MARCH 2000

 

Tragedy and Politics: the Use (and Abuse?) of Genre
Robert Garland Classics Department Colgate University, USA

Though the sources of their inspiration are for the most part hidden from us, the Greek tragedians, perhaps more frequently than we will ever know, selected their subject matter and composed their dramas with a political agenda. Although only very rarely, as in the case of Phrynichus' lost Siege of Miletus and Aeschylus' Persians, are tragedies known to have been explicitly based on historical events, many more, such as the Oresteia, are thought to provide an allegorical treatment of a contemporary social or political event. It is also conceivable that the tragedians occasionally provided thinly disguised characterisations of contemporary political figures, notable examples being Oedipus in Oedipus the King and Creon in Antigone, both of whom are thought to be based on the character of Pericles.

Whatever the frequency of allusions to fifth-century political and social concerns in Greek tragedy, there is nothing new, therefore, in investing it with a contemporary message. Indeed the ease with which the genre has in the twentieth century lent itself to a variety of political agendas is one of the primary causes of its current popularity. An early instance of the use (and, arguably, abuse) of Greek tragedy was James Thomson's adaptation of Agamemnon, performed in London in 1738, which offered a satire on contemporary politics. It did so, however, only by violating the text to the degree that Clytemnestra (Queen Caroline) in the end rejects the suggestion of Aegisthus (Robert Walpole) to murder Agamemnon (George II).

Arguably it was the horrific carnage of the First World War that most dramatically altered the status of Greek tragedy in the commercial theatre, with Euripides' plays becoming a vehicle for the pacifist and anti-war sentiments that were widespread in both Europe and America. In the interval between the two World Wars, tragedy was exploited by fascist dictators for propagandist effect. It was following a memorable performance of Antigone in Syracuse that Mussolini established the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, which staged productions of Greek drama that were in line with the fascist aims of the government. The supreme indignity suffered by Greek tragedy, however, was a Nazi production of Oresteia in Berlin in 1936.

Productions of Greek tragedy have continued till the present to provide a vehicle for articulating the anxieties and outrage of the twentieth century, as historical events and tendencies have given them contemporary relevance. In the 1960's it was Bacchae with its focus upon liberation form the constraints of society which spoke most loudly to the current age. In the late 1960's and early 1970's productions of Greek tragedy were mounted in protest against the Vietnam War - a war that has been called America's Sicilian Expedition. Especially notable was the Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki's Trojan Women in 1974, which depicted the Trojans in the guise of Japanese civilians at the mercy of Americans at the end of World War II. Likewise the films of Michael Cacoyannis, notably his Trojan Trilogy (1967-77), were influenced both by the Vietnam War and by the Greek military dictatorship.

A dependency on the part of the professional theatre upon contemporary events in order to give 'relevance' to a production and to provide the spur to audience response has continued until the present. David Leveaux's 1997 Donmar Warehouse production of Euripides' Electra sought to articulate 'a moral struggle that resonates now from the Balkans to the streets of Omagh' and similarly Katie Mitchell, director of the current production of Oresteia at the National Theatre in London (which, misery upon misery, I shan't be able to see), has commented, 'Our feelings about Bosnia do inform the production... But we're not trying to set it there literally - it opens the debate' (interview in The Daily Telegraph 30 Nov. 1999).

In light of the persistent tendency to impart a contemporary political message to the staging of Greek tragedy, certain questions arise. It is these questions that I should like to put to the members of this seminar:

1)       Can or should any limits be imposed on the appropriation of Greek tragedy for modern propagandist aims, however enlightened those aims might be, and how might such limitations be endorsed?

2)       Conversely, is an interpretation of Greek tragedy that is shorn of all contemporary political and/or social reference either desirable or commercially viable?

3)       To what extent is Greek tragedy in the modern theatre (and on film) palatable to a modern audience only when viewed through the lens, or indeed the mirror, of contemporary events and Angst?

4)       To what extent (if at all) are modern directors under a moral obligation to respect and to some extent reproduce the aims of the original playwright, so far as those aims are discernible, and to what extent should they be free to take liberties with the text either in the name of art or in the name of an ideal?

5)       Should the classics profession be doing more to educate the theatre world about interpreting Greek tragedy in order to rid the contemporary theatre of the most egregious misinterpretations - or is it advised to leave well alone? (see previous seminar in this series led by Peter Meineck LINK WHEN WEBPAGE)

In conclusion, I should like to mention that I am currently writing a book on the transmission and (to the extent that I am able) reception of Greek tragedy from antiquity to the present day, and that the topic of this seminar is one that I shall be addressing in that undertaking. However, I wish to assure all participants that, though I expect to be greatly enlightened by the comments I receive, I shall take the greatest care in giving full attribution to all. PS I am particularly interested in chasing down references to (and perhaps photographs of) the Nazi production of the Oresteia, mentioned above.

