Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English
from c.1970 to the Present  

Drama Day 2000 : Mask Workshop

Held at the Open University, Milton Keynes, Saturday 30th September

Click here for video and sound extracts

The video and sound extracts are from a workshop conducted by Professor Greg McCart at the Open University in September 2000. The workshop was attended by 170 undergraduate students from the OU and staff and graduate students from a number of universities and formed part of an outreach programme of seminars and workshops organised by The Reception of the Texts and Images of Ancient Greece in Late Twentieth-Century Drama and Poetry in English project. A full length video of the workshop is kept by the Research Project and is available for consultation by visiting students and researchers (contact Carol Gillespie for more details).

Greg McCart studied English Literature and Classics at the University of Queensland, Australia. His involvement in the university drama society led him to pursue a career in theatre training and lecturing in Theatre Studies. He has been an actor and playwright and has directed over forty university productions for the stage. He has translated, directed and performed ancient Greek drama over the past fifteen years. His commissioned translation of Euripides' Medea was premiered by the Sydney Theatre Company in 1996 and is published in John Senczuk (ed.), Word for Word (Five Islands Press, 1998). His translations of Oidipous the King and Oidipous at Kolonos along with notes on their productions are published in Michael Ewans (ed.), Sophocles: Four Dramas of Maturity and Sophocles: Three Dramas of Old Age (Everyman, 1999 and 2000, respectively). He has explored the design, manufacture and use of the Greek tragic mask in performance and has conducted numerous workshops on the mask.

He currently teaches at the University of Southern Queensland where he has held the positons of Head of the Theatre Department, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Chair of the University's Academic Board. He continues as Director of the USQ Performance Centre.

Greg makes use of mask in teaching ancient Greek drama for he finds it to be a most helpful tool in leading students to a deeper appreciation of these dramas. He also has used the tragic mask in contributing to the training of factors for the stage. The mask allows the actor to explore an entirely different mode of performing from that required by modern theatrical conventions. It helps the actor 'open up' physically and find vocal and other reserves which are normally untapped by the Stanislavsky-based training methods which abound in drama schools. He has found that spectators respond more enthusiastically to masked performance of Greek drama than they do to its unmasked performance. He is convinced that the reason for this is that respecting the conventions which governed the original performances of these dramas leads to a new and enlightening appreciation. He is currently exploring mask and Aristophanic comedy.

The extracts used in the workshop were Oidipous the King ll 618-772a and Bakchai ll 1153-1217, both in the original and in Greg McCart's translation.

We gratefully acknowledge the grant aid for this workshop from The Hellenic Society and the Arts Faculty of the Open University.