Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance

Graham Ley

Description

This collection of published and unpublished essays connects antiquity with the present by debating the current prohibiting conceptions of performance theory and the insistence on a limited version of ‘the contemporary’.

The theatre is attractive for its history and also for its lively present. These essays explore aspects of historical performance in ancient Greece, and link thoughts on its significance to wider reflections on cultural theory from around the world and performance in the contemporary postmodern era, concluding with ideas on the new theatre of the diaspora.

Each section of the book includes a short introduction; the essays and shorter interventions take various forms, but all are concerned with theatre, with practical aspects of theatre and theoretical dimensions of its study. The subjects range from ancient Greece to the present day, and include speculations on the origin of ancient tragic acting, the kinds of festival performance in ancient Athens, how performance is reflected in the tragic scripts, the significance of the presence of the chorus, technology and the ancient theatre, comparative thinking on Greek, Indian and Japanese theory, a critique of the rhetoric of performance theory and of postmodernism, reflections on modernism and theatre, and on the importance of adaptation to theatre, studies of the theatre and diaspora in Britain.

Introduction

Section A:  Greek theatre and theory

Preface

1. "Hypokrinesthai in Homer and Herodotus, and the Function of the Athenian Actor", Philologus 127.1 (1983)

2. "Performance and Performatives", Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 13.1 (1998)

3. “Monody, Choral Song, and Athenian Festival Performance", Maia xlv.2 (1993)

4. “The Presence of the Chorus”, unpublished essay developed from a paper given at a conference at Northwestern University, Chicago, October 2010.

Section B:  Greek theatre practice

Preface

5. Graham Ley and Michael Ewans, "The orchestra as Acting-area in Greek Tragedy", Ramus 14.2 (1985)

6. "Performance Studies and Greek Tragedy", Eranos 92 (1994)

7. “The Nameless and the Named: Techne and Technology in the Ancient Athenian Theatre”, Performance Research 10.4 (2005)

Section C:  Performance theory

Preface

8. "Sacred Idiocy: the Avant-garde as Alternative Establishment", New Theatre Quarterly 28 (1991)

9. "The Rhetoric of Theory: the Role of Metaphor in Peter Brook's The Empty Space", New Theatre Quarterly 35 (1993)

10. "Richard Schechner's `The Future of Ritual': the Final Chapter", Performance Research 3.3 `On Ritual' (1998)

11. "Aristotle's Poetics, Bharatamuni's Natyasastra, and Zeami's Treatises: Theory as Discourse", Asian Theatre Journal 17.2 (2000)

12. "Theatrical Modernism: A Problematic", in A.Eysteinsson and V.Liska (eds.)A Comparative History of Literature in European Languages: Modernism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, (2007)

13. “Discursive Embodiment: The Theatre as Adaptation”, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 2.3 (2009)

14. “The Critical Absence of a Postmodern Reception Theory of Live Performance”, unpublished editorial contribution to Baz Kershaw and Graham Ley (eds.),“Beyond Postmodernism”, Contemporary Theatre Review 3.18 (2008).

Section D:  Diaspora theatre

Preface

15. “Composing a History: Problematics of the British Asian Research Project at Exeter”, Studies in Theatre and Performance 30.2 (2010)

16. “Theatre and Diversity” – unpublished English-language version of the paper delivered in Cologne and published in W.Schneider Theater und Migration: Herausforderung fur Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis. Bielefeld: Transcript, (2011)

17. “Diaspora Space, the Regions, and British Asian Theatre”, New Theatre Quarterly 107 (2011)

Conclusion

Sujets

• Social History
• Literary Criticism
• Theater
• HISTORY
• Theatre
• General officer
• Ancient history
• General
• Ancient
• Drama
• Performance