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RESPONSES

Michael Ewans, University of Newcastle, Australia

This paper well outlines the history of political responses (or more generally, responses to contemporary events) in the performance of Greek tragedy in the twentieth century. My responses to the five questions posed to us are

1 & 5I do not believe that any a priori limitations can be imposed. As

Prof Garland is well aware, Greek tragedy was itself intensely political (in the introductions to the new Everyman Sophokles, I have been trying to develop a picture of S. as responding even more closely to contemporary political events than most scholars will allow), and those political dimensions are bound to be appreciated, and appropriated for its own ends, by the modern theatre - both in productions of the original plays, and in new plays based on their subject-matter (Anouilh's Antigone is only one conspicuous example). I can't really conjure up an image of learned classicists trying to adjudicate, either singly or en masse, on the appropriateness of a particular theatre practitioner's proposed use of Greek drama - even in a liberal democracy! (Clearly their voices would not be listened to at all in the context of (e.g.) a Nazi Oresteia).

However, I certainly do believe that a receptive theatre company can very usefully learn to avoid some of 'the more egregious misinterpretations'; a good example would be the '98 Sydney Theatre Company medeia, in which the advice of Greg McCart, as translator and dramaturg, was taken by the director even to the point of constructing a circle with skene doors and two parodoi/eisodoi and using them correctly.

2 Absolutely not! Speaking as a director, I produce these dramas partly because of my interest in their original conditions of performance, but mainly because I believe that they have a great deal to say to a contemporary audience about its own political and social situation. If a production of a Greek tragedy lacks distinct semiotic markers which alert the audience to the drama's relevance to their situation, it is unlikely to be successful, either aesthetically or commercially. Contrariwise, a production can be faithful in many respects (e.g. shape of playing space, use of a translation which is accurate as well as actable), and also stimulate the audience by presenting images from their own culture (like Mary-Kay's work, or my own Antigone here, set in Sarajevo under siege). Sometimes faithful and modern can make a remarkable blend; in my open-air, modern dress Aias we used an ekkyklema, and not one member of the audience found this ancient dramatic device in any was incongruent with the Gulf War setting of the action.

3 (see above re 2) The issue is not whether Greek tragedy is 'palatable' to audiences without being viewed through a contemporary mirror, but whether it is comprehensible at all to them. To my mind nothing is less helpful to modern audiences than a reverent production which pursues the chimera of 'being faithful to the original' at the expense of bridging the gap between that original and its modern audiences (all those 'worthy' (??) Classical Society productions with amateur actors standing around in sheets and declaiming!).

4 It's less a question of morality than of accurate description. Some productions do indeed take vast liberties with the original (starting, usually, with the use of one of the many loose, free translations which are now on the market, so even the director has little idea of what the author actually wrote). If these liberties are truly taken 'in the name of art or in the name of an ideal' then nobody can - and perhaps, nobody should - stop them; but I wish our contemporary culture encouraged a climate in which the three great names of Aischylos, Sophokles and Euripides were reserved only for productions which combine fidelity with imaginative re-creation for contemporary audiences, and these rather freer versions were more correctly billed e.g. as 'Oresteia by Tony Harrison, freely adapted from Aeschylus'. To my mind there is a very thin line between a translation as free as Harrison's and (e.g.) Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, which is advertised as a new play by S.H. but is really only a slightly freer Bearbeitung of S Philoktetes than Harrison's is of Aischylos.

5 See 1 above. For a scholar to act as dramaturg is not always a rewarding process for that scholar (Oliver Taplin might have something to say about this), but all of us who have genuine knowledge of how these plays worked in their original theatrical and social context ought to try wherever possible to put it at the disposal of modern practitioners - and audiences, e.g., by preshow talks, program essays etc. (I note that I am really agreeing here with what Peter M said in the February discussion paper).

Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, UK

Robert has done us a service in summarising plainly some of the attitudes towards the cultural politics of modern performances of Greek tragedy which often masquerade as aesthetic criticism. I’m currently preparing a critical essay ‘Who owns the play?’ for publication on our Reception of Classical Texts Research Project Website in the autumn so I’m especially pleased that Robert has opened up so many of the constituent issues.

