Become a CA Member to watch this talk
Dr David Bullen, our Expert in Residence, is Associate Professor in Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London as well as a theatre director, writer, and dramaturg. He has been co-artistic director of Theatre of the Gentle Furies since 2011.
There have been over 500 theatre productions based on Greek tragedy staged in the UK since 2000. Although this accounts for only a fraction of what goes on in British theatre, in recent years spates of very high profile productions coming within months of one another can make it feel that Greek tragedy is more popular than ever. In the last few months alone there has work inspired by Electra, the Oresteia, and the tragic figures of Helen and Clytemnestra at three major London theatres. But as these productions hint at, it is no longer the case that Greek tragedies are simply (as in common British theatre parlance) ‘revived’ – artists are doing much more than just staging ancient dramatic texts, transforming them into entirely new theatrical creations, sometimes while still asking for them to be understood as the ancient work itself. While adaptations have thrived, there have been almost no translations of extant tragic works staged in professional theatres over the last decade.
This lecture takes a look at the phenomenon by revisiting the translation/adaptation dichotomy and asking whether Greek tragedies are able to be revived at all. Do we need a different framework entirely to think about how these ancient texts make their way to performance today? And how might a few ideas from one of the biggest media franchises over the last forty years help point the way towards a better understanding of Greek tragedy as contemporary performance?
His own adaptations of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes have been performed in the UK and the US. Recent and forthcoming books include Greek Tragedy, Education, and Theatre Practices in the UK Classics Ecology (co-edited with Dr Christine Plastow, Routledge), Shakespeare in the Theatre: Phyllida Lloyd (with Elizabeth Schafer, Arden Shakespeare), and Greek Tragedy as Twenty-First-Century British Theatre: Why, What, How (Liverpool University Press). Most recently he has completed a new edition of Don Taylor’s Antigone for Methuen Student Editions, coming soon!