Informations

• Publié par: University of Exeter Press
• Date de parution: 26 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780859899833
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance
This collection of published and unpublished essays connects antiquity with the present by debating the current prohibiting conceptions of performance theory and the insistence on a limited version of ‘the contemporary’. Each section of the book includes a short introduction; the essays and shorter interventions are all concerned with theatre, with practical aspects of theatre and theoretical dimensions of its study. The subjects range from ancient Greece to the present day, and include speculations on the origin of ancient tragic acting, the kinds of festival performance in ancient Athens, how performance is reflected in the tragic scripts, the significance of the presence of the chorus, technology and the ancient theatre, comparative thinking on Greek, Indian and Japanese theory, a critique of the rhetoric of performance theory and of postmodernism, reflections on modernism and theatre, and on the importance of adaptation to theatre, studies of the theatre and diaspora in Britain.
Graham Ley is Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theory, University of Exeter. He has directed and translated for the theatre and was dramaturg to John Barton in Tantalus directed by Peter Hall (Denver USA, 2000, UK, 2001). He has previously published with both University of Exeter Press and University of Chicago Press.
Exeter Performance Studies
Series editors : Peter Thomson, Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter; Graham Ley, Professor of Drama and Theory at the University of Exeter; Steve Nicholson, Professor of Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Theatre at the University of Sheffield.
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Peter Thomson (2000)
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Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson (2002)
The Censorship of British Drama 1900–1968 : Volume One 1900–1932
Steve Nicholson (2003)
The Censorship of British Drama 1900–1968 : Volume Two 1933–1952
Steve Nicholson (2005)
Freedom’s Pioneer : John McGrath’s Work in Theatre, Film and Television
edited by David Bradby and Susanna Capon (2005)
John McGrath: Plays for England
selected and introduced by Nadine Holdsworth (2005)
Theatre Workshop: Joan Littlewood and the Making of Modern British Theatre
Robert Leach (2006)
Making Theatre in Northern Ireland: Through and Beyond the Troubles
Tom Maguire (2006)
“In Comes I”: Performance, Memory and Landscape
Mike Pearson (2006)
London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror
Richard J Hand and Michael Wilson (2007)
Theatres of the Troubles: Theatre, Resistance and Liberation in Ireland, 1980-2000
Bill McDonnell (2008)
The Censorship of British Drama 1900–1968 : Volume Three, The Fifties
Steve Nicholson (2011)
British South Asian Theatres: A Documented History
edited by Graham Ley and Sarah Dadswell (2011)
Critical Essays on British South Asian Theatre
edited by Graham Ley and Sarah Dadswell (2012)
Victory over the Sun: The World’s First Futurist Opera
edited by Rosamund Bartlett and Sarah Dadswell (2012)
Marking Time: Performance, Archaeology and the City
Mike Pearson (2013)
Singing Simpkin and Other Bawdy Jigs: Musical Comedy on the Shakespearean Stage
Roger Clegg and Lucie Skeaping (2014)
Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance
Collected Essays
Graham Ley
UNIVERSITY of EXETER PRESS
First published in 2014 by
University of Exeter Press
Reed Hall, Streatham Drive
Exeter EX4 4QR
UK
www.exeterpress.co.uk
© 2014 Graham Ley
The right of Graham Ley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 85989 891 1
Typeset in Plantin Light by
Kestrel Data, Exeter
Printed in Great Britain by
Short Run Press Ltd, Exeter
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One: Greek Theatre and Theory
Preface
1.      Hypokrinesthai in Homer and Herodotus, and the Function of the Athenian Actor
2.     Performance and Performatives
3.     Monody, Choral Song, and Athenian Festival Performance
4.     The Presence of the Chorus in Greek Tragedy
Part Two: Greek Theatre Practice
Preface
5.     Graham Ley and Michael Ewans, ‘The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy’
6.     Performance Studies and Greek Tragedy
7.     The Nameless and the Named: Techne and Technology in Ancient Athenian Theatre
Part Three: Performance Theory
Preface
8.     Sacred Idiocy: The Avant-garde as Alternative Establishment
9.     The Rhetoric of Theory: The Role of Metaphor in Peter Brook’s The Empty Space
10.   Richard Schechner’s The Future of Ritual : The Final Chapter
11.   Aristotle’s Poetics , Bharatamuni’s Natyasastra , and Zeami’s Treatises: Theory as Discourse
12.   Theatrical Modernism: A Problematic
