FEBRUARY 2000

 

The practice of performing Greek Drama - investigations into communicating Greek Drama to contemporaryaudiences
Peter Meineck, Aquila Theatre Company, New York, USA

It is very clear that he number of Greek plays making their way on to the professional and non-professional stage is on the rise. At this very moment in New York there are four Greek plays running with another just closed. In the past season we have seen Sophocles on Broadway, Homer at the Lincoln Center, Aeschylus’ coming to Off Broadway and all the Fifth Century Athenian dramatists strongly represented Off-Off Broadway. The same seems true in the UK with notable productions in the West End and at the National. This may all be a by-product of Millennium Madness - theatre companies looking for monumental texts to mark the event - yet even so, more and more audiences are gaining the opportunity to experience Greek drama live on stage.

It seems appropriate to begin this year’s seminar by introducing some discussion on the way in which Greek drama is communicated to contemporary audiences and to examine methods by which scholars working in this field and theatre practitioners can mutually benefit from each others experience.

The Information Gap

Ask any drama student or working actor on the first day of rehearsal to create some impressions of Greek theatre and the answers will always be the same; white togas, megaphone mouths, huge grotesque masks, platform shoes, Fate, hubris, humans as the playthings of the gods, amphitheatres, a chanting chorus. Anyone who has enjoyed Woody Allen’s Greek chorus in “Mighty Aphrodite” gets the picture. Most people have outmoded and seriously ill-conceived notions of Greek drama and this lies at the very heart of tackling the problem of how to communicate these texts to a contemporary audience. The exciting, often starling and sometimes controversial research of the past 50 years is just not getting through and this usually results in one of two kinds of production: Either the play becomes over reverent with a cast of actors blurting out lines of translationeese that means nothing to them and fails to engage the audience on any truthful emotional level, or a production chooses to heavily deconstruct, which is fine, except when that deconstruction develops out of a lack of understanding of the play.

So what can be done to close this gap? Some suggestions

1) Programs teaching ancient drama should include some form of basic theatrical instruction, be it in directing, dramaturgy, acting or design. Likewise Theatre training programs should seek to include Classicists and ancient theatre specialists in their teaching staff. This would at least equip students with the means to communicate and share research across disciplines. It would be interesting to hear from teachers with experience of these probelms.

2. Both Classicists and Theatre scholars seek to explore each other’s outlets for the publication of research relating to Greek drama or collaborate jointly on research projects.

3. Scholars of ancient drama should provide active and exciting dramaturgical advice to theatre companies seeking to stage Greek plays. Theatre companies should be made aware that the resources and knowledge of a local educational institution are at their disposal and willing to be consulted.

4. Scholars should seek to disseminate current knowledge and opinions of Greek drama to the theatrical community. Didaskalia was one example of how well this could work and yet still only a start.

5. Scholars should work with education coordinators in Theatres to create educational programming to promote an understanding and appreciation of Greek drama within young audiences and teachers. This is one way we can help guarantee future interest in the subject.

These are just some basic ideas and it may be that in one form or another some of these are already being practiced, but it should be apparent to all of us that there is a great opportunity to benefit from this renewed interest in Greek drama currently in our theatres and to capitalize on it to create new interest in the subject as a whole.

Practical Magic

Once a director has gained an understanding of these texts and can at least make informed dramatic choices, there still remains a fierce debate on the presentation of Greek drama that does not seem to exist in other forms of non contemporary drama. There is a sanitized view of ancient drama, be it comedy or tragedy, that refuses to allow these inventive dangerous texts to breathe again on stage. This may be a result of the “Glory that was Greece” syndrome, but this does not do justice to these great old plays. How can dramatists free the sprit the original and create dynamic, engrossing and emotional performances live on stage? This is a huge subject and of course there is no definitive answer but it does seem that the lack of understanding of Greek drama hinders this development.

Elizabethan drama is a subject equally at home in the academy or on the stage with a healthy cross over between the two disciplines. Innovation and exploration are widely accepted alongside scholarship and examination. Very few people now expect the RSC to perform all their shows in doublet and hose and a well informed innovative approach to Shakespeare can still cause a great deal of public excitement. Most audiences moved by a Greek play today may be reacting to a strong central performance by a famous actor or an idea that they have witnessed a great text staged once again, but are they reacting to these plays on an emotive visceral level? This can happen with Shakespeare why not with Greek drama? Why are modern dress or anachronistic productions so scorned, are they of no use? Does the prevailing idea of Greek drama have more to do with Victorian Northern Europe than Fifth Century Greece not least the theatrical world of 2000.

