Buying Thebes: Promoting a Cultural Commonwealth in Contemporary Anglophone Adaptations of Greek Tragedy

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2017 Buying Thebes: Promoting a Cultural Commonwealth in Contemporary Anglophone Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Phillip Zapkin Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Zapkin, Phillip, "Buying Thebes: Promoting a Cultural Commonwealth in Contemporary Anglophone Adaptations of Greek Tragedy" (2017). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7027. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7027 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 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Buying Thebes: Promoting a Cultural Commonwealth in Contemporary Anglophone Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Phillip Zapkin Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature Ryan Claycomb, Ph.D., Chair Lisa Weihman, Ph.D. Kathleen Ryan, Ph.D. Dennis Allen, Ph.D. Emily Klein, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia 2017 Keywords: Adaptation, Drama, Theatre, Cosmopolitanism, Commonwealth, Greek Tragedy Copyright 2017 Phillip Zapkin Abstract Buying Thebes: Promoting a Cultural Commonwealth in Contemporary Anglophone Adaptations of Greek Tragedy Phillip Zapkin This project argues that theatrical adaptations of Greek tragedy exemplify the functioning of a cosmopolitan cultural commonwealth. Dramatists like Christine Evans, Colin Teevan, David Greig, Marina Carr, Femi Osofisan, Moira Buffini, and Yael Farber enact intercultural collaborations to reshape material from a cultural common and make that material meaningful for contemporary audiences. This collaborative ethos of drawing from shared source material undermines the logic of neoliberal late capitalism, which is premised on property ownership and individualist competition. “Buying Thebes” contributes to adaptation studies scholarship by theorizing a political economy of adaptation, combining both a formal reading of adaptation as an aesthetic practice and a political reading of adaptation as a form of resistance. Drawing an ethical center from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s work on cosmopolitanism and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s theory of the common, I argue that Attic tragedy forms a cultural commonwealth from which dramatists the world over can rework, reimagine, and restage materials to build new worlds through the arts. Neoliberalism imposes an economized market logic on all social and cultural interactions, which erodes possibilities for rounded humanity, democracy, and social justice. However, contemporary adapters resist these attacks both with overtly anti-capitalist content and through the aesthetic structures of adaptation and performance. Chapter I begins to theorize adaptation as a collaborative form. Chapter II traces resistance to the reduction of human beings to homo oeconomicus. Chapter III examines resistance to the erosion of democracy and a non-marketized public sphere. Chapter IV argues against the global inequality reproduced in economic (neo)colonialism. Chapter V claims Yael Farber’s Molora exemplifies the hybrid cosmopolitanism that characterizes all adaptation. And finally, the Conclusion brings together the arguments from each chapter to demonstrate how theatrical adaptation performs a cosmopolitan cultural commonwealth in defiance of neoliberal political economy. iii Acknowledgments I would like to first thank my committee members for their support, encouragement, advice, and feedback, without which this project would not have been completed. Above all, I’d like to thank Ryan Claycomb, without whom my entire academic life would probably be a shambles. Over the past six years, I could not have asked for a better mentor. I would also like to thank Katy Ryan, Lisa Weihman, and Emily Klein for their valuable chapter feedback. In addition, I appreciate the numerous discussions I’ve had with Dennis Allen about philosophy, theory, and psychoanalysis. Thanks to Ryan, Katy, Lisa, and Dennis for their graduate classes, which have helped shape my thinking, writing, and teaching. Additionally, thanks for the financial support from West Virginia University and the English Department, which helped make the completion of this project possible. In particular, I am grateful for the fellowship support. Further, I would like to thank Graley Herren, editor of Text & Presentation, for publishing an essay on David Greig based on an