Classical Drama Research Articles

Samuel Beckett and a New Form of Dialogue

Samuel Beckett and a New Form of Dialogue Majid Sarsangi, Hamed Soleimanzadeh Abstract Drama was changed fundamentally with the beginning of post-modernism and due to various multi-dimensional events and these changes included lack of hero and champion, inability of dialogue in formation of oral disputes and so on. Samuel Beckett, Irish playwright, had suitable understanding of social relations of modern and post-modern age based on lack of individual identity and self-alienation and left traditional structure of drama and its triple dimensions that was a sign of dialectic triad (beginning as thesis, middle as anti-thesis and end as synthesis) and gained another arrangement in dramatic elements due to the date conditions of arrangement of drama elements, in which dialectic discourse is gone out of its credit realm. Beckett disagrees with this issue that the drama should have beginning mid and ending or the characters should be fixed and the assumption that the action and plot are two main elements of creating drama. Despite to structure of dialectic discourse of classic drama, something that is tangible in dramas of Beckett is paradox, in which some situations are repeated with unclear beginning and ending. Hence, Beckett has created a free, novel and non-dialectic discourse with the violation of aspects of dialectic discourse in all structural elements of drama, which is aimed crating single thinking and not collective challenge. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijmpa.v5n2a5

Ragamala Miniatures in the Collection of the State Museum of Oriental Art: An Attempt at Attribution

The article is devoted to nine Indian miniatures from the collection of the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow). The aim of this study is to provide an academic description of these items, and to clarify their attributions. All the works in question have been thoroughly studied: the author conducted an iconographic, textological and stylistic analysis of the objects. He also looked for compositional and stylistic analogues among the miniature paintings (mainly from foreign collections), published in catalogues, monographs, articles, and on the Internet (on the websites of museums and libraries); the items identified were carefully analysed. On the basis of the abovementioned study, the author identifies nine sheets in the collection as miniatures of Ragamala series; in some cases it is also possible to clarify the time and place of their creation. Ragamala is a unique phenomenon of medieval painting of Hindustan, representing a visualisation of Indian musical modes. The musical material is embodied by the depiction of scenes that may contain motifs similar to those found in Baramasa ( Twelve Months ), Nayaka-Nayika (types of the heroes and heroines of classical drama), and other series of Indian miniature painting. This fact leads to closer attention to iconographic schemes and signatures of the items discussed. This article summarises a five-year study of the authentication of Ragamala miniatures in the collection of the State Museum of Oriental Art.

Aristófanes na Universidade de Lisboa. Uma experiência pedagógica e artística

If we take as a starting point the idea that a dramatic text is one meant to be performed, inseparable from the staging practices that each period reinvents, and that the best way to study it is through the experience of attending a performance, there is no better option for university students than providing them the possibility to enter that world. The course Encenação do Teatro Clássico (The Staging of Classical Drama), taught to the students of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon in 2012, culminated with the public performance of Aristophanes’ play Peace, at the Salão Nobre of the University of Lisbon on December 17, 2012. This article is a reflection upon this challenging, though fruitful, pedagogical and artistic experience.

Representations of the dead and the afterlife in translations of Mudan Ting, a masterpiece in Chinese Kunqu theatre

The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the strategies used to translate into English death related cultural taboos viz. death, ghost and resurrection represented in the prominent classical Chinese drama Mudan Ting. Particular reference is made to the articulation of these taboos in three seminal English versions of Mudan Ting (as Peony Pavilion) by Cyril Birch, Wang Rongpei and Zhang Guanqian, respectively. Although these translators all follow the source text closely, certain differences in their translation strategies warrant attention. Cyril Birch takes an acculturation approach to the translation of death-related material, whereas Wang Rongpei adheres to the original text and tends to use semantic translation. In contrast, Zhang Guanqian usually translates literally, infusing the English text with a “foreign” flavor. These differences are examined in light of the general propensity among translators to take an avoidance approach to death-related material. The strategies used to translate taboo subjects are found to depend on the translator’s intentions, the target readership, the specific nature of the culturally loaded elements and the availability of equivalent expressions in the target language and culture.