Truth is hard to find in performances of Greek drama, the language, rituals and customs all seem foreign and the emotions of the characters so strange. But there are ways to communicate the sensibilities of Greek drama and produce a play that is a truthful human experience and not some far off glimpse of an alien culture? Some basic suggestions follow.

Communicating Catharsis

1. Truth in performance is paramount. We don’t pay to hear text being recited, but emotions played out on stage advanced by a great story. Actors need translations that they can react to and find the heart of a performance, be it poetry or prose. So many productions fail with a translation that is unsuitable for the kind of performance the company is attempting.

2. An understanding of the production conditions in existence when the plays were created. This includes staging, the theatre space and most importantly the visual dimension of Greek theatre (remember theatre means “seeing place”).

3. A basic understanding of the history rituals and culture of the period. Again, a sanitized and inaccurate view of the Greeks pervades here.

4. A sense of masks. Masks have been well discussed in this seminar but hardly any actors have any experience of working in the kind of masks current in the Fifth Century. Although a production may never be staged with masks an appreciation for masked theatre and their use in rehearsal can achieve amazing results.

5. The development of a ensemble sharing a sacred space. this concept is particularly rare in the star driven environment of American theatre but essential to creating a well crafted Greek play.

6. A focus on movement as well as words. This concept flows from using masks where movement becomes paramount and blocking must be exactly coordinated and highly choreographed.

7. If it works use it. Sometimes something so anachronistic can becoming the most moving element on a production. A recent W.W.II Iliad had the audience rolling in the aisles at the gods in Book One and crying their eyes out at Achilles in Book Nine. Is Agamemnon in combat gear so different from the way the Athenians of the Fifth Century depicted their Homeric heroes on vase paintings as Hoplites wearing the armour of the day?

8. Don’t forget music (and Dance). Greek drama had all these elements manipulating the emotions of the audience. Music can take the stage into whole other dimensions bating the theatre in atmospheres.

9. Trust the structure of the texts. whatever is cut, changed and adapted the original structure can still serve as a strong dramatic framework. The simplest of stage devices such as a stage entrance or a messenger speech at just the right moment can produce startlingly effective results.

The list could go on but I hope that the seminar will add to it and discuss some of the points raised. This does seem to be one of the few places where an interdisciplinary dialogue does take place and this is important. Clearly, contemporary Greek drama on stage can still develop much further and productions can become stronger and more sensitive if they have the advantages of the scholarship and knowledge that already exists. I’ve chosen an overtly practical theme for this seminar because I would like to hear how we can make theatres and audiences come to a deeper appreciation of Greek drama and what theatre companies might do to communicate these plays more effectively on stage.

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RESPONSES

Barbara Goff, University of Reading, UK

First, thanks to Peter for a punchy beginning to the seminar.  Coming back to London from Texas, I too am struck by the wealth of classical performances here.  I would like to say that I am inspired to exploit such resources more fully in my teaching, but others must of course be the judges of how inspired I am.  I am at present team-teaching with a drama specialist a course at St Mary’s College (Strawberry Hill, Twickenham), in Greek Tragic Theatre, which is cross-listed with the drama department.  (This is a course that I inherited from Margaret Williamson, now at Dartmouth.)  I’m finding it a wonderful opportunity to learn from my fellow teacher and from the drama students enrolled in the course, and in line with Peter’s suggestion 1, I would certainly recommend such collaborations to colleagues.  Two other points: much of the sharing of resources that Peter advocates could/should be done via the Internet.  Didaskalia certainly points the way, but might there also be a case for a site organized in terms of contributions from many sources: I’m thinking particularly of notes on productions from theatre companies, professional and amateur, with stills or video clips, discussing problems encountered and (?) overcome. Perhaps also notes from successful teaching experiments or other kinds of collaboration between practitioners of page and stage.  Finally, a thought from my experience of a recent production in London by the Actors of Dionysos.  They often have pre-performance talks by classical scholars, but might not they, and other similarly specialised companies, also host discussions between actors and audience about the challenges and opportunities of staging Greek plays?  Since the audiences are likely to consist preponderantly of classical scholars and students (including those still in school or just starting college), such discussion might be very useful and interesting.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, The Open University, UK

Firstly I want to say how much I enjoyed Peter's call-to-arms; as someone who has straddled the world of theatre and Classical academia (sometimes uncomfortably, sometimes with ease) for the last eight years, I have often found need to voice such thoughts, but rarely have I found a platform from which to shout them.

