The purpose of this Introduction
is to offer an overview of the current and future work of the research
project, to identify and explain its parameters, to indicate areas where
the focus has been shaped by conceptual consideration, to identify significant
issues and problems which will be the subject of future investigation
and to contextualise the drama database both culturally and methodologically.
The methods used are
determined by the scope and aims of the project. The research is a response to the renewed
upsurge of interest in Greek drama and poetry, both in the original
and in translation, which became such a strong feature of the last quarter of
the twentieth century. The intention is to research, document and debate
this phenomenon in ways which will be of value to those researching
and studying in this and other closely related fields and in particular
to open up ways of describing, analysing and explaining the relationship
between ancient and modern texts, performances and readings. Therefore,
in addition to the light shed on modern Reception of particular ancient
texts it is hoped that issues and theories can be addressed which are
also relevant to Reception in other periods. For example, questions
about why and how the same text can be seen as conservative in one context
and radical or even subversive in another require comparative study
not only of ancient and modern but also of a range of modern examples.
We have not been rigid about
chronological limits. Wole Soyinka's version of Euripides, The Bacchae:
a Communion Rite (published 1973) is often taken as the opening
fanfare of the awakening interest in Greek drama in the last part of
the twentieth century, but we have considered earlier material where
it is relevant, symptomatic and/or influential. Works which are performed
or published slightly later than the year 2000 will also be included
since their inspiration and creation might fairly be said to be located
in the twentieth century. As well as works referring to particular Greek
texts or groups of texts, the project also includes those referring
to stories and figures from myth or to themes and images, such as Troy,
Dionysus, Achilles.
- Main
aspects of the research
- Theoretical
Framework
- The role
of the drama database
- Why the
database is necessary
- Advantages
of publishing on the Internet
- Opportunities
and difficulties
- Databases
and the wider research community
- Language
- Categories
and documentation
- Evidence
and sources
1.
Main aspects of the research(Click
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There are two main aspects
to the research. The first is concerned with the preparation of detailed
case studies which examine the formal, discursive and contextual relationships
between Greek texts and new creative work in drama and poetry. These
studies map 'correspondences' of situation, relationships, language
and image which converge on or diverge from the Greek. They analyse
ways in which complex discourses are 'translated' and 'transplanted
across time, place and language. Case studies completed so far have been published
conventionally in books and refereed journals [Publications]
The second aspect of the
research is the preparation and publication of a database of late twentieth-century
examples. This supports the aim of the project to study performance
as well as text. The drama section of the database draws on primary
evidence from programmes, acting scripts, prompt books, interviews and
theatre records as well as texts. Theatre and poetry performance in
the original language and in translation is included, as are versions,
adaptations and new work for which an ancient text or myth is the springboard.
Together with the poetry database which is now under construction thiis wil inform on-going work on literatures in English, the history
of which has been characterised by the importance of the relationship
between classical poetry and drama, translation and 'new' poetry and drama. The design of the databases are being developed by Carol Gillespie, Project Officer and IT co-ordinator.
2. Theoretical Framework (Click
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The project's approach to
Reception Studies is dialogic. This means that the focus is on the engagement
of the modern with the dynamics of the ancient, with resulting insights
into the interpretation of both. This approach contrasts with more traditional
methods which concentrate on the 'influence' of the ancient work or
describe 'reactions' to it, as though the ancient work and its interpretation
could be thought of as something fixed and static. One of the positive
aspects of recent research into the appropriation of classical culture
by succeeding traditions is that this has also liberated classical texts
from a straightjacket of identification with the values and interpretations
of the appropriating societies and has thus opened up the reading and interpretation of ancient poetry
and drama for re-examination. In this sense Reception Studies is not
merely concerned with the receiving tradition but can also yield insights
about the source text or performance.
Intertextual approaches
to literature are now an accepted part of modern scholarship but there
is also further scope for consideration of the impact on staging of
intertextuality of performance, a meta-theatre which self-consciously
enters into a dialogue or even an agon with contemporary as well
as ancient performances. It is hoped that documentation of the processes
of performance creation will support future research in this area and will enable assessment of the impact of theatre practitioners who are themsleves 'receivers' of the ancient material as well as being part of their own theatrical and cultural traditions.