التربية الإسلامية ودورها في تربية شخصية الطلاب

Personality is a compacted word that easy to say, but it is difficult to be realized. Etymologically, the personality comes from the Latin language which means persona. This word refers to a mask used by actors in classical drama. Personality is also becomes the reflection of attitude and action of a person or a nation which sets its uniqueness from people or other nations. In Islamic educational context, it is as characteristic and Islamic identity. Thus, the religion that carries out the mandate will enhance the personality and noble character. Personality can be fully determined when the research has done and met the scientific criteria. Therefore, the personality can be taught in schools, introduced to the students through their habituation, principles and ethics. In al-Qur’an, it has been mentioned the terms of formation and development of the human personality, some influential factors and the ways to solve the problems. Muslims as well as believers from the perspective of Islam are those who always train their heart and are not easily get angry but they should be generous, obey Allah, SWT.

Africanizing Greek Mythology: Femi Osofisan’s Retelling of Euripides’the Trojan Women

Nigerian writer Femi Osofisan’s new version of Euripides' The Trojan Women, is an African retelling of the Greek tragedy. In Women of Owu (2004), Osofisan relocates the action of Euripides' classical drama outside the walls of the defeated Kingdom of Owu in nineteenth century Yorubaland, what is now known as Nigeria. In a “Note on the Play’s Genesis”, Osofisan refers to the correspondences between the stories of Owu and Troy. He explains that Women of Owu deals with the Owu War, which started when the allied forces of the southern Yoruba kingdoms Ijebu and Ife, together with recruited mercenaries from Oyo, attacked Owu with the pretext of liberating the flourishing market of Apomu from Owu’s control. When asked to write an adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, in the season of the Iraqi War, Osofisan thought of the tragic Owu War. The Owu War similarly started over a woman, when Iyunloye, the favourite wife of Ife’s leader Okunade, was captured and given as a wife to one of Owu’s princes. Like Troy, Owu did not surrender easily, for it lasted out a seven-year siege until its defeat. Moreover, the fate of the people of Owu at the hands of the allied forces is similar to that of the people of Troy at the hands of the Greeks: the males were slaughtered and the women enslaved. The play sheds light on the aftermath experiences of war, the defeat and the accompanied agony of the survivors, namely the women of Owu. The aim of this study is to emphasize the play’s similarities to as well as shed light on its differences from the classical Greek text, since the understanding of Osofisan’s African play ought to be informed by the Euripidean source text.

Self-mockery of hallyu in the Korean drama My Love from the Star (Byeol eso on geudae) and the role of the seventeenth-century novel The Dream of the Nine Clouds (Guunmong)

ABSTRACTThe fields of Korean classical literature and Korean TV drama do not often intermingle. Viewers of K-dramas can sometimes watch their protagonists thumb through certain books onstage, but these books are usually of foreign origin and do not belong to the so-called canon of traditional Korean literature. As a covert parody of the The Dream of the Nine Clouds, My Love from the Star is an exception. It does not only explicitly allude to the novel, but shares semantic and structural parallels with it. In order to illuminate the intertextual references between the two works, I combine John Fiske’s concept of intertextuality with Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody. The tension between the novel and drama generates a dichotomy between tradition and hallyu that eventually leads to the self-mockery of hallyu itself. The fact that My Love from the Star was not widely recognized among hallyu fans as a parody of The Dream of the Nine Clouds might ironically support the drama’s mockery of the superficiality of hallyu. It might also prove that the pleasure viewers derive from a drama has less to do with the communication of meaning than with the way they are moved by it.

