Contemporary Antigones, Medeas and Trojan Women
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository CONTEMPORARY ANTIGONES, MEDEAS AND TROJAN WOMEN PERFORM ON STAGES AROUND THE WORLD by OLGA KEKIS A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Drama and Theatre Arts School of English, Drama, and American and Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham February 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis examines postmodern theatrical adaptations of Antigone, Medea and The Trojan Women to show how they re-define the central female figures of the source texts by creating a new work, or ‘hyperplay’, that gives the silenced and often silent female figures a voice, and assigns them a political presence in their own right. Using a collection of diverse plays and their performances which occurred in a variety of geographical locations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this thesis analyzes adaptive, ‘hypertheatrical’, strategies employed by the theatre, through which play texts from the past are ‘re-made’ in the here and now of theatrical performances. A close analysis of these performances demonstrates how the historical and cultural identity of contemporary audiences informs the process of re- interpretation of familiar material within new contexts. They evidence how these re-makings reflect the culture, the political moment or the socio-historical coincidence in which they are conceived and performed. Most importantly this thesis shows that without exception these appropriations become entirely new Antigones, Medeas and Trojan Women; they invoke re- configurations or re-inventions of femininity which detect and emphasise individual women’s strengths and female solidarity, thus placing the plays firmly within a contemporary feminist discourse. DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my husband Chris and to our three daughters Stella, Danae and Sofia. Without their constant encouragement, support, understanding, and unconditional love this project would never have been completed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to many people who helped me in numerous ways to complete my thesis. First and foremost I owe thanks to my supervisors Kara Reilly and Liz Tomlin for their invaluable guidance, their unending support, their continued encouragement and their insightful comments throughout my research and the writing of my thesis. I need to thank Kara especially, for believing in me even when there wasn’t much to believe in – without her confidence in my abilities I would not have dared embark on this project. I would like to thank Liz in particular for tirelessly insisting that I never do anything less than perfect – she has provided me with a model of academic excellence in procedure and enquiry. I am grateful to all the academic staff in the Drama Department at the University of Birmingham who were always supportive and helpful and all the staff at the OLRC library for their helpfulness and cheerfulness. A special thank you to John Warrick for giving me early on the practical experience which I so lacked in theatre, to Kate Newey for showing me how to work with impossible deadlines and for challenging me to do more than I thought I ever could do, to Russell Jackson for giving me the opportunity to teach in the department and gain invaluable experience, and to Brian Crow for first pointing me in the direction of Brecht and his relationship to adaptation, for his insightful and constructive comments on early drafts of my thesis, and for our many, long, conversations where he always encouraged me and supported my efforts. Many grateful thanks go to Caroline Radcliffe for her insightful comments and helpful suggestions for improving my thesis, as well as for her encouraging support. I would also like to thank Olga Taxidou for generously providing me with the text for her adaptation Medea: A World Apart, as well as with a DVD recording of the premiere of the play, and Sarah Bryan-Bertail for making so much effort to find and then send me her video recording of the performance of Charles Mee’s Trojan Women: A Love Story. To Joanne Tompkins, in particular, I owe a considerable debt. In practical terms I am thankful because she is the one who first pointed out Griselda Gambaro’s Antígona to me and also told me about Christine Evans’ Trojan Barbie. But more importantly I am indebted because she supported and encouraged me from the very start of my project with genuine generosity which will always remain an inspiration to me. I