Adapting Greek Tragedy

Shows how contemporary adaptations, on the stage and on the page, can breathe new life into Greek tragedy.

Hypertheatre: Contemporary Radical Adaptation of Greek Tragedy investigates the adaptation of classical drama for the contemporary stage and explores its role as an active, polemical form of theatre which addresses present-day issues. The book’s premise is that by breaking drama into constituent parts, revising, reinterpreting and rewriting to create a new, culturally and politically relevant construct, the process of adaptation creates a 'hyperplay', newly repurposed for the contemporary world. This process is explored through a diverse collection of postmodern adaptations of Antigone, Medea, and The Trojan Women, analysing their adaptive strategies and the evidence of how these remakings reflect the cultures of which they are a part. Central to this study is the idea that each of these adaptations becomes an entirely new play, redefining its central female figures and invoking reconfigurations of femininity which emphasise individual women’s strengths and female solidarity. Written for scholars of Theatre, Adaptation, Performance Studies, and Literature, Hypertheatre places the Greek classics firmly within a contemporary feminist discourse.

This book explores contemporary African adaptations of classical Greek tragedies. Six South African and Nigerian dramatic texts – by Yael Farber, Mark Fleishman, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, and Wole Soyinka – are analysed through the thematic lens of resistance, revolution, reconciliation, and mourning. The opening chapters focus on plays that mobilize Greek tragedy to inspire political change, discussing how Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is reconfigured as a freedom fighter and how Euripides’ Dionysos is transformed into a revolutionary leader. The later chapters shift the focus to plays that explore the costs and consequences of political change, examining how the cycle of violence dramatized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy acquires relevance in post-apartheid South Africa, and how the mourning of Euripides’ Trojan Women resonates in and beyond Nigeria. Throughout, the emphasis is on how playwrights, through adaptation, perform a cultural politics directed at the Europe that has traditionally considered ancient Greece as its property, foundation, and legitimization. Van Weyenberg additionally discusses how contemporary African reworkings of Greek tragedies invite us to reconsider how we think about the genre of tragedy and about the cultural process of adaptation. Against George Steiner’s famous claim that tragedy has died, this book demonstrates that Greek tragedy holds relevance today. But it also reveals that adaptations do more than simply keeping the texts they draw on alive: through adaptation, playwrights open up a space for politics. In this dynamic between adaptation and pre-text, the politics of adaptation is performed.

'Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy' provides a wide-ranging analysis of the role of the director in shaping adaptations for the stage today.

Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions provides a wide-ranging analysis of the role of the director in shaping adaptations for the stage today. Through its focus on a wide range of international productions by Katie Mitchell, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Peter Sellars, Jan Fabre, Ariane Mnouchkine, Tadashi Suzuki, Yukio Ninagawa, Andrei Serban, Nikos Charalambous, Bryan Doerries and Richard Schechner, among others, it offers readers a detailed study of the ways directors have responded to the original texts, refashioning them for different audiences, contexts and purposes. As such the volume will appeal to readers of theatre and performance studies, classics and adaptation studies, directors and theatre practitioners, and anyone who has ever wondered 'why they did it like that' when watching a stage production of an ancient Greek play. The volume Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy is divided in three sections: the first section - Global Perspectives - considers the work of a range of major directors from around the world who have provided new readings of Greek Tragedy: Peter Sellars and Athol Fugard in the US, Katie Mitchell in the UK, Theodoros Terzopoulos in Greece and Tadashi Suzuki and Yukio Ninagawa in Japan. Their work on a wide range of plays is analysed, including Electra, Oedipus the King, The Persians, Iphigenia at Aulis, and Ajax. Parts Two and Three – Directing as Dialogue with the Community and Directorial Re-Visions - focus on a range of productions of key plays from the repertoire, including Prometheus Landscape II, Les Atrides, The Trojan Women, The Bacchae, Antigone and The Suppliants, among others. In each, the varying approaches of different directors are analysed, together with a detailed investigation of the mise-en-scene. In considering each stage production, the authors raise issues of authenticity, contemporary resonances, translation, directorial control/auteurship and adaptation.

A modern retelling of Sophocles' classic play, Antigone, by bestselling writer and poet Hollie McNish As the daughter of Oedipus, Antigone was dealt a cruel hand at birth - even within the bounds of Grecian tragedy. When her brothers are slain fighting for the throne of Thebes, Antigone finds herself pitted against her uncle, the newly crowned King Creon. In defiance of the king, Antigone buries her brother's body, a choice she may pay for dearly. In this new adaptation, we see Sophocles' play reignited by bestselling poet and writer Hollie McNish. Hollie's considered retelling brings Sophocles' original text to a modern-day audience, illuminating the remarkable resemblances between ancient Greek thought and the society we grapple with today. '[Hollie McNish] writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love . . . She's always been one of my favourites' Kae Tempest

As a creative medium, ancient Greek tragedy has had an extraordinarily wide influence: many of the surviving plays are still part of the theatrical repertoire, and texts like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Medea have had a profound effect on Western culture. This Companion is not a conventional introductory textbook but an attempt, by seven distinguished scholars, to present the familiar corpus in the context of modern reading, criticism, and performance of Greek tragedy. There are three main emphases: on tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, on a range of different critical interpretations arising from fresh readings of the texts, and on changing patterns of reception, adaptation, and performance from antiquity to the present. Each chapter can be read independently, but each is linked with the others, and most examples are drawn from the same selection of plays.

What happened to Greek tragedy after the death of Euripides? This book provides some answers, and a broad historical overview.