early draft of Chapter III; and Elizabeth Bradburn, editor of Comparative Drama, for publishing a forthcoming article on Christine Evans’ Trojan Barbie and Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu. Personally, I would like to thank my family for their support. In particular, Andi Stout, with whom I’ve talked, argued, and thought through much of the political economy, psychoanalysis, and other ideas here. Without our discussions/arguments, this project would not be what it is. I’d also like to thank my mother and father, Sandy and Mike Zapkin, who always supported me in my educational endeavors, and my sister, Molly, who got the siblings’ share of the scientific talent and left me more of the humanities talent. iv Table of Contents 1. Introduction Buying Thebes: Political Economy, Theatre, and Culture under Neoliberalism 1 McTheatre: Neoliberalism on Stage 6 Reshaping the Human and the Social: Neoliberal Ideology at Work 10 Staging Resistance to Neoliberal Hegemony 19 2. Chapter I Adaptation: Shared Cultural Myths 28 What is Adaptation? 32 Faithful Infidelity 44 Why the Greeks in the 20th and 21st Centuries? 48 Global Greeks? 56 The Political Economy of Adaptation 61 3. Chapter II Homo Oeconomicus: Marketized People and Culture 68 Rebuilding Barbie: Bare Life and Modern Art after Troy 74 Korinthiazomai: Colin Teevan’s Alcmaeon in Corinth, the Commodification of Social Processes, and Jouissance 92 4. Chapter III Polis No More: Atomized Consumers and the Dissolution of Common Modes of Being 109 The Communal Crisis as Crisis of Individualism in David Greig’s Oedipus the Visionary 113 Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats and the Politics of Space and Family in Neoliberal Ireland 131 5. Chapter IV Economic (Neo)Colonialism: Disaster Capitalism Makes Globalization Go Round 150 Economic Anti-Colonialism: Protest in Two Femi Osofisan Plays 154 The God of Profit: Nation Building and Global Economics in Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes 174 Politics of Disavowal: Neoliberal Rhetoric and Results 184 6. Chapter V Ubuntu: Building a Better World Together 190 Making A New World: Cosmopolitan Aspirations in Yael Farber’s Molora 197 7. Conclusion Buying Thebes: Or, You Get What You Pay For 223 8. Works Cited 239 1 Introduction Buying Thebes: Political Economy, Theatre, and Culture under Neoliberalism In the sitting room of an American CEO’s swanky home, Theseus and Theramenes discuss the collapse of the Russian economy after its transition to capitalism. When Theramenes questions the possibility of a pure market economy, Theseus replies that the problems facing the former Soviet state in the mid-90s are entirely the Russians’ fault: “How’re we supposed to prop them up when they’ve sold their whole damn system to the black market?” (Maguire 11). Taking a traditional neoliberal line, Theseus obscures the inherent connection between free market orthodoxy and the predatory stripping of Russian assets through privatization following the fall of the Soviet government.1 The conversation might seem slightly incongruous, given that Theseus and Theramenes are characters from Jean Racine’s 1677 play Phèdre. But in 1995 Matthew Maguire adapted it specifically for the context of the roaring nineties, drawing on contemporary themes like the links between sexuality, power, and finance, the ruthlessness of stock-trader and CEO international financial culture, affluenza, and exploitation.2 Of course, just as Maguire adapted his play for the 1995 premier at New York’s Here Theatre, Racine had adapted his version for the 17th century French court, drawing on Seneca’s Roman tragedy, which in turn drew from Euripides’ 5th century BCE Athenian tragedy Hippolytus. A play like Maguire’s Phaedra, with its series of sources and adaptive predecessors leading back to antiquity, challenges a romantic illusion of the literary genius/genuine/genesis—that tripartite linguistic structure suggesting 1 For more on the economic impact of Russia’s neoliberal experiment, see Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism. For more on the economic, cultural, and human impact, see Klein. 2 In his adaptation, Maguire changed many of the characters’ names. He calls Theseus Thomas, and Theramenes becomes Angus. I have chosen to open with the names from Racine’s play to emphasize the contrast made possible by temporal juxtaposition in adaptation. 2 authentic and original creativity. Instead, this chain of intertexts and

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