Reviewed by: Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions ed. by George Rodosthenous Tiffany Pounds-Williams Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions. Edited by George Rodosthenous. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017. Cloth $108.00, Paper $29.95, eBook $26.95. 296 pages. Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions, edited by George Rodosthenous, is a long-overdue study of the role of the director in crafting modern adaptations of ancient Greek tragedies. Besides being an insightful look at varying approaches, objectives, spectators, and needs, this book is [End Page 145] also a helpful catalog of significant adaptations of Greek tragedy. One of the only other such works that come to mind is George Steiner's 1984 Antigones, though it obviously focuses solely on the legacy of the titular character rather than the variety of classical figures that Rodosthenous's book does. The adaptations discussed, stemming from each of the "big three" (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), are both stylistically and geographically diverse, including work by artists such as Tadashi Suzuki in Japan, Bryan Doerries and the Theater of War in the US, Ariane Mnouchkine in France, and Theodoros Terzopoulos in Greece. Rodosthenous's collection is part of a wider trend in the last two decades of increased scholarly focus on and artistic adaptations or translations of Greek classics, exemplified by such recent works as Tina Chanter and Sean D. Kirkland's 2015 The Returns of Antigone : Interdisciplinary Essays and Olga Kekis' 2019 Hypertheatre : Contemporary Radical Adaptation of Greek Tragedy. For his part, Rodosthenous centers his collection on the argument that auteurs of Greek adaptations differ from directors due to their substantial control of the play, rivaling that of the playwright. These are worthy of study due to the conversations they spark within various communities: military veteran, Christian Orthodox, and 1960s New York feminist activist communities being leading exemplars. The eleven chapters of Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy are organized into three parts—";Global Perspectives," "Directing as Dialogue with the Community," and "Directorial Re-Visions"—in addition to an introduction and a short "Exodus." The chapters are written by theatre lecturers, such as Marianne McDonald, directors, like Rodosthenous, and critics, like Andrew Haydon. The introduction clearly acknowledges and discusses in depth the nature and responsibility of adaptations and auteurs, the necessity of a second volume to discuss additional auteurs, the obligation to compile a similar study on comedy, and the value of continuing to produce such old stories. Penelope Chatzidimitriou's essay, "Tadashi Suzuki and Yukio Ninagawa: Reinventing the Greek Classics; Reinventing Japanese Identity after Hiroshima," is one of the strongest in the collection. In it, she discusses the gender-ambiguous version of Medea by Yukio Ninagawa, which incorporates traditional Japanese theatrical conventions found in Bunraku and Kabuki, both customarily performed entirely by men, and how that ambiguity allows for commentary on similar Attic acting conventions as well as the history of male femininity in Japanese culture. Chatzidimitriou argues that the onnagata role of Medea is challenged by Ninagawa's choice of an androgynous character through its rejection of social norms inherent in the play and thus becomes neo-onnagata. This is a useful contribution to a discussion on auteurs, as it demonstrates a fusion of old and new community values. Other productions considered in the "Global Perspectives" section are Suzuki's The Trojan Women, Terzopoulos's The Persians and Prometheus Bound, and various productions by Katie Mitchell in Britain. [End Page 146] The second section of the book, "Directing as Dialogue with the Community," stresses the relationship that can occur between adaptations and the communities in which they are performed. In her essay, "Directing Greek Tragedy as a Ritual: Mystagogy, Religion, and Ecstasy," Magdalena Zira sums this up well with the Greek word Mυσταγωγία or mystagogy, a performance in which an audience is so absorbed that it participates on a spiritual level and is "transported to another plane" (122). Zira connects this idea to the Cyprus Theatre Organization and Nikos Charalambous's The Suppliants, which incorporated Christian Orthodoxy and whose audience had recently experienced the 1974 Turkish invasion and subsequent lack of governmental support in locating missing family members. Other adaptations discussed in this section are...
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Jun 5, 2021
Spyros Katsoulas 
Open Access