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Dramaturgy for Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

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Dramaturgy for Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus Dramaturgy for Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus translated by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (1856) with annotations by Dr. Clara Drummond compiled by Fly Steffens, Dramaturg MFA Generative Dramaturgy Protocol Sample University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film, & Television Table of Contents Note from the Dramaturg Background Page 4 Aeschylus: from Critical Surveys of Literature: Critical Survey of Drama Elizabeth Barrett-Browning: from Great Lives from History: The 19th Century Select Production History Page 15 Timeline Articles / Reviews Suggested Critical Reading and Supplemental Resources Page 38 Texts available in Rehearsal Dramaturgy Library Digital Resources Contemporary Comparisons Prometheus Bound: the text Page 40 Barrett Browning’s Preface to the 1833 Barrett Browning Translation Scene Breakdown Annotated Text: compiled by Clara Drummond Additional Glossary and Pronunciation: Marianne McDonald Cut Recommendation Sample Steffens1 Note from the Dramaturg: Basic Protocol? When I began research for a pseudo-production of Prometheus Bound, I began my search by solely looking for an engaging and lyrical translation. Among the thirty-plus translations and adaptations, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 1856 translation possesses a unique lyricism I find incredibly compelling. However, after the buoyant joy associated with finding the perfect play, I soon was drowning in Classical scholarship, endless literary commentary, stale summations of Greek Theatre practices, and sore arms and eyes from carrying books or boring through obscure digital articles. I am a graduate student in their late twenties who has no experience as a dramaturg on a Greek play; surely to understand it I need digest the thousands of years of lineage that leads me to this moment in the first place. Normally when I begin work on play, I do a Fuchsian close read ((see EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play). This tends to reveal the tautological rules and realities – meta/physical, emotional, cultural, of the world of Prometheus Bound; such a singular observation may help free a company from the burden of the entirety of all theatre history. What is our – relationship to the text, now, as a group of people, in this moment? What’s going on in this play? How do we feel about it? What is so? The following dramaturgical materials take little of these questions into account. Instead, they are basic and rudimentary outlines toward a conventional protocol based in historicism and restricted by crippling precedent – by what we, what I, have been potentially conditioned to think we need to understand and execute a Greek Tragedy in conventional theatre education and practice. In reviewing these materials, I do not find them to be unhelpful or irrelevant, but in no way do these materials provide a better understanding of the play. Steffens2 I am no Prometheus – my capacity as a dramaturg is not oracular nor all-knowing – but this process has lead me to my own set questions: questions for dramaturgs working on a Greek Tragedy. When I asked them of myself and my peers, I found that my approach to this task had been quite misguided. If I had begun my approach into the text with these questions instead of attempting to digest the origins of Western Theatre into something as meaningful, lyrical, and evocative as Barrett Browning’s brilliant translation, the following materials would look very different. Here they are: 1. What do you know about Greek Theatre? 2. When is the last time you saw a production of a Greek Play? a. Where was it? b. How was it staged? c. Did you like it? Why or why not? 3. Do you prefer reading or seeing Greek Plays? Why? 4. Do you find Greek Plays difficult to understand? Why or why not? a. What would help you to understand them? b. Does your previous exposure to Greek Plays help you? Why or why not? 5. Do you find Greek Plays difficult to enjoy? Why or why not? a. What would help you to enjoy them? 6. What do you think a director needs from a dramaturg to successfully stage a Greek Play? a. An Actor? b. A designer? 7. What does it mean to successfully stage a Greek Play? 8. What is your opinion on Greek Choruses? a. What is successful about them? Why? b. What do you wish was different, if anything? Why? 9. What are the benefits and consequences of removing significant context from a text, such as historical, geographical, cultural, political, or mythological references? 10. In Prometheus Bound, there is very little physical action paired with extensive monologues. How does this play need to be produced to stay engaging, if it isn’t already? 