t is around noon and the stage is still lying in the bright sun that now starts moving
towards the west.
They have just returned from lunch, 14.000 people or even more trying to find a seat, to calm down. All still excited from what they have seen in the early morning and even more anxious to see what will happen next.
The signal, silence, music!
The orchestra enters, followed by the chorus, the “pista piston”, “ the faithful of the most faithful’, the guardians of the throne, the “gerontes”, old wise men. All dressed in precious golden robes. “Polychrysos”.
They are wearing masks, not the stiff, hard ones that shall come up much later, but masks like stockings, painted and with wigs.
And although they wear masks, they have human faces.
They move towards the twelve marble seats but before they arrive there, before they have even passed the monument in the center, 14,000 people have heard them speak, and hold their breath, yes, something terrible will happen, something completely new and unexpected!
It’s of course only a play, but a new play, The Persans by Aeschylus and we are in Athens in the theatre of Dionysus. New, because its 472 B.C.!
And it will always remain a new play!
New like all the others, every single one of them written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander. Timeless and up to the point each time they are performed.
The chorus!! This is the challenge!
Or, as Herbert Golder puts it:”as almost anyone who has ever seen a Greek play can attest, the chorus is every director’s nightmare. It almost never ‘works’.” (Preface to the first issue of Arion to be devoted to “The Chorus in Greek Tragedy and Culture”, Fall1994/Winter 1995).
Whoever has ever seen a Greek Tragedy performed in Greek may not be aware that there is a problem in translating the choral codes. But as soon as you translate it, the singing and dancing may appear merely to be an interruption of the play, yet the chorus is at the heart of the play.
However, every contemporary performance of an ancient Greek tragedy must be an adaptation of sorts, since it involves translation of the language of the original and confronts a profound ignorance of the music, dance and theatrical convention faced, for example, in the case of Shakespearean drama, and thus involves experimentation.
And as Aristotle desired:” The chorus should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be a part of the whole and should assume a share in the action…”
The challenge:
Greek tragedy permits a political response to unpredictable, extreme situations without being crudely topical. Set in an imaginary past that offers few specifics in the way of
setting or physical description, it is also amenable to both changes of venue and to multi-racial casting.
But an even more fundamental reason, as either Aristotle or Freud would have been to first to point out, is plot.
American TV, film and theatre are often based on the travails of dysfunctional families.
In Greek Theatre there is a wide variety of everything, just name it: betrayal, incest, murder and revenge, jealousy, love stories, madness.
Thus, Greek plots can, as Freud demonstrated, aim at uncovering deep psychological truths without degenerating into soap opera and, due in part to the presence of divine forces and a public setting in the remote past, provide a more complex notion of motivation than can be projected by reduced, modern characters in the present.
Avant-garde productions that aim to retain a Brechtian sense of distance in relation to the disturbing psychological and historical events have for comparable reasons also found Greek drama convenient.
And so...there is a stage, Ancient or modern, an empty place, a back yard, a square, a dark attic. It does not matter! A few actors, a director, who knows what he wants. And a muse carrying the spirit through time
There is no cheating in Ancient Greek Theatre!
Just passion. Nothing else.
Andrea Kapsaski
© 2001 Andrea Kapsaski ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Ancient Theatre Alive! Athens 2001, the international festival of ancient Greek drama organized in Athens by ArtPromotion, is scheduled to open on August
20th and run through September 9th, 2001.
The aim of the festival is to present some of the best theatre companies in the world with their own personal interpretation of Ancient Greek Drama by combining the original text and the traditional
form of acting with the knowledge and experience of modern theatre and the traditional theatre of each country.
Greece is the cradle of theatre, democracy, science, art, and Western civilization in general, and has influenced all the international forms of art and theatre in particular. With this festival we attempt to close the circle by returning to
Greece all the knowledge and applied experience that has been gained by actors and stage directors worldwide through the knowledge and magic of Greek culture.
The festival of ancient Greek drama is an act of peace, an homage to Greece and
its significance in the history and civilization as well as a worldwide cultural preparation for the Olympic games of 2004.
The festival is sponsored by companies and state institutions in Greece, Europe and America, and it will take
place in the Ancient Theatre of Herodus Atticus in Athens, one of the world’s oldest theatres.
The current list of participating companies includes:
Talos TheatreEnsemble - USA
Performing MEDEA by Euripides
Directed by Arthur Meiselman
www.aviar.com/ensemble/Talos/Medea/medea.html
Compania Nacional de Mexico (National Theatre of Mexico)
Performing OEDIPUS REX by Sophocles
Directed by Jose Sole
Yuko Senga Unit - Japan
Performing the EURIMIDES from the Orestes Trilogy by Aeschylus
Directed by Yuko Senga
www3.big.or.jp/~tange/
Lokadharmi Theatre Group - India
Performing MEDEA by Euripides
Directed by A.A. Chandradasan
www.angelfire.com/in2/lokadharmi/
Dialog Teatr - Poland
Performing ELECTRA by Euripides
Directed by Dariusz Gabryelewicz
www.geocities.com/Broadway/Booth/5710
Theatre de la Danse - France
Performing ALCESTE by Euripides
Directed by Caroline Chauveton
www.chez.com/theatredeladanse/enseignement.htm
Taller De Teatro De La Universidad Nacional De La Plata in co-operation with the Teatro De Repertorio De Buenos Aires
Performing ANTIGONE by Sophocles
Directed by Roberto Aguirre and Norberto Barruti
www.trn.com.ar
OFF-FESTIVAL
Concurrent with the Ancient Theatre Alive - Athens 2001” festival, this program will present productions unrelated to Ancient Geek Drama, giving each company the possibility to perform a
work according to their own choice and taste.
The performances will be held at several ancient outdoor theatres.
AK
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