Bodies in a Car Park; Or, Une Comédie Charcutière: Resuscitating Shakespearian Authorship in Contemporary French Street Theatre

The reinterment of Richard Ill's remains in Leicester Cathedral on March 26, 2015, opened deep historical rifts in the UK over the cultural and political ownership of the king's dead body. The dispute--at times acrimonious--between the cities of Leicester and York was hardly surprising. What was at stake, both in the discovery of these six-hundred-year-old bones in a supermarket car park in Leicester and in the eventual decision to bury Richard in the Midlands rather than his family's traditional powerbase in the North of England, were deep-seated conflicts over borders and boundaries, both spatial and symbolic, and over the cultural and political structures that maintain and define them. As it happens, such conflicts are well illustrated in Shakespeare's plays, particularly Richard III. They are also at the heart of the global literary culture over which conventionally presides--a culture that has been much in evidence across the three-year period that connects the anniversaries of 2014 and 2016. Paradoxically, fifty years ago next year, Roland Barthes declared the symbolic demise of iconic literary authorship of this kind in his seminal essay The Death of the Author (1967). (1) His claim, that texts are structured by multiple systems of signification open to the active participation of the reader rather than the controlling intentions of a dominant Author-God, was symptomatic of the antibourgeois intellectual climate of the period in which it was written. The 1960s closed with a sharp critique of accepted representational norms, including the consecrated status of the playwright in traditional theatre. In the wake of 1968, politically aware theatre practitioners, particularly in France, sought to step up the democratic potential of theatre and break down the social and cultural boundaries between stage and audience. They also attempted to replace the classic work, seen as conservative and redundant, with a creative dynamic of textual play which, as I will argue, has profoundly transformed the contemporary environment of Shakespearian production. Street theatre was born out of this movement. In France, contemporary companies such as 26000 couverts, Les 36 du mois, Generik Vapeur, and Royal de Luxe reject formal dramatic texts, seeking to distance themselves from conventional artistic norms which, they claim, alienate the audience with whom they wish to work. Their productions reject the familiar site of the built theatre and its bourgeois rituals, preferring instead to perform in markets, supermarkets, village squares, empty factories--and indeed car parks. Their repertoire is made of collaboratively written plays, and it relies on audience participation. The aim of this literal dis-placement is to free the actors from normative and institutional constraints and thus to generate an relationship between performers and spectators. This essay explores three productions of Shakespearian comedies performed in France in recent years by 26000 couverts, Royal de Luxe, and La Compagnie des Chemins de Terre. I shall focus on two apparent paradoxes in these productions. First: if, in a supposedly authentic theatre, the iconic Author is (or should be) dead ... why perform at all? What exactly is it that is being performed when this literary body remains the starting point of such productions? To answer this question, I shall consider the ways in which the relocation of outside the theatre appears to displace Shakespeare himself. Second, I shall argue that, by taking classical drama out of familiar theatrical environments into urban spaces, street theatre challenges the place of the spectator in a performance as well as that of the author. I will concentrate on notions of spatial and social displacement drawn from the Situationist movement of the late 1950s and 1960s and ask whether--in street theatre based on a play by Shakespeare--Shakespeare's play is present or absent, living or dead; and what happens to the audience when they are confronted by this destabilizing sense of authorial loss. …