I suspect that some aspects of the broader debate mask a degree of academic angst (of the ‘Who killed Homer’ variety) about the role of scholars as custodians and transmitters of classical culture. So far as translation and performance issues are concerned, I would want to distinguish between on the one hand drawing narrow and simplistic correspondences between figures/issues in the Greek plays and in modern politics and society, and on the other hand suggesting and exploring resonances between the two. So I’m less interested in lexical aspects of translation than in the ways in which the translational practices of modern authors, director and audience relate to one another. (This is an aspect of Reception which I discuss in a forthcoming book ‘Translating Words : Translating Cultures’, Duckworth 2000)

I thought that the recent RNT version of Ted Hughes’ version of the ‘Oresteia’ illustrated the opportunities and pitfalls in almost equal measure! The director’s (Katie Mitchell) conception of the Chorus (wheel-chair bound veterans wearing poppies) and her use of a video screen to project shots of celebrations of the end of a modern war often seemed intrusive – rather like jogging the audience and saying ‘have you noticed there are modern parallels’. Theatrical semiotics need to be unobtrusive and, of course, there are not exact modern parallels. This was especially evident in the ‘Home Guard’ (Agamemnon) which also irritatingly followed the modern fashion of illustrating the Chorus’ words by on-stage action (in this case the sacrifice of Iphigenia).

In the later parts of the trilogy, however, the video screen was used to greater effect, especially in the projection of live on-stage action, for instance in the shots seen from below of Orestes peering into the grave of Agamemnon, a visual allusion perhaps to the lavatory scene in the film ‘Trainspotting’, picking up the ambivalence between an almost ritual cleansing through psychological trauma and a descent into hell.

It seems to me that the way in which the modern author and director adapt the Greek conventions is the crucial aspect of communicating the dynamics of the ancient play to a modern audience. Heaney’s ‘Cure at Troy’ made overt use of this technique especially in the new lines he wrote for the Chorus. The way these were received was culturally and politically revealing -–for instance, it sometimes seemed as if what critics found shocking was to have the Chorus specifically align the suffering of the hunger striker’s father and that of the policeman’s widow, rather than to have a more generalised reference to the situation in the North of Ireland (which would have left the audience free to interpret the play in sectarian terms if they chose). And of course it was these lines of the Chorus which were cut in some productions (especially in the USA).

I rather think that modern audiences are reacting against overtly didactic stagings of Greek plays. They are bringing their own experiences and cultural sensibilities to the interpretation of modern performances and (pace Golder) the ‘essence’ which authors and directors might try to communicate is not so much a sense of the sacred (which is as culturally biased as any other aspect – as Golder’s choice of examples shows) but rather the formal aspects of the plays which shape the dynamics of conflict. Modern audiences will surely respond to and interpret these dynamics in the context of their own experience – an experience which is enlarged and sometimes transformed by their participation as spectators.

So in response to Robert’s questions – it’s not practical (or in a free society desirable) to set limits on the appropriation of Greek tragedy, but purely propagandist productions are likely to be only of ephemeral interest. It would, I think, be virtually impossible to exclude all contemporary resonances; it is the ways in which these mesh with the Greek that is challenging and memorable. Finally, there is surely a continuing role for discussion and experiment between those who are primarily academics, those who are primarily practitioners and those who are both. Audiences who are aware of how the Greek conventions are being communicated and who can recognise and respond t the way a modern production plays with (constructions of) the original work are surely the audiences who will ensure that there is a lasting demand for ‘new Choruses’?

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Final Response from Topic Leader Robert Garland

Talking through this subject is like pealing an onion. Any point of principle can be matched by any other. So any discussion of how Greek tragedy should or should not be staged is likely to founder on the shoals of individual aesthetic preference. Lorna Hardwick's analyis of it as cultural politics masquerading as aesthetic criticism is entirely apt. Such exchanges can be instructive in highlighting our different attitudes and priorities as scholars, theatre producers, critics, investors, theatre-goers, and so forth, but they are hardly likely to be transformative. We are not heading towards the emergence of any kind of shared set of aims. Productions of Greek tragedy - less so, I suspect, productions of Greek comedy - reveal among other things just how polarising any artistic product is, as the contradictory reviews of Katie Mitchell's Oresteia have most recently demonstrated. Neither as academics nor as members of the general public can we establish parameters to which productions of Greek tragedy should ideally (let alone actually) conform, without looking either foolish or pedantic. It is, moreover, in the  nature of the theatre to shock and outrage - just as Aeschylus shocked his audience by opening Agamemnon with a speech by a humble watchman, of all people. So consensus is neither attainable nor desirable. Besides, encountering what we don't like in the theatre is likely to be at least as memorable as encountering what we do like. The wheel-chair bound veterans wearing poppies of the Mitchell production thus become a kind of signature, whether we find this device creative or intrusive. In sum, Barbara Goff is right. The legalistic terminology in which I framed my questions is hardly productive and scarcely warranted. Yet, if I may partially defend the wording, it stemmed from a legalistic desire not to concede to mere impressionism in which discussions about the staging of Greek tragedy all too easily get bogged down.