The Greek Theatre scene in the UK is healthy too: we have recently had major productions of Aiskhylos and Sophokles playing in London's West End, together with a host of tragedies and comedies playing in Off-West End venues. The provinces are being catered for too with touring productions and specially staged offerings, like the remarkable "Greeks" performed very recently at Glasgow. Things are on the up here too it would appear.

I see a great deal of Greek drama these days, a lot of it mediocre in my opinion, some of it palatable, occasionally it can be wonderful, but it is ALWAYS worthwhile. That is to say, a company might not have the academic kudos that we might require behind its production of a Greek play, but at least it is being performed, being seen, being heard, getting known. I can be scathing (in my mind, rarely on paper) about productions that have failed to address issues of staging in a sufficiently 'Greek' way; it can often lead to a feeling of intense frustration as you sit there in the darkened auditorium (how un-Greek!). I recently saw a production of the Libation Bearers where Klytemnestra was killed in full view of the audience. It weakened the tragedy, I felt; it grated on my sensibility of understanding that "the Greeks would never have done that". But was it wrong? Is it wrong to perform without masks, or music, or dance?

Should we as academics or practitioners who are enlightened in our knowledge of "how the Greeks did it" really attempt to spread the word to the uninitiated director or designer or actor, musician or technician?

Will an attempt to educate our present and future theatre practitioners simply lead to a more limited, if 'authentic', mode of presentation of these timeless works?

For me, the greatest theatrical experience of my life was watching/participating in Mnouchkine's "Les Atrides"; I am an exponent of the notion that "all theatre is Oriental", so I was bound to love her interpretations of the tragedies. But it worked for me on an academic level too; it satisfied my sense of "this is what the Greeks did", and allowed me to understand for the first time the integral relationship between text, dance, music, spectacle and drama. But pure Greek it wasn't. The make-up worn by the actors was mask-like, but not masks. Their costumes were inspired by Indian, Japanese, and other Eastern dress-styles. The music was as much about gamalan as it was Greek. But the production spoke to me; it said, "here in essence is what you have always thought about Greek theatre, take what you want from it. Leave the rest behind".

Remembering that heady experience fondly (over fondly perhaps), it is disquieting to read arguments like Sallie Goetsch advanced in her critique of "Les Atrides" for the Drama Review in 1994:

"On an interpretative level, Mnouchkine does Aeschylus a grave disservice, constantly overriding his directorial decisions." ("Les Atrides and the History of Reading Aeschylus". Drama Review. 38 (3). Fall. 1994. 75-95)

Must we be so narrow in our awareness of what is so "Greek" about Greek drama? Can we say that Aiskhylos or any other ancient dramatist must "direct" our visions of their work?

Should we just allow contemporary productions to be what they want to be?

Let's take from them what we want, utilise them for sure, use them for teaching aids, whatever. Delight in the ones that work for us as individuals, despair at those that don't, but lets not straightjacket productions into "those that got it right" and "those that got it wrong".

Just some thoughts ....

End of rant.

Robert Garland, Colgate University, USA

Peter Meineck's seminar should be warmly received by all those interested in contemporary productions of Greek drama. Though I have no hard evidence to go on, my sense is that the contact which he recommends between scholars and theatre practitioners very rarely happens today in the commercial theatre. We have come a long way since the beginning of the nineteenth century when Gilbert Murray, Professor of Greek, was spearheading the move to dramatise Greek tragedy on the stage, not least through the vehicle of his own translations. Thus, Meineck's suggestion that 'Theatre training programs should seek to include Classicists and ancient theatre specialists in their teaching staff' comes as a breath of fresh air, for the current stand-off between the two is in no-one's benefit.

His further observation that productions of plays tend to be either 'over reverent' or heavily deconstructed is also very much to the point. Indeed one can claim that there is nothing very much in between in contemporary productions of ancient drama. The dilemma, in my view, inevitably begins with the thorny issue of translation, a problem that has bedevilled the general public's understanding and appreciation of both tragedy and comedy, virtually since the sixteenth century. The variety of translations that are in vogue is matched only by the variety of terms used to describe them, viz. account, adaptation, version, realization, transfiguration, and the like. Though Classicists are often deeply disturbed by the latitude that translations take, particularly those that are staged, they are, of course, in no position to teach the contemporary theatre director his or her profession, especially where big bucks are concerned, which is where the heart of the problem lies. 