Goethe’s Allegories of Identity by Jane K. Brown

Reviewed by: Goethe’s Allegories of Identity by Jane K. Brown Simon Richter Jane K. Brown, Goethe’s Allegories of Identity. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 2014. 229 pp. Toward the conclusion of Jane Brown’s previous book, The Persistence of Allegory: Drama and Neoclassicism from Shakespeare to Wagner (2007), she states that Goethe was “the last great allegorical dramatist of the European tradition. His synthesis of allegory and mimes, opera and Greek tragedy, did not survive his own death” (221). But the end of allegorical drama did not spell the end of allegory itself. In her new book, Goethe’s Allegories of Identity, Brown mounts a powerful argument that it is precisely Goethe’s use of allegory, especially in narrative and in Faust, that undergirds what we take for granted as the [End Page 285] terrain of modern subjectivity, the rhetorical landscape, so to speak, of our inner selves. In other words, even if allegory explicitly died on the stage, it persists implicitly and powerfully up to our own time in the way we have thought about and experienced the self. In the space between Rousseau, the author of the primacy of self and irrational feeling, and Freud, the representative analyst of the unconscious, we find Goethe. But it is only because of the literary record of Goethe’s lifelong preoccupation with Rousseau and the twofold problem that Rousseau posed—the inaccessibility to reason of the deepest self and the question of how to reconcile the claims of the self with society—that this space is so structured that analysis of the depths of the self can take place. What Goethe did, Brown argues, is to adapt dramatic allegory into a distinctly modern mode of narrative that succeeded in representing interior depths of the self that are not subject to the rule of reason and in so doing fashioned the realm that would become the domain of depth psychology. If Brown is right, we are all of us “Goethean,” whether we have read him or not. Although the chapters in Brown’s book, beginning with Goethe’s reception of Rousseau and culminating with those aspects of interiority that are taken up by Freud and depth psychology, may give the impression that her argument proceeds chronologically, it is important to recognize that it does not. For sure, there is a terrain of dates when major works were published. Rousseau’s works—Julie and Emile or the Confessions and Reveries, for instance—are given as a starting point. And one does get a sense that Goethe’s classical dramas (Egmont, Iphigenie, and Tasso) mark a significant moment in Goethe’s deployment of allegory in the service of plumbing the depths of the self. But the primary way in which Brown sees Goethe engaging with Rousseau is through persistent recurrence, coming back to him time and again in order to rewrite Rousseau’s plot of the interior self and to expose and limn greater and more complex depths. Thus, she begins with Werther, “the originary text of German depth-psychological narrative” (144), and Die Wahlverwandtschaften, “the paradigmatic German psychological novel” (34), and ends with them as well, just as she recurs to Faust in chapters 3, 5, and 7 and concludes with a new interpretation of Faust’s final words about “Vorgefühl” in act 5. In other words, the psychic terrain that comes into view through her recurrent interpretations of Goethe’s works is as stratified as her readings. What makes Brown’s contribution to the history of subjectivity distinctly literary is the fact that she continues to rely on aspects of literary form, chief among them, of course, allegory. The component parts of the secularized, modern allegory of the self consist of recurring plots, hybrid or mixed genres, patterns of naming and character constellations, and a symbolic landscape. All of these are involved in processes of constant rewriting, where the primary text being rewritten is Rousseau’s Julie. Brown has an uncanny knack for seeing through the surface narration and recognizing core similarities between disparate texts. Thus, for example, not only are Werther and Die Wahlverwandtschaften rewritings of Julie and the latter Goethe novel a rewriting of the former (18), but...

“The Series That Changed Television”?: Twin Peaks, “Classic” Status, and Temporal Capital