Even so, I do not throw up my hands in despair at raising the question, and in the responses which I received I see some common ground.

 In the final analysis, despite all my disclaimers, I believe that something intensely valuable is at stake, that we (whoever 'we' is) do need to try to avoid what I previously described as 'the more egregious misinterpretations', and that something needs defending, and though I'm all for experimentation, I cannot kiss goodbye to all claims of authorial intentionality. (I'm talking here only of productions that are closely based on the original Greek - not of adaptations). I hope that doesn't put me in the camp of those (mainly scholars) who seek to be 'didactic', to use Lorna's word. Au contraire, I value the theatre as an innovative and expansive medium, not least in the staging of Greek tragedy. And I believe as well that Greek tragedy is an enabling medium within the context of the contemporary theatre in that it encourages producers to think creatively, perhaps more than they need to do in almost any other type of staging.

As Michael Ewans points out, we can hardly as 'learned classicists' adjudicate on what is dramatically acceptable, but - and this point was also reiterated in the previous seminar - we can at least hope that the advice of leading interpreters of Greek tragedy will be sought, even though that in itself is no guarantee that they will be listened to, or even that they will necessarily give 'good' advice. (Indeed I would be very interested in hearing about Oliver Taplin's experience as a consultant. Can such relationships ever be easy?) Michael Ewans uses the example of skene doors as something which a director could be 'educated' (my word) into applying. This is perhaps a less contentious area of involvement (in that it involves 'merely' the practicalities of staging Greek tragedy), at least in the case of a director who is receptive to such features, than advice about interpretation. The question still remains, however, to what extent any production should seek to 'archaeologise' the theatrical space and imitate the conventions of the ancient theatre. With all the work that has been done recently on the semiotics of masking, the use of masks was one of the most criticised features of the 1971 Peter Hall production

I suppose, too, whether we are purists or not, we had better stop complaining about the use of ancient tragedy to highlight modern social and political issues (because it won't go away), even though, as Barbara points out, it all too quickly turns into spray paint and cliché. Who knows how these plays were being staged in the fourth century BC when they first enjoyed revivals (or even in the fifth century in some cases), but the very conditions of production naturally laid them open not only to re-interpretation, but also revision way back then. But should we gripe at the gratuitous and often distracting insertion of contemporary markers, whether in the translation itself or in the staging? The real point at issue, as she underlines, is the emotions that the production evokes or fails to evoke. Are we convinced and moved by the modern analogy or do we merely find it gratuitous?

My current involvement with Greek tragedy is linked to my sense that here is a phenomenally popular art form which, arguably, constitutes the primary window through which the general public encounters its classical heritage. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but not much, I suspect.)

Concurrently I am concerned about the disjunction between that fact and the little that many - by no means all - productions have to say 'about' antiquity. Yes, there is some Angst in me, as Lorna tactfully suggests, that Greek tragedy is so nakedly in the public domain. Pointless Angst, I recognise. And that, of course, is a function of a much larger debate that has to do with the marginalised condition of the profession. I'm no fan of the gosh-they-were-just-like-us school of thought, and that is my main gripe with the contemporary theatre's relationship with classical tragedy. And I might as well admit this as well: it bothers me that in my own university there's a course on Greek tragedy taught by the English Department.

So in conclusion, I wish there was some way of 'lightly' educating directors and audiences into the great preoccupations and assumptions of Greek tragedy - and hence of Greek culture - I mean things like inherited curses, the Greek hero in the deep, religious sense of the world, the obligations of suppliancy, the terror of pollution, the vital importance of burial, and the obliviousness of the gods to human suffering. Of course some of this does emerge and get across - particularly the obliviousness of the gods, which is surely one of the reasons for its current popularity - but I suppose what I really prize and am most reluctant to see jettisoned is the distinctively Greek world view that Greek tragedy evokes. Lorna Hardwick's forthcoming book 'Who owns the play?' suggests that this question will be - for the first time to my knowledge - thoroughly explored. Well, I don't quite know what the answer is to getting that distinctively Greek thing across. No, the answer is obvious. The NT should hire me as a consultant. No, no, I mean it should hire us all.

With thanks to all. I do hope I shall meet Michael Ewans some day - I occasionally travel south!