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4th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, 2004:
Adaptations of Ancient Greek Drama


The 4th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, on the theme of 'Adaptations of Ancient Greek Drama', took place at Royal Holloway University of London on Thursday 17 June and the University of Oxford on 18 June 2004. The organisers were Eleftheria Ioannidou (Oxford), Elina Dagonaki (Oxford), and Conor Hanratty (RHUL).

The programme is available as a PDF document by clicking this link. Abstracts are available in plain text below on this page. (You will need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on your machine to read PDF files. If you prefer to read a paper version, please contact us).

Tragedy in non-western contexts

Conor Hanratty, '"The Two-way Traffic of Our Stage?": Questions of Interculturalism and Hybridity in Modern Adaptations of Greek tragedy'
It would appear that in contemporary Dublin the production of ancient Greek tragedy is dominated by women. The most popular plays in performance are those which feature female protagonists – Antigone, Medea, Clytemnestra, Electra. The most exciting adaptations of Greek tragedy in recent years have been by female playwrights like Marina Carr and Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy and female directors like Katie Mitchell and Deborah Warner. This paper seeks to examine the variety of women’s voices that are the driving forces in the contemporary production of Greek tragedy in at the Abbey. Particular productions for discussion include Deborah Warner’s production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw, Katie Mitchell’s Iphigenia at Aulis, originally performed at the Abbey Theatre in 2002, Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats and Ariel, versions of Medea and the Oresteia, and the new production of Antigone, entitled the The Burial at Thebes.

Royal Holloway, University of London
Email conorhanratty@hotmail.com

Eleftheria Ioannidou, 'Greek Tragedy as the Other: Antigone in The Island by Athol Fugard'
Abstract not available.

DPhil at University of Oxford, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama
Email eleftheria.ioannidou@classics.ox.ac.uk

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Revisiting Ancient Conventions

Lefki Papachrysostomou, 'Adapting Aristophanic Comedy onto Today’s Stage'
Abstract not available.

Université de Bretagne Occidentale
Email lefkothea1@yahoo.com

Chris Vervain, 'Discovering the Lock - Adapting Mask Techniques for Performing Tragedy' [followed by demonstration]
Electra finds a lock of hair. How can we perform this in mask? Lacking ancient stage directions and acting manuals the modern director and actors of masked tragedy can only adapt the performance techniques available today. Useful insights are provided by both the training of conventional drama schools and the alternative approaches of Physical Theatre and the modern western "traditions" of mask theatre associated with it. Non-Western traditions of mask theatre that have survived into the current era are also instructive, in particular, the Japanese Noh. One complication arises from the fact that whilst mask theatre has its own special requirements (compared with the currently predominant unmasked naturalistic genres) masks come in various forms and their lack of homogeneity calls for many different approaches and performance styles. Performing the plays in English translation introduces further complications. For example, whilst Aeschylus’ Choephori is written for a theatre of mask various manifestations of "The Libation-Bearers" seem to have been made with unmasked or no performance in mind. The exact moment of Electra's discovery of the lock is significant here. The needs of mask theatre- a highly visual form, as we understand it - suggest a certain timing for the event. This, in turn, has implications for the metaphysical significance of this pivotal action. I illustrate this point with a practical demonstration.

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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Tragedy and Different Media

Elina Dagonaki, 'The Oresteia Myth in T. Aggelopoulos, The Travelling Players'
Abstract not available.

DPhil at University of Oxford, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama
Email eleftheria.dagonaki@classics.ox.ac.uk