“The Series That Changed Television”?Twin Peaks, “Classic” Status, and Temporal Capital Ross P. Garner (bio) At the launch of the Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery Blu-ray box set, actor James Marshall (who played the series’s James Dean–esque biker teen James Hurley) responded as follows when questioned about the program’s enduring appeal: I think it’s a timeless quality that David Lynch has … there’s a lot of movies that stand the test of time because it seems to be that certain directors are gifted with a certain magnetism and a certain sense of visual poetry that most people don’t get. I think it’s true art. I think truth always stands the test of time.1 On the one hand, the themes employed here are familiar, as discursive bids for status and prestige—what Pierre Bourdieu names “symbolic capital”—made by a particular consecrating agent via associating Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–1991) with culturally valued concepts such as authorship and, within the context of television, cinema.2 However, Marshall’s engagement with the term “classic” is also interesting, as this label is employed with increasing frequency across a variety of contexts relating to television at present. These range from everyday talk among audiences to continuity announcements introducing typically older rerun programming and promotional campaigns. Twin Peaks is a prime example of this, as recent articles announcing the program’s return on Showtime positioned the series as “cult classic drama.”3 Whereas cult is a concept that has generated much academic discussion, the mechanisms underpinning “classic” status have received less scholarly attention and, when this has occurred, have been approached in a problematic way. For example, although the UK BFI TV Classics range has seen academics outline the “classic” status of series including Edge of Darkness (BBC, 1985) and Doctor Who (BBC, 1963–1989, 1996, [End Page 137] 2005–), these studies typically demonstrate what Jason Mittell has named a “textualist assumption” by assuming that “classic” status can be objectively identified by analyzing the program itself.4 Such approaches overlook how the term “classic television” can be analyzed “as [a] discursive practice[,] … as a property and function of discourse” that becomes meaningful according to the requirements of multiple interpretive communities—a point noted elsewhere in some overlapping discussions of televisual “golden ages.”5 Through adopting a discursive approach, this essay challenges text-based understandings of “classic” television by considering how Twin Peaks has been industrially positioned as “classic TV” in paratextual sources produced for the Blu-ray release in 2014 and to announce the program’s forthcoming return. The discussion also draws on Bourdieu’s ideas concerning field and capital to argue that Twin Peaks’ “classic” status arises from consecrating agents making appeals on behalf of the program to forms of symbolic and/or temporal capital.6 “Temporal capital” here refers to the length of time that Twin Peaks has spent within the televisual field, and so it differs from Matt Hills’s use of the term, which concerns the status that TV studies scholars accrue from being up to date and debating new programs and technologies over historical equivalents.7 In contrast, this essay argues that Twin Peaks’ “classic” status is constructed by discursive appeals to longevity and an enduring reputation—discourses that frequently recur in previous studies of TV “classics.”8 Straight away, though, two possible criticisms to this approach require addressing: first, I am not arguing here that TV shows generate “classic” status independently and so demonstrate agency. Instead, I posit that Twin Peaks’ reputation arises from discursive statements proffered by agents operating within the TV field at specific sociohistorical moments, which bestow symbolic and temporal capital. Second, although this essay focuses on paratexts, I am not arguing for a complete rejection of the text. Both Mittell and Hills have rightly discussed “text functions” and how audience subcultures, including academics, produce textual readings to support certain classifications.9 Such constructions of the text do, however, need to be read reflexively to recognize the discursive trajectories through which such classifications arise. The official press release for the Twin Peaks Blu-ray set promised to potential buyers “hours of never-before-released material that dives...

HÌNH TƯỢNG MẪU THƯỢNG NGÀN TỪ TRUYỀN THUYẾT, CHẦU VĂN ĐẾN VỞ CHÈO BẮC LỆ ĐỀN THIÊNG

HÌNH TƯỢNG MẪU THƯỢNG NGÀN TỪ TRUYỀN THUYẾT, CHẦU VĂN ĐẾN VỞ CHÈO BẮC LỆ ĐỀN THIÊNG

Incest, Zoophilia, and Lust for Power in Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare

Both William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and his contemporary Chinese counterpart Tang Xianzu (1550–1616) explore three types of human lust — incest, zoophilia and greed for power but show remarkable disparities in the ways of treating them. Shakespearean plays and western classical drama in general present more severe forms of incest, whereas Tang Xianzu’s works and traditional Chinese drama as a whole are quite free from incest between blood relatives, which is muted as anabhorred violation of Confucian principles guiding family life.By contrast, Tang Xianzu demonstrates tolerance of zoophilia; whereas Shakespeare’s oblique evocation ofzoophilia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects his culture’s intolerance of bestiality. In regard to greed for power, Tang Xianzu’s protagonists never have political ambitions that go beyond the position of prime minister, showing no covetous desire for the throne; Shakespeare, however, includes several incidents of regicide in his plays. Thepaper points to the difference in the cultural contexts of the two masters lived that to a large extent determine the difference intheir ways of representing these forms of lust.