The ideal is surely the practice of the Italian Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, which commissions joint translations by a philologist and a professional writer for its productions in the ancient theatre of Syracuse. The translation is then tested in the Istituto's actors' school and 'modified according to the demands of fluency and actability' (G. Monace p. 222 in International Meeting of Ancient Greek Drama at Delphi 8-12 April 1984, Delphi 4-25 June 1985). Is such an admirable synthesis of talent and expertise attainable in the commercial theatre elsewhere?

Just a few small points: Firstly, Meineck's call to 'free the spirit' of the original does, of course, have a long history itself. That is what Gilbert Murray claimed Max Reinhardt had finally achieved in his celebrated production of Oedipus the King at Covent Garden in 1912. Secondly, though I applaud the need and desire 'to produce a play that is... not some far off glimpse of an alien culture', I believe too that a production ought to be faithful to the cultural pressure points of the society that produced it, viz. in the Greek case themes such as the dread of pollution, the claims of suppliancy, the power of the hero, etc., which deserve and require sensitive exploration, even though they are not part of our everyday cultural experience and are in some cases indeed inalienably alien.

This is such a great topic - and a highly topical topic too. There's so much more to be said but I've run out of space. Let it be admitted, too, that Classicists are themselves by no means in agreement as to what the goal of any production should be, as the spirited correspondence between Herb Golder and Oliver Taplin in Arion demonstrates. I truly hope that some pooling of resources and expertise can be engendered along the lines suggested by Peter Meineck.

David Wiles, Royal Holloway College, London University, UK

I endorse absolutely what you say about relations between the academy and the professional theatre. I support your nine-point manifesto about how productions should be approached. I should like to express a reservation, however, about the rhetoric which introduces that manifesto, as I think there are some important points here worth debating in this seminar. The statement which makes me uneasy is: "Truth in performance is paramount. We don't pay to hear text being recited, but emotions played out on stage advanced by a great story." The word TRUTH in theatrical circles has acquired a huge amount of Stanislavskian baggage, particularly when sub-classified as EMOTIONAL TRUTH. I share absolutely your commitment to 'a sense of masks' when working on Greek plays, and I think one reason why student actors enjoy working with masks is because it releases them from all that Stanislavskian stuff about character and belief. One of the many things masks tend to do is shift the emphasis from character back to story. When you say that an audience is drawn to emotions 'advanced' by the story, I wonder how you relate this to Aristotle's view that story is the soul of the tragedy, which I take it means that story is not there simply to advance something else?

The word TRUTH is a feature of modern rather than classical discourse about performance. In the matter of masks, I suspect you will respond that masks allow the actor to be more 'truthful', and you could cite many practitioners in support of that view. However, we need to take the term apart. Stanislavski's definition is clear in An Actor Prepares: 'Truth on the stage is whatever we can believe in with sincerity, whether in ourselves or in our colleagues.' It's a positive concept relating to an interior state. Mask practitioners, I think, are more likely to have a via negativa in mind, a stripping off of successive layers of pretence, layers of dissociation between mind and body. I think this is an important distinction. We can play Greek tragedy in order to expose the emotional core that lies beneath and behind the words and gestures of the protagonists; but we can also do the opposite, and highlight the way the truth proffered by each individual character crumbles. Agamemnon's version of events yields before Clytaemnestra's, which yields before Orestes' which yields before that of a polis in flux... It is the endless deferral of truth which gives (or gave) the Oresteia its interest.

So I wonder how committed you want to be to this notion of TRUTH as paramount within a mimetic art form? If we want our friends in the theatre to think that Greek tragedy is so universal that it can speak to a post-modernist consciousness as easily as to a modernist consciousness (if I'm not being too paradoxical here?), then perhaps a different form of words is needed?

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Final Response from Topic LeaderPeter Meineck

Thanks for everyone who responded to my seminar topic. I list brief responses below:

1. I was particularly glad to hear from David Wiles who is one of those rare creatures, the theatre scholar and practitioner who also crosses over into classics and back again, producing very successful results. I agree with all that David wrote but would like to clarify my stance on the term 'truth' in this context. I do think it is a telling reminder of the problems we face in disseminating information to the theatre world when the very tern 'truth' immediately becomes a hot button to the Method school of acting. I think this demonstrates how successful those schools have been in creating a definite language for their approaches and teaching it to generation of students. This is food for thought as we are still battling to dispel the same old misconceptions about ancient drama.

