I run a theatre company in Ireland. At the moment we’re working on a production of Agamemnon which will tour Ireland in March. I’m also looking for other venues to perform in Europe, especially Rome as we will be doing a production of Julius Caesar there next year. Is anyone on this message board based in Rome? Do you think there would be interest in a Greek Tragedy performed in English there? If the company is confident that a large enough audience will come then arranging a performance there should be easy enough.
I cannot answer your questions, but looking at your website it seems like you work for a very interesting theatre company. Planning on coming to California anytime in the next few years?
This is much of the mysteries I will never understand. There was a Chinese theater group who played Oedipus (in Chinese!) and a Japanese group made a tour in Europe who had adapted Antigone to their “No” theater genre. Both were very successful, got the best critics and their performance was full of audiences. I mean, theater is not cinema, one cannot use subtitles for the audience to follow the actors, or is it possible?
The theatre and opera don’t use subtitles. They use supertitles - the translations are projected above the stage.
Of course, they aren’t always readable, especially when it’s a tour group that’s only having a few performances in a given theatre. When I saw a touring Modern Greek production of Lysistrata, the supertitles were badly timed, and on top of that so much light was leaking from the stage they were difficult to read. However half of the audience were local Greek people who came to see a theatre show in their own language, and the other half were theatre nuts who know the play, so the supertitles weren’t much of a loss. But that’s the worst example I can think of.
Usually, when I see a show in a foreign language, I only read about half the supertitles, but then most of the foreign language theatre shows I’ve seen have either had better music than plot (opera) or they were plays with which I was already familiar. I bet all of those critics already knew the plot of Oedipus and Antigone.
Our production of the Oresteia will be heavily influenced by Noh & will have a cast of 2. I know what you’re thinking! Impossible. But it’s not. In Aeschylus the most important character is the chorus. I once did Oedipus & had a cast of 6, a chorus of 2. And it fail’d. Restricting the cast to 2 restores primacy to the chorus, for the chorus are only 2 who create & become each character. The chorus ARE every character. The website is not updated enough with the info I would like to be there. I had a choice for the number of the cast & I chose 2. It is possible, it will be beautiful, it will be perfect. I’m now working on the final translation & coming up against such obstacles as this - I use the Greek but I quote Weir-Jones’ literal translation -
“Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing.”
Anyone have any brilliant ideas??? Poetry anyone? I mean, seriously, a “sponge”???
You know, I cannot recall a single production of a Greek play I’ve seen where the chorus did not outnumber the other characters. But I haven’t seen that many productions, so it figures.
Paula Vogel picked up the mutability of Greek choruses in her Pulitzer-prize winning play “How I Learned How to Drive”, where the cast list reads : Li’l Bit, Peck, Female Greek Chorus, Male Greek Chorus, and Teenage Greek Chorus. Of course, the three choruses play all the other characters, and (if I remember correctly) during some scenes they kept on bickering with each other forgetting that there was a non-chorus character on stage.
Poetry anyone? I mean, seriously, a “sponge”???