The Dutch Courtesan Online

The Dutch Courtesan Online Oliver Jones In June 2013, the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York staged John Marston’s Jacobean city comedy, The Dutch Courtesan (1605).1 Directed by Michael Cordner, the production marked the second early modern play staged in the new Department’s Scenic Stage Theatre, and extended an established series of explorations of early modern drama at York, which has seen seldom-performed plays returned to the modern stage. Since moving in to the Department’s new building in autumn 2010, the combination of colleagues’ expertise and well-equipped theaters and TV production facilities has made it possible to capture these performances on film. Following the success of the performances and recording of the Department’s inaugural production of Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters!, staged in June 2011, the Dutch Courtesan project sought to expand the ambitions of the former. The result was the creation of a new project website, www.dutchcourtesan.co.uk (Cordner and Jones). This site was envisaged as a vehicle by which to track the preparation of the play from script to performance and to offer a range of contextualizing information about the play’s history. Ultimately becoming host to the film of the performance, the website extends the duration of the production beyond its short three-day run and offers the user a version of what an audience saw in the theater, “remediated,” in Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s term (qtd. in Aebischer 144), and presented among an assemblage of supporting materials ranging from scholarly theater-historical and literary essays to rehearsal blogs and films, and interviews with cast, creatives, and visiting industry professionals. The purpose of this essay is to explore the rationale of the project and the website’s creation, and to consider how viewing The Dutch Courtesan through the website lens shifts the way in which we might approach early modern texts in performance and on screen. [End Page 623] Rarely played: The Dutch Courtesan on the modern stage While this may be the most active period of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater-making since Shakespeare and his contemporaries wielded quills (Lopez, “Seeds” 35), one such contemporary, John Marston, has yet to enjoy the modern popularity of some of his peers. Against the works of Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, and the inevitably omnipresent Shakespeare, Marston’s plays have rarely made it to the modern professional stage. In Karin Brown’s extensive list of 50 years of professional productions of early modern theater in the UK and USA since 1960, only four out of 341 were of Marston’s plays (200-01). While we can add further productions to the list (see Douglas and Jones; Brown makes no claims to being completely comprehensive), a representation of a little over 1% of fifty years of early modern productions does not immediately suggest a hearty endorsement of Marston’s work. Nevertheless, the first production on Brown’s list might suggest that such circumspection was not always so strongly felt; for in 1964, in its second season, the National Theatre staged Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, directed by William Gaskill and Piers Haggard, at Chichester and the Old Vic. To choose the play for the theater’s first foray into non-Shakespearean drama from before the Restoration, out of the full range and richness of the known repertoire, suggests that the powers at the newly formed company saw Marston’s work as being exemplary classical drama, which drama had long been advocated as being a “vital” component in the remit and duty of a national theater to stage (Elsom and Tomalin qtd. in Cordner, “The Dutch Courtesan, 1964” 1). It was the success of two earlier productions of the play, directed by Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in 1954 and 1959, that led Kenneth Tynan to propose the play for inclusion the National’s second season (Cordner, “The Dutch Courtesan, 1964” 3-4; Tynan 507). However, Littlewood’s success was not replicated by Gaskill and Haggard. Branded “An Inhibited Booby” by the Times’ correspondent (“Inhibited”), and “depressing” and “ponderous” by Bamber Gascoigne, Tynan’s successor at the Observer, both the production...

Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature. Hannah Crawforth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xii+218.

<i>Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature</i>. Hannah Crawforth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xii+218.

