behalf of the state. In the play's most sustained analysis of the causes of the madness, Heracles recalls his gradual desensitization to the act of killing and the shift from what was a trained action to the point where 'instinct and reaction take over' and the natural movement from this state into mania. Armitage sees in Euripides' Herakles a powerful symbol for the uncertainty of our own age as well as a means of responding to questions about the place and nature of masculinity and approved violence in modern society.

DPhil (current) on 'The Reception of Euripides' Herakles' at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford (supervisors: Edith Hall & Fiona Macintosh)
Email kathleen.riley@classics.ox.ac.uk

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Politics and the Bakkhai

George Sampatakakis, 'A Methodology for Dionysos: Rethinking Performance Histories'
Axioms:
1. Performance is a live and not a textual event; however, performance reconstruction is solely textual history based upon the re-materialization of 'memory'.
2. Performance is a bygone event that survives only in 'memory', thus, 'the history of performance resides in the history of memory itself' [Roach (1998) 24].
3. In any case, memory (and its evidence) is 'ideologized' per se; thus the reconstruction of a performance involves - most of all - a hermeneutic of transcendence in a sense that it un-validates the sources and puts them into a test which screens out meanings anew.
4. As a result, 'polyvocality' [term by James Clifford] was restrained and orchestrated in many traditional methodologies by giving to one voice a pervasive authorial function and to others the role of sources, 'informants', to be quoted or paraphrased. Once polyphony and poly-documentation are recognized as modes of re-performing the past, monophonic authority is questioned, revealed to be unreliable for recalling in the present an already performed history.
5. The de-'aesthetization' of our methodologies re-allows performance histories a consequent political hypostatization. 'Histories' in general can authorize realizations of Power in their attempt to conserve a seamless single-versioned past. Nonetheless, seeing the re-performance of the Bakkhai as monologic is unrealistic for a 'text' that has been used as a political metaphor by revolutionary classicists, gay directors, black Marxists, conservative feminists, queer playwrights, Left directors, environmentalists, Greek nationalists, radical postmodernists, even as an allegory for Greek Orthodoxy.

BA (Athens), MPhil (Cantab.)
PhD (current) on 'Bakkhaimodel: the Re-usage of Euripides' Bakkhai in Text and Performance' (supervisor: David Wiles). Holder of a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation
Email g.sampatakakis@rhul.ac.uk

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Konstantina Foskolou, 'Bakkhai and Troades in Performance: the Directions of Matthias Langhoff'
Matthias Langhoff was born of German parents exiled in Zurich in 1941. Educated in the Berliner Ensemble, he has worked and lived not only in GDR but also in various European countries. What we tried to detect was the reasons why, for a director who does not have a permanent group and does not work in his native language, Greek tragedy remains one of his unchanging orientations. Langhoff's staging of Euripides' Bakkhai with the State Theatre of Northern Greece at the ancient theatre of Epidavros in 1997 was an event that marked not only that very summer, but also Greece's recent theatre history in general. Langhoff interprets hoots and hisses in a particular way: 'Even if it sounds coquettish, I'm very pleased with the premiere. Reactions revitalized the audience. Greek tragedy offers the material for this awakening'. Women of Troy, 'adapted from Euripides by Matthias Langhoff', was a National Theatre of Brittany production first presented in Rennes in 1998. If sticking to the theme of war is natural for Langhoff, it is equally natural to draw on the source of tragedy: 'For Müller as for me, ancient tragedy is the greatest example of political literature'.

Fascination by the political dimension of tragedy, research onto its links with modern society, shock-tactics through violent and provocative images, exclusion of gods, polemic aroused because of the performance, intrusion of elements of modern Greece: this is how we may briefly describe Langhoff's approach to Greek tragedy.

BA (Athens), MA (Paris III)
Thesis (current) on the performance history of the Oresteia on the Greek stages during the 20th century at the Theatre Studies Institute, Paris III - 'Sorbonne Nouvelle' University (supervisor: Georges Banu)
Email nadiafos@yahoo.com

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