11. Do you think Greek Theatre is relevant to a contemporary audience? Why or why not? a. Should it be? Why or why not? Steffens3 Perhaps I was unknowingly drawn to Barrett Browning’s translation as we are kindred spirits in a way. In 1833 she finished her first translation of the text in just two short weeks; subsequently Barrett Browning was horrified and disappointed at how little heart and poetry she found in the technically perfect translation. Twenty-three years later she published her revisions, caring not about precision of meter and definition but more on gesture, sense, and affect – she wanted to create something that communicated to others the incredible sensation brought on by reading Aeschylus’ original text in Greek. Though I may have little material to show for it, this process has affirmed my instinct that pursuit of dramaturgy is borne within the heart. The technical practice of dramaturgy is certainly useful and necessary in the creation of a production, just as Barrett Browning required the ability to basically translate text from one language into another. Prometheus gave humankind more than just fire; he stirred within humankind a fire of passion. More than just science; art. Steffens4 Background Aeschylus Excerpts from Critical Surveys of Literature: Critical Survey of Drama Biography The life of Aeschylus can be pieced together from ancient sources, especially from several biographies that survive in the manuscript tradition that are probably derived from an Alexandrian volume of biographies, perhaps by Chamaeloon. Aeschylus was born in about 525- 524 B.C.E. in the Attic town of Eleusis. His father, Euphorion, was a Eupatrid (an aristocrat) and probably very wealthy. As a youth, Aeschylus witnessed the fall of Pisistratid tyranny in Athens and the beginnings of Athenian democracy, and he later lived through the Persian invasions of mainland Greece in 490 and 480 B.C.E. He is said to have fought at Marathon in 490, where he lost a brother, Cynegirus, and at Salamis in 480. Aeschylus's description in The Persians of the great sea battle of Salamis suggests that he was an eyewitness. Ancient reports that Aeschylus also fought in other battles of the Persian Wars, including Artemisium in 480 and Plataea in 479, are more doubtful. Aeschylus's well-known patriotism may have led to the tradition of his being involved in all these battles. Aesychlus lived in an age not only of the citizen-soldier but also of nationalistic and political poetry, and allusions to contemporary issues can be found in Aeschylus's plays. […] Aeschylus's dramatic career probably began very early in the fifth century B.C.E. with his first dramatic production at the Greater Dionysia between 499 and 496. His first tragic victory, for unknown plays, was won in 484, and he earned at least twelve more victories in his lifetime and several more posthumously. […] [Aeschylus] lost in the Greater Dionysia of [468 B.C.E] to Sophocles, who won his first tragic victory. In the next year, Steffens5 however, Aeschylus was victorious with Laius, Oedipus, and the extant Seven Against Thebes, a tragic group often called Aeschylus's Theban trilogy. Evidence suggests that Aeschylus produced his Danaid trilogy, including the extant The Suppliants and the lost Egyptians and Danaids, in 463, when he was victorious over Sophocles. This trilogy was formerly dated on stylistic grounds as early as 490, but subsequently discovered evidence has caused scholars to revise their conclusions about Aeschylus's dramatic development and about the evolution of Greek tragedy in general. Aeschylus's surviving trilogy, the Oresteia, was produced in Athens in 458 B.C.E. and was followed shortly by the poet's second trip to Gela, where he died and was buried in 456-455. […] Aeschylus had at least two sons, Euaeon and Euphorion, both of whom wrote tragedies. In 431 B.C.E., Euphorion defeated Sophocles as well as Euripides, who produced his Mēdeia (Medea, 1781) in that year. Aeschylus's nephew Philocles was also a tragedian; according to an ancient hypothesis (an introductory note providing information about the play) to Sophocles’ Oidipous Tyrannos (c. 429 B.C.E.; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715), one of Philocles’ productions was even considered better than Sophocles’ play. Achievements The earliest of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work is extant, Aeschylus made major contributions to the development of fifth century B.C.E. Athenian tragedy. According to Aristotle’s De poetica (c. 334-323 B.C.E.; Poetics, 1705), it was Aeschylus who “first introduced a second actor to tragedy and lessened the role of the chorus and made dialogue take the lead.” This innovation marks a principal stage in the evolution of Greek tragedy, for although one actor could interact with the chorus, the addition by Aeschylus of a second actor made possible the great dramatic agons, or debates between actors, for which Greek tragedy is noted. Steffens6 Aeschylus also is the probable inventor of the connected trilogy/tetralogy. Before Aeschylus, the three tragedies and one Satyr play that traditionally constituted a tragic production at the festival of the Greater Dionysia in Athens were unconnected in theme and plot, and Aeschylus's earliest extant play, The Persians, was not linked with the other plays in its group.
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