Christos Prossylis, 'Directing Ancient Greek Drama Using High-tech Modern Techniques: A New Metalanguage Expression' [followed by demonstration]
Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Greek is a startling production of Stephen Berkoff's reworking of the Oedipus myth. Following an overtly religious 1980s musical setting of the Oedipus story, (Lee Breuer's Gospel at Colonus), Greek is a political demonstration against Thatcherite Britain in musical form, premiered in Munich in 1988. In my paper I intend to investigate: firstly, the role of opera and Greek tragedy as comparable expressions of an ideal of Gesammtkunstwerk; secondly, the socio-political status of opera as a means of expression in 20th century England; thirdly, the potential of the Oedipus myth and its particularly Sophoclean formulation for modern reworkings with a contemporary political message. Feeding on the 20th Century's obsession with Freud, it has been set against Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex as a demonstration of fantasy and real-life meeting to clash and destroy those in their path. The piece was considered so disturbing that the British premiere of this opera at the London Coliseum required an age limit to be imposed on the audience. Renowned for being one of his wordiest but most powerful plays, where words kill and one reviewer describes it as an eruption of internal emotional invective, Greek, the classical modern classic, provides an exciting door into the world of Sophoclean reception amongst those not formally trained in 'Classics', a way of investigating the impact of Classical theatre on our general cultural heritage.

Middlesex University of London
Email christos@prossylis.com

 

Expressive Modes

Yana Zarifi, 'Agave's Lament in the Bacchae: An Example of Continuity and Change in the Performance of Grief for the Dead' [followed by demonstration]
Abstract not available.

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

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Rewriting Greek Drama

Callie Ann Sadler, 'Peeling and Trojan Women'
I propose to discuss a production of Peeling, written by Katie O’Reilly and performed at the Project Arts Center in Dublin by the Graeae Theatre Company in conjunction with the British Council of Ireland 22-25 October 2003. An innovative and alluring adaptation, Peeling is set during a contemporary production of Euripides' Trojan Women. The three women in the play, Alpha, Beaty, and Coral, are members of the Chorus of the Greek Drama. This situation provides humor as the women fill their time 'out of the spotlight' with comic conversations (which include such topics as recipes, acting, sex, etc.) – but it also has a serious side as the situation of Euripides' Trojan Woman and the contemporary situation of many women today is paralleled in a thought-provoking performance. The play is contemporary in its visualization, but the tragedy and beauty of Euripides initial vision is retained (although much of the text is absent). The strength of this adaptation lies in its boldness to address the subject of disability and femininity in contemporary society, allowing it to reach a new theatre audience and to ask an old theatre audience to look at the play in a new way.

Trinity College Dublin
Email calliesadler@hotmail.com

Lynn Kozak, 'Smack that bitch up: Psychoanalysis, Sadomasochism and Charles Mee's Bacchae 2.1'
Euripides' Bacchae has always managed to strike a psychic chord within the audience through the ages; its theme of the human struggle to balance primitive impulse with civilising order, and the gap between ritual and violence, remains, more than ever, an enduring conflict. In this paper I intend to examine how Mee has extended scholarly psychoanalytic inquiry into the Bacchae through his own creative interpretation of the play, focusing on how Mee uses elements of psychoanalysis and sadomasochism to define his drama for a modern audience. Ultimately I believe that Mee dramatically realises scholarly psychoanalytic readings of the play and then pushes beyond the linguistic limits of the original text in order to create a new, equally compelling drama about the violence of living with ourselves.

King’s College London
Email lynn.kozak@kcl.ac.uk

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Melinda Powers, 'The Jagged Edge: Mee's Fatagagaian Orestes'
This paper will examine the role of catharsis in American playwright Charles Mee's Orestes, a piece developed in collaboration with Mark Woodruff at the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, in the early 1990's. Mee has described his compositional process as influenced by the way surrealist artist Max Ernst made his Fatagaga collages and has written Orestes by cutting and pasting together texts from Euripides to William Burroughs to the National Enquirer. His collage-style approach to adaptation produces a jagged edge that reflects the turbulent world of the play itself. In this way, Mee reproduces the disparity of Euripides' text through his juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated material, a form that ultimately deflects the cathartic moment. If catharsis functions as a shared emotional experience among spectators, its absence here serves as a dramatic technique that suggests the breakdown of community and thereby democracy. Form and content work together in Mee’s non-realistic, non-linear portrayal to comment on the shortcomings of contemporary American democracy, and by breaking with the conventions of traditional linear narrative, Mee is able to 'remake' and translate the experience of Orestes for a modern audience. It is through this 'remaking' that Mee amplifies and interrogates the problematics of catharsis already inherent in Euripides' Orestes. How can this one concept apply to the divergent trajectories of Aeschylean and Eurpidean drama? Does Mee's use of a wildly non-mimetic strategy in fact enact a deep mimesis of Euripides' reformulation of the Aeschylean precursor?

