An inexplicably understudied field of classical scholarship, tragic reperformance, has been surveyed in its true dimension only in the very recent years. Building on the latest discussions on tragic restagings, this book provides a thorough survey of reperformance of Greek tragedy in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, also addressing its theatrical, political, and cultural context. In the fifth and fourth centuries, tragic restagings were strongly tied to cultural mobility and exchange. Poets, actors, texts, vases, and vase-painters were traveling, bridging the boundaries between mainland Greece and Magna Graecia, boosting the spread of theater, facilitating theatrical literacy, and setting a new theatrical status quo, according to which popular tragic plays were restaged, by mobile actors, in numerous dramatic festivals, in and out of Attica, with or without the supervision of their composers. This book offers a holistic examination of ancient reperformances of tragedy, enhancing our perception of them as a vital theatrical practice that played a major part in the development of the tragic genre in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

Greek tragedy is one of the most important cultural legacies of the classical world, with a rich and varied history and reception, yet it appears to have its roots in a very particular place and time. The authors of the surviving works of Greek tragic drama-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-were all from one city, Athens, and all lived in the fifth century BC; unsurprisingly, it has often been supposed that tragic drama was inherently linked in some way to fifth-century Athens and its democracy. Why then do we refer to tragedy as 'Greek', rather than 'Attic' or 'Athenian', as some scholars have argued? This volume argues that the story of tragedy's development and dissemination is inherently one of travel and that tragedy grew out of, and became part of, a common Greek culture, rather than being explicitly Athenian. Although Athens was a major panhellenic centre, by the fifth century a well-established network of festivals and patrons had grown up to encompass Greek cities and sanctuaries from Sicily to Asia Minor and from North Africa to the Black Sea. The movement of professional poets, actors, and audience members along this circuit allowed for the exchange of poetry in general and tragedy in particular, which came to be performed all over the Greek world and was therefore a panhellenic phenomenon even from the time of the earliest performances. The stories that were dramatized were themselves tales of travel-the epic journeys of heroes such as Heracles, Jason, or Orestes- and the works of the tragedians not only demonstrated how the various peoples of Greece were connected through the wanderings of their ancestors, but also how these connections could be sustained by travelling poets and their acts of retelling.

Classical Greek Tragedy offers a comprehensive survey of the development of classical Greek tragedy combined with close readings of exemplary texts. Reconstructing how audiences in fifth-century BCE Athens created meaning from the performance of tragedy at the dramatic festivals sponsored by the city-state and its wealthiest citizens, it considers the context of Athenian political and legal structures, gender ideology, religious beliefs, and other social forces that contributed to spectators' reception of the drama. In doing so it focuses on the relationship between performers and watchers, not only Athenian male citizens, but also women and audiences throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. This book traces the historical development of these dynamics through three representative tragedies that span a 50 year period: Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, and Euripides' Helen. Topics include the role of the chorus; the tragic hero; recurring mythical characters and subject matter; Aristotelian assessments of the components of tragedy; developments in the architecture of the theater and their impact on the interactions of characters, and the spaces they occupy. Unifying these discussions is the observation that the genre articulates a reality beyond the visible stage action that intersects with the characters' existence in the present moment and resonates with the audience's religious beliefs and collective psychology. Human voices within the performance space articulate powerful forces from an invisible dimension that are activated by oaths, hymns, curses and prayers, and respond in the form of oracles and prophecies, forms of discourse which were profoundly meaningful to those who watched the original productions of tragedy.

This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field. The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion. The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

What happened to Greek tragedy after the death of Euripides? This book provides some answers, and a broad historical overview.

How were women represented in Greek tragedy? This question lies at the heart of much modern scholarship on ancient drama, yet it has typically been approached using evidence drawn only from the thirty-two tragedies that survive complete - neglecting tragic fragments, especially those recently discovered and often very substantial fragmentary papyri from plays that had been thought lost. Drawing on the latest research on both gender in tragedy and on tragic fragments, the essays in this volume examine this question from a fresh perspective, shedding light on important mythological characters such as Pasiphae, Hypsipyle, and Europa, on themes such as violence, sisterhood, vengeance, and sex, and on the methodology of a discipline which needs to take fragmentary evidence to heart in order to gain a fuller understanding of ancient tragedy. All Greek is translated to ensure wide accessibility.

In its long history of performance and reception, Greek drama has been interpreted and adapted in ever-changing ways to share in the preoccupations and tensions of particular historical moments. Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage explores this tradition by investigating a cross section of theatrical productions that have reimagined Greek tragedy in order to address social and political concerns in the US. Studying performance and its role in creating social, historical, and cultural identities, this volume draws on cutting-edge research to move discussion away from the interpretation of dramatic texts in isolation from their performance contexts and towards an analysis of the dynamic experience of live theatre. The study focuses particularly on the ability of engaged performances to pose critical challenges to the long-standing stereotypes and political policies that have contributed to the misrepresentation and marginalization of underrepresented communities. However, in the process it also uncovers the ways in which such performances can inadvertently reinforce the very stereotypes they aim to challenge, demonstrating that ancient drama can be a powerful, yet dangerous tool in the search for justice.

Drawing together new research from emerging and senior scholars, this selection of papers from the decennial Greek Drama V conference (Vancouver, 2017) explores the works of the ancient Greek playwrights and showcases new methodologies with which to study them. Sixteen chapters from a field of international contributors examine a range of topics, from the politics of the ancient theatre, to the role of the chorus, to the earliest history of the reception of Aeschylus' Oresteia. Employing anthropological, historical, and psychological critical methods alongside performance analysis and textual criticism, these studies bring fresh and original interpretations to the plays. Several contributions analyse fragmentary tragedies, while others incorporate ideas on the performance aspect of certain plays. The final chapters deal separately with comedy, naturally focusing on the plays of Aristophanes and Menander. Greek Drama V offers a window into where the academic field of Greek drama is now, and points towards the future scholarship it will produce.

The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars. Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question. Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings? And is everything was performed within such buildings to be considered as ‘theatre’? How does the definition of what is considered as theatre evolve from one period to the other? As for ‘metatheatre’, the discussion revolves around the interaction between reality and fiction in dramatic pieces of all genres. The various definitions of ‘metatheatre’ are also explored and explicited by the papers gathered in this volume, as well as the question of the distinction between paratheatre (understood as paratragedy/comedy) and metatheatre. Readers will be encouraged by the diversity of approaches presented in this book to re-think their own understanding and use of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ when examining ancient Greek reality.

Sensing Greek Drama explores ancient Greek tragedy and comedy through the lens of the senses. It works within and beyond a number of recent developments in the scholarship of Classics and related fields. The individual chapters engage with the senses in drama in manifold ways: through various theoretical frameworks borrowed from kindred fields in the humanities and sciences – postmodernism, humanism, feminism, phenomenology, cognitive theory and neuroscience, to name a few – as well as through the more traditional approaches within Classics, including philology, historicism, performance studies and reception. Above all, Sensing Greek Drama serves as a call to “to recover our senses”, as Susan Sontag wrote in her famous essay “Against Interpretation”, in a modern age characterized by sensory overload and deprivation.