Staging Transition: The Oresteia in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In the face of the strength of the theatre of the Commission [...] how can any of us working in the theatre compete with it? Of course we can't and don't try to. [...] Our theatre is a reflection on the debate rather than the debate itself. It tries to make sense of the memory rather than be the memory.- William KentridgeHo laphalal'igazi.[blood has been spilt here]- Yael Farber, MoloraIn the previous two chapters, I discussed plays that adapt Greek tragedy to dramatize political conflict and change. In the second half of this book, I shift focus to adaptations that deal with the aftermath of change. This entails entering the realm of memory and history. Yet, the emphasis remains on the present, in which both memory and history are at work, and on the future they construct. In the previous chapters I was particularly interested in the ways in which playwrights mobilize Greek tragedy as a political tool and the ways in which they challenge conventional ideas about Greek tragedy. I focused, in short, on how tragedy is used politically, both to inspire change and to perform politics. In the following discussions I examine the ways in which playwrights turn to Greek tragedy to explore the costs and consequences of political transition. In other words, I move from a discussion of ?tragedy and change' to a discussion of ?the tragedy of change', consi- dering how Greek tragedy offers ways not only to perform, but also to theorize, politics.In the present chapter, I focus on two dramatic texts that rework Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy in and into the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Mark Fleishman's In the City of Paradise premiered at the University of Cape Town in 1998 as a collaborative production with his drama students, who also formed the cast.1 Yael Farber's Molora (Sesotho for ?ash') was first performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2003 and published in 2008.2 Like Osofisan's Women of Owu, these plays not only dramatize the losses and compromises that haunt post-conflict societies, but also highlight the challenge they face in coming to terms with the past and moving forward. In my analysis of Molora and In the City of Paradise, I consider the political transition from apartheid to post-apartheid South Africa in relation to the cultural exchange between antiquity and the present, highlighting the politics involved in cross-temporal migration. This focus directs me to a number of interrelated topics, ranging from storytelling to theatre, from memory to justice, from truth to forgiveness, and from amnesty to reconciliation.Aeschylus' Oresteia, the only full trilogy of Greek tragedies known to us today, is based on the ancient myth of the house of Atreus. Although it is set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, the trilogy had considerable contemporary relevance when it was first performed at the Dionysia festival in 458 B C. As Christopher Collard explains, democratic institutions had started to curtail the powers of the Council of the Areopagus, once a consultative body of nobles but by then a conservative, almost oligarchic, college of former office-holders and magistrates.3 The trilogy could thus be seen to mark the transition of Athens from a tribal culture ruled by customs to a democratic society governed by constitutional law.4The Oresteia's first two parts dramatize a Homeric understanding of justice, in which justice is equated with vengeance: in Agamemnon, the king of Argos returns from Troy and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra in revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia; in the Libation Bearers, their children Electra and Orestes avenge Agamemnon's death by killing Clytemnestra. In the trilogy's final part, the Eumenides, however, the definition of justice changes. Athena establishes a judicial court so that Orestes can be legally tried for matricide. When the judges are unable to decide Orestes' fate, Athena casts the final vote herself, securing Orestes' acquittal. …