Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor

Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor PDF Author: Zachary Dunbar
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319954717
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book offers a provocative and groundbreaking re-appraisal of the demands of acting ancient tragedy, informed by cutting-edge scholarship in the fields of actor training, theatre history, and classical reception. Its interdisciplinary reach means that it is uniquely positioned to identify, interrogate, and de-mystify the clichés which cluster around Greek tragedy, giving acting students, teachers, and theatre-makers the chance to access a vital range of current debates, and modelling ways in which an enhanced understanding of this material can serve as the stimulus for new experiments in the studio or rehearsal room. Two theoretical chapters contend that Aristotelian readings of tragedy, especially when combined with elements of Stanislavski’s (early) actor-training practice, can actually prevent actors from interacting productively with ancient plays and practices. The four chapters which follow (Acting Sound, Acting Myth, Acting Space, and Acting Chorus) examine specific challenges in detail, combining historical summaries with a survey of key modern practitioners, and a sequence of practical exercises.

Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor

Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor PDF Author: Zachary Dunbar
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319954717
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers a provocative and groundbreaking re-appraisal of the demands of acting ancient tragedy, informed by cutting-edge scholarship in the fields of actor training, theatre history, and classical reception. Its interdisciplinary reach means that it is uniquely positioned to identify, interrogate, and de-mystify the clichés which cluster around Greek tragedy, giving acting students, teachers, and theatre-makers the chance to access a vital range of current debates, and modelling ways in which an enhanced understanding of this material can serve as the stimulus for new experiments in the studio or rehearsal room. Two theoretical chapters contend that Aristotelian readings of tragedy, especially when combined with elements of Stanislavski’s (early) actor-training practice, can actually prevent actors from interacting productively with ancient plays and practices. The four chapters which follow (Acting Sound, Acting Myth, Acting Space, and Acting Chorus) examine specific challenges in detail, combining historical summaries with a survey of key modern practitioners, and a sequence of practical exercises.

How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today

How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today PDF Author: Simon Goldhill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226301273
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Space and concept -- The chorus -- The actor's role -- Tragedy and politics : what's Hecuba to him? -- Translations : finding a script -- Gods, ghosts, and Helen of Troy

Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric

Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric PDF Author: David Sansone
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118358376
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
GREEK DRAMA and the Invention of Rhetoric “An impressively erudite, elegantly crafted argument for reversing what ‘everybody knows’ about the relation of two literary genres that played before mass audiences in the Athenian city state.” Victor Bers, Yale University “Sansone’s book is first-rate and should be read by any scholar interested in the origins of Greek rhetorical theory or, for that matter, interested in Greek tragedy. That Greek tragedy contains elements properly described as rhetorical is familiar, but Sansone goes far beyond this understanding by putting Greek tragedy at the heart of a counter-narrative of those origins.” Edward Schiappa, The University of Minnesota This book challenges the standard view that formal rhetoric arose in response to the political and social environment of ancient Athens. Instead, it is argued, it was the theater of Ancient Greece, first appearing around 500 BC that prompted the development of formalized rhetoric, which evolved soon thereafter. Indeed, ancient Athenian drama was inextricably bound to the city-state’s development as a political entity, as well as to the birth of rhetoric. Ancient Greek dramatists used mythical conflicts as an opportunity for staging debates over issues of contemporary relevance, civic responsibility, war, and the role of the gods. The author shows how the essential feature of dialogue in drama created a ‘counterpoint’—an interplay between the actor making the speech and the character reacting to it on stage. This innovation spurred the development of other more sophisticated forms of argumentation, which ultimately formed the core of formalized rhetoric.

Theorising Performance

Theorising Performance PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0715638262
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Constitutes the first analysis of the modern performance of ancient Greek drama from a theoretical perspective.

Greek Tragedy in Action

Greek Tragedy in Action PDF Author: Oliver Taplin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134414935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Oliver Taplin's seminal study was revolutionary in drawing out the significance of stage action in Greek tragedy at a time when plays were often read purely as texts, rather than understood as performances. Professor Taplin explores nine plays, including Aeschylus' agamemnon and Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The details of theatrical techniques and stage directions, used by playwrights to highlight key moments, are drawn out and related to the meaning of each play as a whole. With extensive translated quotations, the essential unity of action and speech in Greek tragedy is demonstrated. Now firmly established as a classic text, Greek Tragedy in Action is even more relevant today, when performances of Greek tragedies and plays inspired by them have had such an extraordinary revival around the world.

Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance

Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance PDF Author: Professor Graham Ley
Publisher: Royal College of General Practitioners
ISBN: 0859899640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This collection of published and unpublished essays connects antiquity with the present by debating the current prohibiting conceptions of performance theory and the insistence on a limited version of ‘the contemporary’. The theatre is attractive for its history and also for its lively present. These essays explore aspects of historical performance in ancient Greece, and link thoughts on its significance to wider reflections on cultural theory from around the world and performance in the contemporary postmodern era, concluding with ideas on the new theatre of the diaspora. Each section of the book includes a short introduction; the essays and shorter interventions take various forms, but all are concerned with theatre, with practical aspects of theatre and theoretical dimensions of its study. The subjects range from ancient Greece to the present day, and include speculations on the origin of ancient tragic acting, the kinds of festival performance in ancient Athens, how performance is reflected in the tragic scripts, the significance of the presence of the chorus, technology and the ancient theatre, comparative thinking on Greek, Indian and Japanese theory, a critique of the rhetoric of performance theory and of postmodernism, reflections on modernism and theatre, and on the importance of adaptation to theatre, studies of the theatre and diaspora in Britain.

Theorising Performance

Theorising Performance PDF Author: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472519787
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This exciting collection constitutes the first analysis of the modern performance of ancient Greek drama from a theoretical perspective. The last three decades have seen a remarkable revival of the performance of ancient Greek drama; some ancient plays - "Sophocles", "Oedipus", "Euripides", and "Medea" - have established a distinguished place in the international performance repertoire, and attracted eminent directors including Peter Stein, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Sellars, and Katie Mitchell. Staging texts first written two and a half thousand years ago, for all-male, ritualised, outdoor performance in masks in front of a pagan audience, raises quite different intellectual questions from staging any other canonical drama, including Shakespeare. But the discussion of this development in modern performance has until now received scant theoretical analysis. This book provides the solution in the form of a lively interdisciplinary dialogue, inspired by a conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama (APGRD) in Oxford, between sixteen experts in Classics, Drama, Music, Cultural History and the world of professional theatre.The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Classics and Drama alike.

Greek and Roman Actors

Greek and Roman Actors PDF Author: P. E. Easterling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521651400
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
This collection of twenty essays examines the art, profession and idea of the actor in Greek and Roman antiquity, and has been commissioned and arranged to cast as much interdisciplinary and transhistorical light as possible on these elusive but fascinating ancient professionals. It covers a chronological span from the sixth century BC to Byzantium (and even beyond to the way that ancient actors have influenced the arts from the Renaissance to the twentieth century) and stresses the huge geographical spread of ancient actors. Some essays focus on particular themes, such as the evidence for women actors or the impact of acting on the presentation of suicide in literature; others offer completely new evidence, such as graffiti relating to actors in Asia Minor; others ask new questions, such as what subjective experience can be reconstructed for the ancient actor. There are numerous illustrations and all Greek and Latin passages are translated.

The Women of Troy

The Women of Troy PDF Author: Euripides,
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350358339
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
There's no decent way to say an indecent thing An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once queen, watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The city burns around them. First performed in 415BC, the play focuses on the human cost of war and the impact of loss. This new Student Edition of The Women of Troy includes a commentary and notes by Emma Cole, which looks at the Trojan War as represented in Greek literature and myth; the context in which Euripides was writing and within which the play was first performed; how it would have been originally staged and dramaturgical challenges met; as well as recent performance history of the play, including Katie Mitchell's iconic 2007 production at the National Theatre. Euripides' great anti-war play is published here in Don Taylor's classic translation.

The Theater of War

The Theater of War PDF Author: Bryan Doerries
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307949729
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
For years theater director Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient Greek tragedies for a wide range of at-risk people in society. His is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. Doerries leads an innovative public health project—Theater of War—that produces ancient dramas for current and returned soldiers, people in recovery from alcohol and substance abuse, tornado and hurricane survivors, and more. Tracing a path that links the personal to the artistic to the social and back again, Doerries shows us how suffering and healing are part of a timeless process in which dialogue and empathy are inextricably linked. The originality and generosity of Doerries’s work is startling, and The Theater of War—wholly unsentimental, but intensely felt and emotionally engaging—is a humane, knowledgeable, and accessible book that will both inspire and enlighten.