Allegorical Quests from Deguileville to Spenser

Allegorical Quests from Deguileville to Spenser

Evolution, Revolution or New Culture? The Changing Anatomy of International Criminal Justice (and Some of Its Curiosities)

The history of international criminal justice bears synergies with classical drama. This contribution investigates the changing anatomy of international criminal justice. It argues that international criminal justice navigates between salvation and apology. It first examines some of the inherent features and cultures that characterize international criminal justice. It then draws on the concept of ‘culture shock’ to explain some of the current dilemmas. It argues that critique is one of the inherent symptoms of an extending ‘accountability culture’.

Evolution, Revolution or New Culture? The Changing Anatomy of International Criminal Justice (And Some of Its Curiosities)

The history of international criminal justice bears synergies with classical drama. This contribution investigates the changing anatomy of international criminal justice. It argues that international criminal justice navigates between salvation and apology. It first examines some of the inherent features and cultures that characterize international criminal justice. It then draws on the concept of ‘culture shock’ to explain some of the current dilemmas. It argues that critique is one of the inherent symptoms of an extending ‘accountability culture’.

The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy by Astrid van Weyenberg (review)

Reviewed by: The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy by Astrid van Weyenberg Sarah H. Nooter (bio) Astrid van Weyenberg. The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy. Cross/Cultures 165. Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 2013. Pp. li, 215. US $69.78. In The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy, Astrid van Weyenberg examines a collection of African adaptations of Greek tragedies in light of their political potential. This is a well-researched and rewarding book that illuminates its material from an unlikely angle, given that the author is neither a classicist nor an Africanist but is rather interested in the plays’ “enduring political relevance and … potential to promote change” (van Weyenberg 4). The payoff of this approach lies not in its literary insights but in its attention to the complexities of cultural context. Van Weyenberg lays out her approach in a carefully worded introduction in which she strives to distance herself from the field of classical studies while also justifying her own focus on plays inspired by classical dramas. In her first main chapter (“African Antigones: ‘Wherever the call for freedom is heard!’”), she discusses two adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone. The first is The Island, the renowned South African play composed in 1973 by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, and the second is Tegonni: An African Antigone, by Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan. Van Weyenberg surveys the adaptations of Fugard et al. and Osofisan, noting that both African plays reduce the “complexity of the conflict” in Sophocles’ play to a simpler one in which “[t]here is no doubt about the validity of Antigone’s claim” (8). She suggests that this change in both cases is due to the fact that, while “Athenian tragedy sought to instruct” (8) citizens to engage in debate, the oppressive contexts of composition and performance in South Africa and Nigeria1 did not allow for such ambiguities. Van Weyenberg’s analysis of the two African plays is sensitive and well-informed, but her study enters a crowded field: these plays have already received a great deal of scholarly attention in, for example, Kevin Wetmore’s thorough monograph on a similar topic and Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson’s excellent analysis. Nonetheless, by showing that Fugard and Osofisan use the character Antigone as a “political symbol” (36) and thus as a model for audiences, van Weyenberg brings a new concentration to the [End Page 199] ways that these plays act as cultural tools, meant to have “political potential in the present” (36). Van Weyenberg’s second chapter (“Ritual and Revolution: Wole Soyinka’s Bacchae, a Yoruba Tragedy”) examines The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, an adaptation by Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka first performed in 1972 in London. (The author rightly notes the global nature of all of these playwrights and performances.) Van Weyenberg suggests that Soyinka frames postcolonial Nigeria as being in an analogous position to “imperial Greece” (46) and points to the new themes Soyinka imports into the story of Euripides’ Bacchae, such as slavery and class structures. She also shows how the Yoruba background of Soyinka’s play allows for a new sense of human agency that coexists with divine influence. Hereafter van Weyenberg’s analysis become more complex as she raises a potential critique of the playwright, voicing—through the critique of other writers—some disapproval of the seemingly apolitical nature of Soyinka’s cosmic vision. She then, however, spends several paragraphs exonerating him from this charge, declaring that Soyinka’s Bacchae may not be political in content but nonetheless does offer “political potential” (88) through its relationship to Euripides’ play and its very existence. For Soyinka and some of his audiences, such an exoneration may not be necessary. In the third chapter, van Weyenberg discusses two post-apartheid adaptations of the Oresteia from South Africa. I found this chapter illuminating, in part because van Weyenberg turns her attention most overtly to the political milieu of the plays she is analyzing. Van Weyenberg’s discussion of memory, storytelling, and justice in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee is informative and insightful—somewhat more so than her critique of two plays from this...

