Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History and Critical Practice

Description

This exciting collection constitutes the first analysis of the modern performance of ancient Greek drama from a theoretical perspective. The last three decades have seen a remarkable revival of the performance of ancient Greek drama; some ancient plays - "Sophocles", "Oedipus", "Euripides", and "Medea" - have established a distinguished place in the international performance repertoire, and attracted eminent directors including Peter Stein, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Sellars, and Katie Mitchell. Staging texts first written two and a half thousand years ago, for all-male, ritualised, outdoor performance in masks in front of a pagan audience, raises quite different intellectual questions from staging any other canonical drama, including Shakespeare. But the discussion of this development in modern performance has until now received scant theoretical analysis. This book provides the solution in the form of a lively interdisciplinary dialogue, inspired by a conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama (APGRD) in Oxford, between sixteen experts in Classics, Drama, Music, Cultural History and the world of professional theatre.The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Classics and Drama alike. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction I. Paradigms 2. Towards a Theory of Performance Reception 3. Performance as Event – Reception as Transformation 4. Greek and Shakespearean Plays in Performance: Their Different Academic Receptions 5. Cultural History and Aesthetics: Why Kant is No Place to Start Reception Studies 6. Performance, Reception, Aesthetics: Or Why Reception Studies Need Kant 7. From à la carte to Convergence: Symptoms of Interdisciplinarity in Reception Theory 8. Archiving Events, Performing Documents: On the Seductions and Challenges of Performance Archives II. Mind, Body and the Tragic 9. Bringing Together Nature and Culture: On the Uses and Limits of Cognitive Science for the Study of Performance Reception 10. Does a Deleuzean Philosophy of Radical Physicality Lead to the ‘Death of Tragedy’? Some Thoughts on the Dismissal of the Climactic Orientation of Greek Tragedy 11. Generic Ambiguity in Modern Productions and New Versions of Greek Tragedy III. Translating Cultures 12. Revising ‘Authenticity’ in Staging Ancient Mediterranean Drama 13. Towards Theorising the Place of Costume in Performance Reception 14. Performance Reception and the ‘Textual Twist’: Towards a Theory of Literary Reception 15. Negotiating Translation for the Stage 16. From Translation to Performance Reception: The Death of the Author and the Performance Text IV. Practitioners and Theory 17. Acting Perspectives: The Phenomenology of Performance as a Route to Reception 18. Physical Performance and the Languages of Translation 19. ‘Spatial Poetics’ and Greek Drama: Scenography as Reception 20. Translating Greek Drama for Performance Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z