Researching performance
aspects of Reception also raises questions about audience response and
will involve analysis of audience expectations prior to performance
(including knowledge or otherwise of the Greek works) and reactions
after it. We hope in the future to study this through action research
projects in collaboration with theatre practitioners. There is a lack
of relevant theoretical work in this field. Although reader response
theory suggests potential for analagous work on audience response it is logistically difficult to organise and evaluate.
We also think that the material
environment for modern performances merits detailed investigation. Quite
apart from the relationship between the size and type of theatrical
space and its use in performance, there are underlying issues which
can broadly be described as constituting the Management of Culture.
For example, what plays are staged and texts published? Where and by
whom? What criteria are paramount in these decisions (aesthetic, educational, financial, political)? To use a Greek analogy,
how and why is a Chorus granted and by whom? The manipulation of public
taste and the reading of investment trends are recognised imperatives
in professional theatre management but there is wide debate about their
relation to, on the one hand, the commercial attractions of globally
'acceptable' entertainment, and on the other, to
the tangible, unique and perhaps unsettling impact of live theatre.
Where might Greek drama lie on this spectrum?
The project aims to
enhance the availability of documented raw material which will
inform judgements about these underlying questions. It will be
necessary to formulate and address key questions such as - to
what extent are 'accessibility' and 'feasibility of production'
fashionable buzzwords? Are such concepts constructed from criteria
which are both aesthetic and socio-political? What kind of role
in enabling and directing artists and audiences is played by the
underlying ideologies and criteria used by funding sources (from
the Arts Council to commercial theatre)? Such questions impact
particularly keenly on the environment of modern productions of
Greek drama in which too rigid a polarity between the priorities
and expectations of the 'traditionally classical' establishment
and those of the 'traditionally radical' theatre sector can obscure
and impede the negotiation, experiment and fluidity which lies
between. Later versions of the database and its associated case-studies
will aim to include source material and analysis of these questions.
The published form of the database will be 'nested'
in a series of short Essays, also published electronically, which
will address theoretical and practical issues underlying the construction
of the database and informing its critical use. The first seven
Essays in this series are now available:
3. The role of the drama database (Click
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The database is a tool for
maximising the research potential and importance of performance as well
as text. It is very much the conventional wisdom that drama should be
researched and studied at least as much through performance as through
text. Yet the mechanisms for making this a reality, and in particular
for permitting analysis of a range of productions, are often sadly lacking.
Performance needs to be analysed with the same degree of rigour expected
of textual studies. This is not to say that the nature of the evidence
or the criteria for assessment are the same as for the study of printed
texts. There is a need to identify and document evidence which may by
its nature be ephemeral. It is also necessary to range beyond the 'canonical'
productions, directors and companies (such as the Royal Shakespeare
Company or well known widely reviewed commercial enterprises) and to
survey a broad spectrum of examples, including those from student, touring
and alternative theatre. Where possible we have also documented information about the processes of performance creation, and recorded interviews with translators and directors are stored in our archive.
We hope that the project
will provide a resource for researchers and students coming from several
different starting points, such as modern literature and theatre studies
as well as classical studies. So, for example, it will be possible to
search the database by year, director, actor, company, as well as by
title of the ancient play or author or by modern author or translator.
In this way, the resource should also be important for future cultural
historians examining the subject of twentieth century artistic and dramatic
interest in ancient Greece.
4. Why the database is necessary (Click
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Much of the important evidence
about a performance is normally lost when the run ends and the company
disbands so the project will document important aspects, for example
whether and how the conventions of Greek drama were used, staging, music
and choreography. Sometimes, researchers can be referred to a theatre
archive with details of how it can be accessed. Reviews will be referenced
and sometimes briefly quoted and details given of whether there is a
published text/ translation or a privately held manuscript. The project
documentation will be particularly important where programme details
are minimal or where there is no permanent company archive (or indeed
no permanent company).
The database should enable
better informed critical responses to issues such as the changing role
of the same text in different situations and cultural contexts. It will
stimulate discussion about the possibility of transplanting the dynamics
of Greek drama into modern performances which cannot reconstruct
the Greek conventions of theatrical space, size, location, and community
political and religious status and which sometimes cannot and sometimes
will not attempt to use the ancient theatrical conventions, e.g. masks,
song, dance, Chorus. It will also provide primary evidence to inform
debate about contentious issues, such as whether the religious and cultural
ethos of Greek tragedy and its theatrical conventions implans into modern productions a sense of fate
and human impotence which is both formally and ideologically incongruous
in the modern age. We aim to indicate, where known, the nature and impact of changes or omissions in the use of the ancient text and to allow comparison of ancient and modern physical and cultural contexts of performance.
