January Conference 1999
THEATRE
: ANCIENT & MODERN
Return
to contents
Introduction
to Performance
Nick
Lowe, Royal Holloway College,
University of London, U.K.
The papers on Performance
span a continuum of problems, ranging from issues of role-playing
and impersonation within the plays themselves, through the reconstruction
of fifth-century staging from pointers in the text, to modern
explorations of tragic mythmaking through its re-creation in modes
of performance outside the boundaries of theatre as such. Taken
together, they offer a panorama of the ways in which the concept
of performance has broadened outwards from narrow theatrical reconstruction,
whether of first stagings or in modern production, to become an
essential conceptual tool for the exploration of theatrical ‘meaning’
at many different levels – from the kinds of meaning that
emerge only through the text's incarnation as a live event, to
the many ways in which fifth-century tragedy itself reflects significantly
on the elements and process of performance. Few would now wish
to dispute that Greek drama codes meaning not merely in the text,
but in the stagecraft or semiotics of production; or that tragedy,
while resisting the free and explicit metatheatricality of Old
Comedy, is nevertheless pervaded by self-reflexive meditation
on issues of role-play, deception, and overlaid identities; or
that the reception and re-experiencing of tragedy in modern performance
is itself integral, rather than supplementary, to the process
of excavating meaning from the texts.
These papers illustrate
not only the rich diversity of problems and approaches opened
up by performance criticism(s), but also arguably their deeper
unity in fundamental questions of identity and its construction
in the media of mimesis.
Return
to contents
|
Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English