wish to thank all my friends who put up with me over the years that it took to complete my research and to apologise for the many times I did not answer their phone calls, and refused their invitations for coffee, evenings out and shopping expeditions. But mostly I need to thank them for their emotional support and for the endless times they looked after my children so that I could go to a performance, attend a conference or finish a chapter. Their friendship has meant everything, and made everything possible. Finally, the greatest debt of all, as ever, is to my family: to my husband Chris Paliobeis for standing by me all through this project, for listening to me for hours as my ideas formulated, and for sharing my enthusiasm for the theatre and for postmodern adaptations of ancient Greek drama; to my three lovely daughters Stella, Danae and Sofia for their unending patience, their big, encouraging hugs, their lovely, loving smiles, and for never once complaining about the hours and days that this thesis took their mum away from them; finally to my parents Mena and Basil Kekis for their selfless love and unending support. Without their help this thesis would simply not have been possible. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Feminist and Counter Canonical Discourse 4 Cultural Materialism, Postmodernism and History 7 Postmodern Brechtian Performance Theory 11 The Chapters 12 Chapter One The Ancient Play Texts: Radical in the Original 16 Setting the scene / Historical Background 16 Fifth century Athens: Radical state supported theatre 23 Chapter Two Radical Postmodern Theatrical Adaptation 29 1948, Brecht adapts Antigone – a landmark production 29 Theatrical adaptation as a radical postmodern process – The beginnings 40 Towards a definition: Translation, Transposition, Adaptation 44 Re-making: The Work of Charles L. Mee 47 Theatrical adaptation: a process and a definition 50 Hypertheatre – Hypertheatricality 53 New Antigones, Medeas, Trojan Women: radical hypertheatrical engagement 60 Chapter Three Medea Adapted: The Subaltern Barbarian Speaks 64 431BCE Medea: a barbarian woman defies the powers of a patriarchal and culturally chauvinistic establishment 64 Medea adapted: performing fragmentation to give Medea a voice 71 Medea: A World Apart; Medea and the Women of Troy become refugees in the twentieth century 78 A potentially postdramatic text in a Brechtian performance 91 Medea, contemporary material in East Berlin suburbia 99 Hotel Medea: Medea and the audience defy the night 118 Chapter Four The Women of Troy Adapted: Victims of Wars Reclaim Their Broken Bodies 141 415 BCE Women of Troy: royalty and commoners interrogate Athenian imperialist ventures 141 The Trojan Women In Performance On The Modern Stage: A Cry Against All Wars 152 Radical adaptations of The Trojan Women: a female “writ of habeas corpus” 155 Trojan Women: A Love Story; A gender battle in a world of wreckage 159 Peeling:A painful striptease of clothes and souls peels off layers of misconception 172 Trojan Barbie: “A dream with a hard core of truth inside.” 185 Chapter Five Who Does Antigone Belong To? Who Does Antigone Speak To? 202 442 BCE Antigone: A female citizen breaks the protocol of silence and invisibility 202 Antigone Now: Why Antigone and Whose Antigone? 214 Creon’s Antigone: Metatheatre as a political act 221 Antigone, Antígona and Argentina: An ongoing political relationship 228 A Welcome to Thebes by Eurydice, its democratically elected leader 238 Afterword 256 List of Productions 262 Bibliography 257 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 2.1 (p.32) Picture of the two sisters in the prologue from 1948 edition of Antigonemodell Fig. 2.2 (p.33) Photograph from Antigonemodell 1948. The totems are visible on the left. The horse skulls outline the acting space. The performers who are not acting are sitting on the benches in full view of the audience. Fig. 2.3 (p.35) Helene Weigel as Antigone, with the door attached to her back; Hans Gaugler as Creon; from the performance in Chur, Switzerland, 1948 Fig. 2.4 (p.35) Antigone on the left; Creon and the elders on the right. Fig. 3.1 (p.92) The refugees caught in the storm Fig. 3.2 (p.93) The broken Caryatids Fig. 3.3 (p.94) Drinking from the fountain Fig. 3.4 (p.95) A dungeon-like transit camp Fig. 3.5 (p.96) The while scarf Fig. 3.6 (p.97) The hour-glass Fig. 3.7 (p.114) Medeaplay: Medea rises from the bed on which she was tied Fig. 3.8 (p.115) Multiple characters, multiple identities Fig. 3.9 (p.117) Medeamaterial: three Medeas, one Jason Fig.