So the database will not
merely list productions, important though that is, but will seek to
enrich the documentation and discussion of processes. In so doing,
we hope to encourage interdisciplinary work and especially to promote
understanding of the dynamics of the Greek plays themselves so that
those whose training has been in other disciplines do not regard them
as 'closed' texts, to be measured merely in terms of the authenticity
of reconstruction or the manipulation of a supposedly static and unproblematic
ancient play.
5.
Advantages of publishing on the Internet (Click
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The development of a database
nowadays implies electronic publication. We have chosen the Internet
rather than CD ROM because publication on the Net suits the nature of
the evidence and the aims of the research. It is necessary to use a
medium which permits regular updating and publication in successive
stages (Versions) as different features are added to the project. This
form of publication also allows the database to be contextualised and
explained in a series of Essays examining different aspects of the use
of sources and other critical features, including bibliography.
In addition, the researchers
have a fundamental commitment to disseminating the results of research
as widely as possible. (The project also provides short resumés for
popular publications.) Advances in the availability of IT, including
access to the Internet via cybercafes, community centres and public
libraries, mean that most interested people will be able to get access
inexpensively, and print off the results of their searches. The project
team has co-operated with the Arts and Humanities Data Service,
drawing on its expertise in the archiving of electronic projects to
ensure continuing access to the database.
Internet publishing also
allows us to include facilities for users to contribute to the
research either by using the rapid-response button to volunteer
specific information or by completing the electronic
datagathering form we have devised.
6.
Opportunities and difficulties (Click
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Any research into drama
encounters difficulties about the availability of video recordings.
Copyright problems frequently constrain the inclusion of clips in published
research. Furthermore, using video to research performance brings its
own problems. Video itself 'directs the gaze' and the gaze is unilateral.
More work needs to be done on the teaching and research implications
of working from video. It
is necessary to develop and evaluate research methods which, while utilizing
video, subject it to critical scrutiny and consider it with other sources
as part of a more pluralistic approach. The video can deceive us into
thinking we are experiencing the 'original' performance. The database
is a useful tool in correcting this illusion. The planned research into
audience response will recognise the importance of the 'multilateral
gaze'.
Nevertheless, a database
is not an objective structure and it is necessary to be as clear and
open as possible about the research methods used, including the rationale
for categorizing evidence. Material has to be located, selected and
categorised. Even decisions about whether a production is to be described
as an adaptation or a version are culturally loaded, reflecting judgements
about its relationship to the Greek original and its status as a new
work. Other judgements which are reflected in categorisation include
identification and interpretation of the effects on staging of the conventions
of Greek drama; statements about 'gender interest', 'ethnic interest',
and definitions of 'poor' or 'alternative' theatre. Larger issues have
also been raised about 'what counts as evidence' in the context of performance
and there are critical problems involved in the selction and evaluation
of evidence from sometimes ambivalent sources, such as Reviews. We include short analytical Essays on these and other
relevant subjects in order to assist critical use of the material in
the database. These Essays, in common with all material published electronically
or in hard copy in the course of the project, are subject to external
review before publication.
7.
Databases and the wider research community (Click
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This kind of project also
has implications for the nature and working practices of the research
community. In the first place, the nature of the research maximises
links with practitioners and audiences. This impacts on data gathering.
Apart from the conventional sources such as theatre listings, programmes
and fieldwork by the project team, we also use data gathering forms
(hard copy and electronic) so that others can send in information. This
has obvious implications for filtering and quality control. It also
means that research becomes more participative and co-operative.
The project also has valued
links with other groups, notably the Oxford Archive of Performances
of Greek and Roman Drama (all languages,1500 to the present) and with
the European Network of Research and Documentation of Greek Drama, which
has ambitious plans for future international co-operation in both teaching and research.
In itself, the project
team is interdisciplinary. As well as academic researchers and research consultants (Alison Burke, Ruth Hazel and Antony Keen, we need
the specialist skills of our IT coordinator and we have benefitted from
the expertise of our computing associates David Wong (Open University) and Greg Parker (Solutions Factory).
