Rebel Women: Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today

307 Pages·2005·14.61 MB·English

by  Stephen Wilmer

REBEL WOMEN: STAGING ANCIENT GREEK DRAMA
TODAY
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REBEL
WOMEN
Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today
Edited by
John Dillon and S. E.Wilmer
B L O O M S B U RY
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic
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First published 2005 by Methuen Publishing Ltd
© 2005 John Dillon and S. E. Wilmer
John Dillon and S. E. Wilmer have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-0-4137-7550-4
ePDF: 978-1-4081-5018-4
ePub: 978-1-4081-5017-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Illustrations viii
Foreword ix
'Laudes Mariannae M M V, George Huxley xii
Introduction xiii
International Adaptations
1. Iphigenia and Her Mother at Aulis: A Study in the Revival of a
Euripidean Classic 3
Edith Hall
2. Resonances of Religion in Cacoyannis' Euripides 42
Isabelle Torrance
3. Medea between the Wars: The Politics of Race and Empire 65
Fiona Macintosh
4. Lysistrata Joins the Soviet Revolution: Aristophanes as
Engaged Theatre 78
Marina Kotzamani
Irish Versions
5. Greek Myth, Irish Reality: Marina Carr's
By the Bog of Cats. . . 115
Melissa Sihra
6. Irish Medeas: Revenge or Redemption (an Irish Solution to an
International Problem) 136
S. E. Wilmer
v
REBEL WOMEN
7. Kennelly's Rebel Women 149
Anthony Roche
8. 'Me' as in 'Metre': On Translating Antigone 169
Seamus Heaney
Rebel Women in Ancient Drama
9. Female Solidarity: Timely Resistance in Greek Tragedy 177
Rush Rehm
10. Outside Looking in: Subversive Choruses in Greek
Tragedy 193
J. Michael Walton
11. The Violence of Clytemnestra 215
James Diggle
12. An Archetypal Bluestocking: Melanippe the Wise 222
John Dillon
Appendix: Scene from a new play about Hildegard
of Bingen 235
Athol Fugard
Marianne McDonald: A Bio-bibliography 240
List of Contributors 241
Select Bibliography 245
Index 265
VI
Acknowledgements
The editors wish to acknowledge with gratitude a generous grant
from the Programme in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at
Trinity College Dublin towards the publication of this work. They
also want to thank Mairead Delaney, archivist at the Abbey
Theatre, Dublin, and Dmitri Troubotchkin, Head of the Research
Department at the Russian Academy of Arts gitis, for help with
providing photos and securing permission to use them, and Ms
Svetlana Semikolenova, Director of Research of the Moscow
Bakhrushin State Theatre Museum for her invaluable assistance.
They also wish to thank Holly Maples for help with the index,
Alice Coghlan for compiling the select bibliography and Mark
Dudgeon of Methuen for advising on the preparation of the book.
Vll
Illustrations
Frontispiece: Marianne McDonald
Hall's article: Image from Ariel (Abbey Theatre)
Torrance's article: Three images: Electra and the Chorus, Greek
country-women, and Greek Orthodox nuns
Macintosh's article: Image of Paquebot Poste Frangais by
Dellepiane (copyright Pro-Artis Gendre Editeur-Diffuseur, Paris)
Kotzamani's article: Two images from Moscow Art Theatre 192.3
production of Lysistrata (Moscow Bakhrushin State Theatre
Museum)
Wilmer's article: Images from Medea (with Fiona Shaw) and By the
Bog of Cats. . . (Abbey Theatre)
Vlll
Foreword
Marianne McDonald, whose work and contributions to classical
scholarship are being honoured in this volume, is a scholar of wide
and varied achievement, to whom the topics being discussed here
have a peculiar relevance. She is not, of course, a rebel in any
violent sense - though she holds strong views on many subjects -
but rather in the sense, let us say, that Euripides' Melanippe was a
rebel, by taking a stand against the expectations arising from her
station in life, and in favour of a life of scholarship.
In the circumstances into which she was born, especially when
endowed with beauty and grace as well as wealth, it would have
been all too easy for her to immerse herself in the life of high society
and while away her life in expensive frivolities, to the delight of the
gossip magazines. As things turned out, though, after a distin­
guished undergraduate career at Bryn Mawr, where she majored in
Classics and Music - a combination which was to have a lasting
influence on her subsequent career - she chose to continue with
graduate studies in Classics. For this she turned to the University of
California at Irvine, a good deal closer to her home near San Diego
in Southern California. The area of study that attracted her was
Greek tragedy, and particularly the tragic drama of Euripides.
This resulted in two achievements, the latter of which in
particular has been of momentous importance for classical studies
in general. First of all, she produced a fine monograph developed
from her thesis, Terms for Happiness in Euripides (Gottingen:
Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1978); but secondly, provoked by the
problem of the difficulty of conducting word-searches in classical
IX