Greek Tragedy and the UK Classics Ecology
Senate House Room 102, 6pm, Monday 16 September (online attendance possible)
To celebrate the publication of Greek Tragedy, Education, and Theatre Practices in the UK Classics Ecology, editors Christine Plastow (Classical Studies, Open University) and David Bullen (Drama, Royal Holloway) will be hosting an open discussion on how knowledge of Greek tragedy in the modern world might be re-thought by a shift towards the ecological.
The volume follows a productive trajectory in theatre studies and other disciplines (e.g. Kershaw; Nicholson, Holdsworth, and Milling; Fragkou) over the last twenty years towards accounting for the messy entanglement of social, cultural, political, and affective relations in shaping not only access to understanding but understanding itself. This ecological approach re-positions Classics from a body of unmarked knowledge owned by certain figures, classes, or cultures towards an understanding of knowledge as constantly (re)negotiated by flows and exchanges across networks through time. As the volume’s various chapters demonstrate, approaches to the performance of Greek tragedy in the UK provide illuminating case studies for this way of thinking, pointing to how interrelations and interdependencies between academics, universities, schools, students, theatres, theatre makers, audiences, and so on have helped influence the status, value, and meaning of material from the ancient world. The de-hierarchising and democratising potential of this approach is aligned with work in both Classics and theatre studies to re-think processes of meaning-making with ancient Greek and Roman remains in the modern world, from Margherita Laera’s Reaching Athens to Dunbar and Harrop’s Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor and Umachandran and Ward’s Critical Ancient World Studies.
Joining Plastow and Bullen for the discussion will be contributors from the volume, including Stephe Harrop (Drama, Liverpool Hope), Charlotte Parkyn (Classics, Notre Dame), Alex Silverman (composer), and Peter Swallow MP, as well as the editors of Routledge’s ‘Classics In and Out of the Academy’ series, Fiona McHardy (Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Roehampton) and Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz (Classics, Hamilton College). All are welcome – academics from all disciplines, theatre makers, students – anyone interested in learning more and joining the discussion.
The event will be in person but a link will be circulated to all attendees for online optionality.
References:
Dunbar, Zachary, and Stephe Harrop. Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Fragkou, Marissa. Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre: Politics, Affect, Responsibility. Bloomsbury, 2019.
Kershaw, Baz. Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Laera, Margherita. Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy, and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy. Peter Lang, 2013.
Nicholson, Helen, Nadine Holdsworth, and Jane Milling. The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Umachandran, Mathura, and Marchella Ward, eds. Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics. Routledge, 2023.