I believe that dramatic 'truth' does not only have to mean an individual actor's internalizing certain intentions as with the Method school, but must also pertain to the actor's outward existence. As an audience member I'm not interested in what the actor playing Agamemnon thinks that Agamemnon had for breakfast, but how the actors portrays the role on stage. Any method that helps the actor achieve this is fine but my point is that many actor today have very little knowledge or understanding of ancient Greek culture and therefore find these roles alien and strange, hence we, the audience fail to be engaged. The use of 'truth' extends through research, translation, movement, gesture, voice and ensemble and I have found the mask to insist on a truthful, fully committed performance in order to convey its full power.

I think David is right, we need our own terminology so those of us working in this area don't confuse the issues and can focus on developing our understanding of the subject from a common language of collaboration. Here is one of the problems it seems to me we must address.

To sum up I think TRUTH is essential to ancient drama, particularly as a mimetic form. I'd hate to give this fine word over to Stanislavski without a fight, after all Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides et al. were there first, right?

2. Barbara's points all show how effective collaboration can be. I wonder if it is slightly easier to form such colloborations in British academia than in the US?  I know Barbara has extensive experience in both systems. I too would like to see web resources like Didaskalia expand. Up to now, Didaskalia has been held together by the valiant one woman army that is Sallie Goetsch. I wonder if somewhere like the new Getty Center might step up to the plate to coordinate this with some institutional support. It seems we might all learn from this. Aquila (www.aquilatheatre.com) has tried to put as much information out there as possible and provide links to other related sites but it would be great if our efforts could be linked on-line in some way.

I definitely second the idea of scholars participating in pre-show talks, seminars and conferences based around a show. If nothing else what a great way to publicize classics to a wider and presumably already interested audience. I am sure theatre companies would love to hear from scholars offering this kind of dramaturgical help. I know Oliver Taplin has worked with the National and Pat Easterling with the RSC but there are many other ancient plays being re staged all over the world right now.

3. It was very nice to hear about the work of the Syracusa Festival in testing and staging translations in Robert Garland's response. This reminded me that we have a lot to learn on this subject from beyond the English speaking world and another way classicists can help is to translate these materials into English for a wider readership. I do understand the problems associated with working with a professional theatre company but I feel that if more classicists did cross over a little in academia the idea of advising a theatre director would not seem nearly as daunting. I can assure you it works both ways as many directors fear the material and the vast amount of scholarship that accompanies it. Where on earth does a director contemplating staging the Oresteia start? Here the guidance and encouragement of a classics scholar would prove invaluable.

4. Both Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Robert Garland make the excellent point that one person's Greek drama is another dog's dinner and visa versa of course. I'm not at all suggesting that there is one correct way to perform or stage ancient plays. On the contrary, I believe that by revealing the wealth of knowledge available about these works theatre practitioners will become even bolder in presenting evocative and stirring productions, just as with Shakespeare. We won't like them all the time, some will infuriate us and other's delight but we might learn something ourselves about how these texts work as plays and why they still speak to us today. They will also help promote our subject.  The point about director's talking 'liberties' is well taken but I remember working on the Oresteia with Robert Richmond who wanted to do several different things. I did stop him from having the male chorus bring on the crimson cloths in Agamemnon and explained how vital it was that this was done by women, but he decided to stage the killing of Clytemnestra by Orestes on stage in slow motion to evocative music. It was superb and the audience cried. Can we really be so sure that Aeschylus never did this just because the text indicates a movement inside? We must be careful of believing that text is the only factor that makes for a live production. I think it gets back to that word again - truth. The objective of showing Clytemnestra's death was truthful to the dramatic thrust of the play. It forced the audience to confront what, after all is an essential element in the trilogy. No-one failed to understand it's significance or to be moved by it. Was it what Aeschylus' did - I can't say for sure, none of us can, but it was very definitely the Oresteia. An Oresteia perhaps 'translated' for a different set of dramatic circumstances, but the Oresteia nevertheless. I also think of the countless students and audiences in Santa Cruz who have enjoyed Mary Kay Gamlel's often brilliantly anachronistic open air productions of Greek plays. Medea in an open topped Cadallac as the chariot of the sun? It's nothing of not provocative and makes for a great thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining experience of theatre.

It's clear that this is a huge subject and I hope that seminar members will continue to incorporate ideas about how we can involve ourselves in contemporary stage work in future postings.