The Open Constructed Public Sphere: Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women in a Version by David Greig

Verónica Rodríguez

doi:10.3390/h9010021

Abstract

This article looks at the ‘public’ ‘place’ of drama in Britain at present by offering an analysis of a contemporary version of an ancient Greek play by Aeschylus, entitled The Suppliant Women, written by David Greig, directed by Ramin Gray, and first performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in 2016. Following an agonistic (Chantal Mouffe), rather than a consensual (Jürgen Habermas) model of the public sphere, it argues that under globalisation, three cumulative and interwoven senses of the public sphere, the discursive, the spatial, and the individual and his/her/their relation to a larger form of organisation, despite persisting hegemonic structures that perpetuate their containment, have become undone. This is the kind of unbounded model of public sphere Greig’s version of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women seems to suggest by precisely offering undoings of discourses, spaces, and individualisations. In order to frame the first kind of undoing, that is, the unmarking of theatre as contained, the article uses Christopher Balme’s notion of ‘open theatrical public sphere’, and in order to frame the second, that is, the undoing of elements ‘in’ Greig’s version, the article utilises Greig’s concept of ‘constructed space’. The article arrives then at the notion of the open constructed public sphere in relation to The Suppliant Women. By engaging with this porous model of the public sphere, The Suppliant Women enacts a protest against exclusionary, reductive models of exchange and organisation, political engagement, and belonging under globalisation.

Highlights

This article looks at the ‘public’ ‘place’ of drama in Britain at present by offering an analysis of a contemporary version of an ancient Greek play by Aeschylus, entitled The Suppliant Women, written by David Greig, directed by Ramin Gray, and first performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre
The article addresses some debates in public sphere theory and argues for the kind of unbounded model of public sphere that Greig’s version of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women seems to suggest by precisely offering undoings of discourses, spaces, and individualisations
This article has argued that Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women in a version by David Greig offers an unbounded model of public sphere that counteracts the prevalent contained model, inviting the spectator to stop seeing discourses, space, and individuals in isolation, but as unmarked towards the practice of a more agonistic, interdependent, and porous public sphere

Summary

The Story and Some Relevant Themes to the Public Sphere

Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women (463 BCE), known for instance as the Supplices, Suppliants, or Hiketides, is the first tragedy of a trilogy possibly called Danaïds. Around a week before its opening at the Young Vic in November in 2017, the director of a play that allegedly deals with male oppression is accused of harassment In this specific context, Maddy Costa claimed that, “As collective endeavour, as act of community, in so many ways the text of the Suppliant Women is perfect. David Greig’s version of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women could not have been more timely ‘containing’, as it does, refugee women escaping male abuse and a referendum on offering them asylum In both contemporary politics and the play, refugees and referenda are connected. What is the value of a theatre preoccupied with the public sphere? How can theatre participate and enact gestures of protest in the public sphere/as public sphere in such a context?

An Unbounded Model of the Public Sphere

The Open Theatrical Public Sphere

The Constructed Space and Its Unbounded Elements

Concluding Remarks

Findings

A Provocation