University of California, Los Angeles
Email mpowersA@ucla.edu

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Julie Waddington, 'Sarah Kane: A Contemporary Writer with a Classical Sensibility?'
The aim of the paper is not just to offer a reading of Kane's adaptation of the Euripidean and Senecan plays, but to consider the tension which underpins Kane's turn to the classics. At the same time that Kane draws on classical works she displays uneasiness with this dependence on tradition, claiming not to be interested in the past but in the future of theatre. She insists that theatre should be emotionally and intellectually demanding and bemoans the state of current theatre in which, she claims, drama has been reduced to a mere evening pastime. Rather than appealing to a past theatrical tradition in order to challenge this state she turns, instead, to the realm of football, arguing that if people in the theatre were as emotionally and critically engaged as spectators of a football match then theatre would become vital and meaningful.
By focusing on Kane's Phaedra's Love, I hope to sketch out some of the problems that arise when a classical sensibility is juxtaposed with a contemporary viewpoint.
I will argue that on a textual level this play offers a significant reconfiguration of the Senecan and Euripidean tragedies. I will also suggest, however, that the effect of this reconfiguration was undermined by the naturalistic conventions within which the play was first produced. Paramount to this discussion will be the question of theatrical space. Following David Wiles' insight that performance space has a marked influence on the effect produced (Tragedy in Athens), I will argue that a sensibility cannot simply be transferred from amphitheatre (or football stadium) to small, intimate theatre space, as it is the space itself which, to a certain degree, produces the sensibility.

Manchester Metropolitan University
Email juliewaddington@hotmail.com

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The Historical Perspective

Felicity Hitlon, 'Racine's Phèdre and Sarah Kane's Phaedra’s Love in Their Sociopolitical Contexts'
Abstract not available.

London
Email felicity.hilton@btinternet.com

Rebecca Nesvet, 'Allegory and Ambiguity in Lady Jane Lumley’s Iphigeneia'
Abstract not available.

University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Email ren@aber.ac.uk

Paul Monaghan, 'Prometheus Bound, Symbolists and the Birth of Modern Theatre'
In this paper I will examine the way that a number of Symbolist writers (in both theatre and other literary forms) and directors staged and adapted Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, as a paradigmatic example of the transmission and adaptation of Greek tragedy at the birth of the modern theatre from roughly 1870 to 1930 in Europe, Scandinavia, Russia and the USA. Vying for parentage at this birth were the very different aims and techniques of the Realists/Naturalists, and the Symbolists. At the centre of the Symbolist theatre lies a focus on poetry and the evocation of a metaphysical realm at the expense of the material world of social experience, while Realists sought to ground the new drama in the material world of empirical science. An important aspect of the development of modern theatre was an engagement with the past, and in particular with the heritage of Greek tragedy. Wagner's notion of the gesamtkunstwerk and the Symbolist's synthetism were conscious attempts to recreate what they saw as the truly poly-phonic mode of Greek tragedy which Nietzsche lauded in The Birth of Tragedy.
I will argue that Symbolist notion of the impersonal actor, in which they sought to minimise or even eradicate the materiality of the actor by the use of masks, puppets, or the spiritually athletic body, is particularly appropriate for the staging of Aeschylean tragedy, and suggests a different take on the use of masks by the Greeks.

PhD (current) on 'Performance Mode in Greek Tragedy' at the University of Melbourne (supervisors: Denise Varney & K.O. Chong-Gossard). Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Melbourne
Email pmonag@unimelb.edu.au

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Ancient Myths, Modern Repertoires

Clare Armand, 'Deborah Warner / Fiona Shaw's Medea: A Performance of Euripides’ Playtext Elaborating a Vision of the Present'
Abstract not available.

University of Reading
Email Clareinfo@aol.com

 

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This page was last updated by Stephe Harrop on 16 November, 2009
Copyright © 2007 Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford

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