George Rodosthenous - Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions

Contemporary
Adaptations of
Greek Tragedy

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Contemporary
Adaptations of
Greek Tragedy

Auteurship and
Directorial Visions

Edited by
George Rodosthenous

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

CONTENTS

My directorial interest in Greek tragedy has been forming since 2002. I have, since then, updated and directed twelve plays. I would like to thank Mark Dudgeon at Bloomsbury Methuen Drama for his immediate interest in my research. Also many thanks to Emily Hockley and the editorial team at Bloomsbury Methuen Drama for all their help and guidance towards the final steps of the process, the anonymous reader for his or her constructive feedback and insightful suggestions, and our copy editor for their hard work.

Special thanks to the Michael Cacoyiannis Foundation, which functioned as the main inspiration for this volume, where I presented my Antigone in 2014 as part of the Ancient Drama: Influences and Modern Approaches initiative, included in the ATTICA Regional Operational Programme of the NSRF 200713 funded by the European Union; Alexandra Georgopoulou, Dimitris Yolassis, Xenia Kaldara, Angeliki Poulou, Olga Gratsaniti, Stella Angeletou, Sarantis Zarganis, the technical staff of MCF, Alexander Mordoudack, Chara Petrounia and Eleni Kyprioti, as well as to both casts of Antigone (Leeds and Athens versions). Thanks to the International Theatre Institute (Cyprus branch), Neophytos Neophytou and the Festival of Ancient Drama for its two invitations ( Ajax and Hippolytus ).

I am grateful to all the contributors to this volume for their excellent contributions and hard work in ensuring its smooth publication.

Also, sincere thanks to Stergios Mavrikis for sharing his expert knowledge on the classics over the years and my mentor Arthur Pritchard for his support and guidance over the past decade and a half. Dr Avra Sidiropoulou has been a constant inspiration, Dr Andri Constantinou has provided some useful suggestions for contributors and Dr George Sampatakakis has made astute comments on my Introduction.

Thanks to Dr Scott Palmer for his encouragement in publishing my research on updating Greek tragedy, Ms Susan Daniels, Dr Kara McKechnie, Dr Fiona Bannon, Professor Alice OGrady, Professor Alice OGrady, Dr Anna Fenemore, Dr Tony Gardner, Dr Philip Kiszely, Dr Ben Walmsley, Dr David Shearing, Steve Ansell and all my colleagues, technical and support staff, stage@leeds and students at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries for their support. And to my colleagues at the Department of Classics for their generous feedback on our performances.

Additional thanks to Luk Van Den Dries, Michael Fentiman, Dr Eleanor OKell, Dr Angela Hadjipanteli, Georgea Solomontos, Varnavas Kyriazis, Nikos Charalambous, Professor Edith Hall, Jan Fabre, Marina Maleni, Lea Maleni, Tom Colley, Lauren Garnham, Scott Harris, Alex Clark, George Z. Georgiou, Anastasia Georgiou, Ashley Scott Layton, Patrick Bannon and all the performers I worked with for helping me develop and shape my directorial practice and vision.

I also need to thank Dr Duka Radosavljevi for her feedback on the initial proposal and constructive presence in everything I do.

I owe a lot of gratitude to those who gave me permission to include their photographs in the volume, as well as all the actors and performers portrayed in them.

I would like to thank my sister Marina Rodosthenous and my brother Nektarios Rodosthenous for their continuous support of my work. And, finally my mother Aphrodite and my late father Andreas, who generously introduced me to theatre, music and culture.

This book is dedicated in loving memory to Jonathan Hudson.

Dr George Rodosthenous

Associate Professor in Theatre Directing, University of Leeds

Penelope Chatzidimitriou (PhD Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, MA Royal Holloway) is Theatre Lecturer in the International Programmes of the University of London and in various acting schools in Thessaloniki, Greece. Her book Theodoros Terzopoulos: From the Personal to the Global (University Studio Press, Thessaloniki) is the result of her ten-year collaboration with the Greek director. Chatzidimitriou has also published in journals and collections in Greece and abroad, such as in Theater der Zeit (Germany), Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK), Peter Lang (New York) and China Theatre Press (Beijing). Her research interests focus on twentieth-century performance history, (post-)modern stagings of ancient Greek tragedy, the performing body and systems of acting, amongst others.

Dominic Glynn is Lecturer in French at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), London. Prior to his appointment in 2015, he worked in professional theatre and academia in France. Over the course of his career, he has collaborated with a number of writers and directors, including Olivier Cadiot, Ludovic Lagarde and Jol Pommerat, and has taught at Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies) and the universities Paris Ouest Nanterre La Dfense and Reims Champagne-Ardenne. Glynns research interests include French contemporary literature and theatre, adaptations of Molire on the Restoration stage and, more generally, the rituals of performance. He is the author of (Re)telling Old Stories: Peter Brooks Mahabharata and Ariane Mnouchkines Les Atrides (Peter Lang) and Lignes de fuite (Paris: LHarmattan).

Sue Hamstead came late to Classics after a career in computing. Having completed her doctoral thesis a study of off-stage characters in Greek tragedy she held a series of temporary lecturing posts, firstly at the University of Manchester, then at the University of Leeds, and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at Leeds. Her major research interests are in ancient Greek tragedy and epic. Publications include contributions to a collected volume, Greek Drama IV (eds D. Rosenbloom and J. Davidson), and to an Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy (ed. H. M. Roisman).

Andrew Haydon is a freelance theatre critic based in Manchester, UK. He has written for the Guardian , Nachtkritik.de, Frakcija, Kulturpunkt.hr and Exeunt. As theatre editor of CultureWars.org from 2005 to 2010, he discovered and commissioned a generation of new theatre critics, including Matt Trueman, Miriam Gillinson and Andy Field. His account of British theatre in the 2000s is published by Methuens Decades series as Modern British Playwriting: 20002009 (ed. Dan Rebellato), and forthcoming chapters include A Brief History of Online Theatre Criticism in Duka Radosavljevis new collection on writing about theatre and Directing Stephens in Jacqueline Boltons book on the playwright Simon Stephens.

Sophie Klein is a lecturer in Classical Studies at Boston University. Her research focuses on the ways in which themes and devices from Greek and Roman theatre pervade and influence other ancient and modern art forms. Her recent projects have explored Horaces use of dramatic material in the Sermones and Epistles , the chorus in Sophocles Ajax , mute characters in the plays of Plautus and Terence, and the striking similarities between the comedic formulas employed by Greek satyr drama and the American cartoon Animaniacs . In addition to her academic work, Klein has written several plays inspired by classical literature.