Finally, the open-endedness of the research and its medium presents
decision making problems about the stage at which work in progress is
piloted and published. We have opted to publish in stages (titled as
Versions), which will enable us to undertake periodic reviews of the
utility of the database as a research tool.
The sections of this introduction
which follow outline specific issues of language; categorisation; evidence
and primary sources.
8.
Language (Click to go back
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The research project studies
the reception of classical texts in English. By English, we mean and will include examples
of any of the many (and still developing) ways in which the English
language has responded to and shaped perceptions of classical drama and
poetry. This of course reflects the existence of a fluid zone of cultural
exchange, including, for example, Irish-English, Scots-English, Caribbean-English,
American-English, and the many variants and dialects. It also recognises
the importance of multi-lingual poetry and language juxtaposition in
drama performances, such as the Greek/English material in Harrison's
Trackers (DB no. 219), the Greek/ Creole/ English interfaces
in Walcott's Stage Version of the Odyssey (DB no. 845), and the
Xhosa and other languages of South Africa interlaced with English in
Medea (DB no. 827). We have also included films subtitled in
English (for example Elektreia DB no. 130, A Dream of Passion
(based on Medea) DB no. 181), performances in other languages
with English sur-titles, for example the Oresteia of the Craiova
Theatre of Romania (DB no. 940) and performances of drama in the original
Greek when presented to audiences who might be expected to interpret,
review and discuss primarily through the medium of English (for example
Oedipus Tyrannus DB no.230). Documentation of performances in
the original language (for example the Cambridge Greek play) is important
in order to allow wider analysis and comparison of cultural contexts,
including the relationship between productions in the original and in
translation and to foster research on audience experience and expectations.
Some inconsistencies are
inevitable and where there is a doubt our policy is to include rather
than exclude. Thus details of the performance of Les Atrides
in the UK have been included because of the cultural influence of the
production (DB no.152). We hope that our co-operation with other research projects will contribute
to detailed analysis and comparison of performances of Greek drama and
their role in cultural exchange across a range of languages and traditions.
Therefore the 'in English'
parameters of the project should be seen as recognizing the varieties
and flexibilities of the English language, globally in its various cultural
contexts and not as the imposition of any kind of cultural straitjacket
or hierarchy. In particular, we make no assumptions about the existence
of the kind of 'Anglicized' performance style for Greek drama, so graphically
described by Herbert Golder (Arion, Third Series 4.1 Spring 1996,
pp 174ff) and which has prompted much controversy about the extent to
which the evidence justifies any generalisation about the existence
of so-called 'national' stereotypes of performance style, let alone
of claims that some styles (i.e. cultures/nations?) can be said to be
more faithful (proprietors?) to the original. (For this debate see subsequent
issues of Arion, especially Oliver Taplin's response in Arion,
Third Series 5.3 Winter 1998). On the contrary, we hope that the project
as a whole and the database in itself will enable later researchers
to address issues of pluralism and commonalities as well as 'otherness'
and in particular to analyse and assess the impact of classical referents
in post-colonial literatures, which is a major strand in our printed publications.
9.
Categories and documentation (Click
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The decisions we have made
about how examples are categorised and the nature of the information
which is recorded about them are dictated by the overall aims of the
project. All these decisions are to a greater or lesser degree culturally
'loaded' and for this reason a brief explanation is given here. In the
first place, it may seem arbitrary to make the basic initial distinction
between Drama and Poetry. Of course there is no suggestion that poetry
plays no part in drama, and especially in Greek drama, nor indeed, do
we wish to underplay the role that drama plays in some poems. Our distinction
is basically generic, that drama has to do with theatre and audiences
and has its own conventions. All of these characteristics place particular
demands on modern staging. Nevertheless, we also recognise that performance
poetry, and especially poetry taking its impetus from Greek source texts, requires special attention in documentation. Film has been documented
using the basic categories applied to drama, while film poems have been
documented as poetry, with some adaptations (for example, Tony Harrison's
The Gaze of the Gorgon, DB no.134). It will be apparent from
the references to the source text/image that there is a significant
cross-over in genres from ancient source to modern realisation.
The diagram which follows
shows the aspects of performance to be documented.
Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English 