The 26th Annual Joint Postgraduate Symposium on Ancient Performance and Reception, hosted by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London, will take place on one day only this year, Thursday 25 June 2026. This year’s theme will be: ‘Technologies in the Theory and Practice of Greek and Roman Performance and its Reception.’
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About the symposium
This Symposium focuses on the reception of Greek and Roman tragedy, comedy, satyr play, epic, lyric, and other texts in performance, exploring their afterlives through re-workings by writers and practitioners across all genres and periods. This year’s theme seeks to explore how technology, broadly conceived, has shaped ancient drama and the modern reception and performance of Greek and Roman drama. The relationship between technological innovation and ancient drama is discernible in both the ancient and modern worlds. Its implications range from questions surrounding ancient stage technologies such as the mēkhanḗ (μηχανή); to the relationship between ancient performance and the development of literary and material cultures; and to the role that digital technologies play in and around modern performances of Greek and Roman drama, for example the 2021 Oxford Greek Play, Orestes. The word ‘technology’ itself derives etymologically from the ancient Greek word téchnē (τέχνη), defined variously as ‘art’, ‘skill’, ‘craft’ and ‘cunning’. The link between this concept and the performance of ancient drama is visible in the name given to the performers of Greek drama during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire: ‘hoi peri ton Dionuson technitai’ (οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται) or ‘Artists of Dionysus’. We invite responses which consider such expanded understandings of ‘technology’ in relation to the study and performance of Greek and Roman drama in antiquity and modernity.
Contact for enquiries
Please email all enquiries to: apgrd@classics.ox.ac.uk
Join us in person
9.30am to 5pm, Thursday 25 June 2026: Riverside Pavilion, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford, OX4 1DY – for a map, directions and accessibility information please see the ‘Find Us’ section of the St Hilda’s College Website.
6pm to 8.30pm, Thursday 25 June 2026: Ioannou Centre, 66 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU - for a map and directions etc. to the Ioannou Centre, please visit the Faculty of Classics website.
Join us online
For those of you who cannot make it in-person, you are welcome to join us in on Zoom.
In-person accessibility
The Pavilion at St Hilda's College is fully wheelchair accessible; accessible toilets are located on the ground floor. Please see the online Access Guide for more details about the building's accessibility. Feel free to contact the APGRD with any queries.
Programme
Riverside Pavilion, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford, OX4 1DY
09:30 – 09:45: Welcome from Oxford and Royal Holloway teams
09:45 – 11:15 Panel 1 (chair: Tom Barrett)
Laura Muncaciu: The Masked Voice: Vocal Technē and the Technologies of Tragic Vocality [online]
Adam Zanin: Reconstructing Fragmentary Drama in the Digital Age: Technē and Technology in Sophocles’ Tereus [online]
Salome Joglidze: Re-mediating Tragedy: Technology in Staging Iphigenia in Aulis through Lasha Bugadze’s Vision
11:15 – 11:30 Break
11:30 – 13:00 Panel 2 (chair: Aisling Gray)
Nassim Mandhouj: Ancient hands, new tools: toward an automatic transcription and digital edition of handwritten annotations in Early Modern editions of ancient Greek drama
Mariam Kaladze: Archival Silences and Performance Traces: Toward a Methodology for Archiving Ancient-Drama Reception on the Georgian Stage
Sanjana Ramanathan: In Media Res: Curating & Unsettling Time in Beth Piatote’s Antίkoni
13:00 – 13:45 Lunch
13:45 – 15:15 Panel 3 (chair: Despoina Christianoudi)
Simona Thompson: The use of technological innovation in the production of ancient Greek tragedy: an opportunity or a threat?
Z.I. Mahmud: Engines of Return, Crafts of Memory: Ulysses and the Technologies of Epic Performance from Antiquity to the Digital Stage [online]
Mario Valori: Managed Incompletion: AI, Technē, and Classical Reception in Dorsen’s Prometheus Firebringer [online]
15:15 – 15:30 Break
17:00 – 18:00 Break – Please note that after this break the Symposium will resume in the Lecture Theatre in the Faculty of Classics, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66, St. Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LU.
18:00 – 18:45 Response by Dr Francesca Beretta (St Anne’s, University of Oxford) followed by Plenary
18.45 – 19:30 Performance by the British American Drama Academy (BADA) Greek Theatre Programme
19:30 – 20:30 Drinks Reception and Picnic Dinner in the Atrium of the Ioannou Centre.
Call for papers
We are delighted to circulate our call for papers, the deadline for submitting abstracts is Friday 20th March. Full details can be downloaded as a PDF.
Participants
Masters and PhD students from around the world are welcome to participate, as are those who have completed a doctorate but have not yet taken up a post. The symposium is open to speakers from different disciplines, including researchers in the fields of classics, classical reception, modern languages and literature, and theatre and performance studies. Practitioners are welcome to contribute their personal experience of working on ancient drama. Papers may include demonstrations or recorded material. Undergraduates are very welcome to attend. This year’s symposium will be in person and online, although we encourage participants to attend in person where possible. We hope to be able to offer a small bursary for travel from afar.