13.   Discursive Embodiment: The Theatre as Adaptation
14.   The Critical Absence of a Postmodern Reception Theory of Live Performance
Part Four: Diaspora Theatre
Preface
15.   Composing a History: Problematics of the British Asian Research Project at Exeter
16.   Theatre and Diversity
17.   Diaspora Space, the Regions, and British Asian Theatre
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgements
With the exception of Chapters 4 and 14, all the essays collected here have been previously published. In addition, Chapter 16 is published here for the first time in the original English draft, which was later published in a translation into German made by Azadeh Sharifi. In the case of Chapter 1, the presentation has been abbreviated or cut in places by me for republication here, primarily to avoid the inclusion of Greek text; other Greek words and phrases have been transliterated, hopefully as a bridge between the original language and the reader.
Chapter 4 was developed from a paper originally given at a conference on the ancient Greek chorus at Northwestern University in Chicago, October 2010. Chapter 14 was originally drafted as an editorial contribution to a guest-edited issue of Contemporary Theatre Review 3.18 (2008) called ‘Beyond Postmodernism’; my companion as guest-editor was Baz Kershaw. I should like to thank the editors and publishers of all the journals, and of the books in which essays appeared as chapters, for their goodwill, and where appropriate for their permission to republish. The details of first publication are as follows.
(1) ‘ Hypokrinesthai in Homer and Herodotus, and the Function of the Athenian Actor’, Philologus 127.1 (1983), pp. 13–29.
(2) ‘Performance and Performatives’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 13.1 (1998), pp. 5–18.
(3) ‘Monody, Choral Song, and Athenian Festival Performance’, Maia xlv.2 (1993), pp. 105–24.
(5) Graham Ley and Michael Ewans, ‘The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy’, Ramus 14.2 (1985), pp. 75–84.
(6) ‘Performance Studies and Greek Tragedy’, Eranos 92 (1994), pp. 29–45.
(7) ‘The Nameless and the Named: Techne and Technology in the Ancient Athenian Theatre’, Performance Research 10.4 (2005), pp. 97–104.
(8) ‘Sacred Idiocy: the Avant-garde as Alternative Establishment’, New Theatre Quarterly 28 (1991), pp. 348–52.
(9) ‘The Rhetoric of Theory: the Role of Metaphor in Peter Brook’s The Empty Space ’, New Theatre Quarterly 35 (1993), pp. 246–54.
(10) ‘Richard Schechner’s The Future of Ritual : the Final Chapter’, Performance Research 3.3 ‘On Ritual’ (1998), pp. 117–19.
(11) ‘Aristotle’s Poetics , Bharatamuni’s Natyasastra , and Zeami’s Treatises: Theory as Discourse’, Asian Theatre Journal 17.2 (2000), pp. 191–214.
(12) ‘Theatrical Modernism: A Problematic’, in A. Eysteinsson and V. Liska (eds), A Comparative History of Literature in European Languages: Modernism (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007), pp. 531–44.
(13) ‘Discursive Embodiment: The Theatre as Adaptation’, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 2.3 (2009), pp. 201–209.
(15) ‘Composing a History: Problematics of the British Asian Research Project at Exeter’, Studies in Theatre and Performance 30.2 (2010), pp. 225–32.
(16) ‘Theatre and Diversity’—unpublished English-language version of the paper delivered in Cologne and published in W. Schneider (ed.), Theater und Migration: Herausforderung für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), pp. 219–28.
(17) ‘Diaspora Space, the Regions, and British Asian Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly 107 (2011), pp. 215–28.
Introduction
This collection of essays stretches over thirty years, and is a selection from a larger body of material. The essays and shorter interventions take various forms, but all are concerned with theatre, with practical aspects of theatre and theoretical dimensions of its study. The subjects range from ancient Greece to the present day: the partition is indeed mostly between those two eras, although there are more than two sections to the book, since grouping writings together is, to an extent, a constructive activity in itself.
The rationale for the book lies in the fact that I have always been more inclined to write essays and construct shorter arguments than monographs, and much of my work is scattered around in journals. Some of those journals are familiar and well-scanned by those in theatre and performance studies; but many are not, notably the classical publications. So collecting them here is like publishing a monograph, I suppose, but of a rather different kind.
There is also, inevitably, some kind of claim attached to an intellectual retrospective, and my sense is that most of these issues are still live, something that surprises me. I recall in the early days being browbeaten to believe that scholars were capable of marching the subject forw