Reperformances and the Transmission of Texts

Abstract:This chapter analyses the impact of reperformance traditions on the transmission of the texts of classical drama, including, but not limited to, the question of actors’ interpolations and adaptations.

The Languages of Puppetry: Rewriting Early Modern Iberian Theater for the Contemporary Stage

PLACING Spanish classical theater on par with puppetry might seem paradoxical at first glance since sixteenth and seventeenth century dramaturgy is considered an established literary and performative tradition, while the marionette --in the Western world--suffers the prejudiced view that it is parodic genre, an entertainment mainly for children or, in Scott Cutler Shershow's words, a marker or rubric of the 'low' (6). Nonetheless, in the last decade number of Spanish directors have managed to masterfully combine Early Modern plays with puppets in order to re-think from the stage some prominent classical dramatic texts, with varying degrees of popularity and cultural impact on modern audiences. That is the case for hagiographic and religious theater, which is hardly ever staged today, most likely because of its thematic concerns, nowadays considered less palatable than other forms of classical drama. In contrast, canonical Early Modern comedias, such as Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla [The Trickster of Seville]--a play that will be referred to later in this article--have had rich tradition of performances that have left an imprint of expectation on audiences, particularly concerning the mise-en-scene in the collective imaginary. In this article will illustrate, through the analysis of three case studies, how the dramatic language of puppets contains, on one hand, the power to reinvent and invigorate dramatic form--that of religious and hagiographic theater--with minimal impact on contemporary mise-en-scene and, on the other hand, to deconstruct and reconceptualize in new light the performative tradition of the most emblematic classics. (RE)CREATING THE SPECTACLE OF HAGIOGRAPHIC PLAYS The subject of hagiography today does not enjoy the popularity it did during the seventeenth century due, in large part, to the fact that contemporary audiences are not familiar with the lives of saints (Dassbach 162). This lack of contextual knowledge on the part of the public and the sense of implausibility these comedias inspire combine for dramatic genre that is completely foreign to contemporary audiences. Nonetheless, this disconnect can be compensated for by the spectacular quality of the hagiographic plots, materialized on stage through the presence of the puppet. Indeed, the puppet's theological dimension and its unconstrained acrobatic power make it the most suitable entity for embodying the characters and forces of hagiographic comedia. The marionette possesses the ability to generate on stage the plausible impossible, to borrow Michael Malkin's terminology (quoted in Tillis 37), referring to the connection between the real and the imaginary in the art of puppetry or, in other words, to transform what Antonio Risco has called lo maravilloso cristiano (17) into lo verosimil (17). Evidence of this is seen among playwrights of European modernism and the Avant-garde, such as Anatole France, Maurice Bouchor, Paul Claudel and Michel de Ghelderode, who wrote religious plays and dramatizations of the lives of saints intended for performance solely by puppets, as emphasized in Bouchor's own words: I persist in believing that the appearance of Saint Michael, of celestial voices, of miraculous flowerings of lilies and roses, and the transfiguration of martyr are more appropriate to our small stage than to conventional theaters where the personality of the actor, too real and too familiar destroys all impression of the supernatural (9). Following this theory of materializing the through the presence of the inanimate on stage, artistic director Jesus Caballero initiated research project in 2006 based on the historical reconstruction of the stage set of maquina real. The expression maquina real refers to those seventeenthcentury theater companies specialized in fully staging hagiographic plays exclusively with marionettes in corrales de comedia [Spanish playhouses] during Lent. …