“The man is a fool who imagines he is firmly prosperous” The pacifistic gesture of Euripides’ Trojan Women and its resonances in the adaptations by Jean-Paul Sartre and Ong Keng Sen MASTERARBEIT zur Erlangung des Mastergrades an der Kultur- und Gesellschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Paris-Lodron Universität Salzburg Fachbereich Kunst-, Musik- und Tanzwissenschaft Gutachterin: Univ. Prof. Dr. Nicole Haitzinger eingereicht von Julia Lipold, BA Salzburg, Oktober 2019 Eidesstattliche Erklärung Ich erkläre hiermit eidesstattlich [durch meine eigenhändige Unterschrift], dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Alle Stellen, die wörtlich oder inhaltlich den angegebenen Quellen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde bisher in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form noch nicht als Bachelor- / Master- / Diplomarbeit/ Dissertation eingereicht. _________________________________ Datum, Unterschrift I Abstract Whether myth or reality, the events surrounding the fall of Troy show the horrors of war and, as a consequence of it, the suffering of women. These women convey the pacifistic gesture of the tragedy on stage and thus act as a mouthpiece for the playwright, in this master thesis in three concepts by Euripides (415 BC), Jean-Paul Sartre (1965) and Ong Keng Sen (2016). Euripides’ Trojan Women shows captive women who express their grief and pain through lament, whereas Sartre's Les Troyennes adds angry tirades against the Greeks, thus depicting female protesters and Singaporean director Ong combines these two approaches by interweaving pansori and Korean pop into changgeuk, a traditional Korean opera. The different representations of the Trojan women can also be deciphered by the role of Helen who is the reason for their suffering and for the destruction of the city; a single person who has caused a collective disaster. In Euripides, Helen fears for her life and tries to convince her husband of her innocence with rhetorical skill. In Sartre’s version a passionate, desperate woman, who is still in love with Menelaus, enters the scene but the latter harshly rejects his wife’s requests and accuses her of lying. Ong casts a male singer in the role of Helen, thus breaking down the boundary between the male and the female. She becomes a transgressive character and an outsider between the Greeks and the Trojans. In the Korean version, the cool and aggressive nature of the Spartan king gives way to a protective, almost loving one when he holds his wife in his arms to protect her from Hecuba’s verbal attacks. In the following master thesis these two topoi are examined. On the one hand the pacifistic gesture of Euripides’ Trojan Women and its resonances and on the other hand the different elaborations of Helen. A bundle of methods is used to work out these motifs: in the chapters on Euripides and Sartre a theatre-historical method as well as an analysis of specific scenes are carried out, the chapter on the Korean adaptation focuses on performance and staging analysis and the last chapter on the role of Helen is the result of a comparative approach in merging Euripides’, Sartre’s and Ong’s works together. II German Abstract Ob Mythos oder Realität, die Ereignisse rund um den Fall Trojas zeigen die Schrecken des Krieges, insbesondere das Leiden der Frauen. So vermitteln die trojanischen Frauen die pazifistische Geste der Tragödie auf der Bühne und fungieren als Sprachrohr für den Dramatiker, wie die drei Konzepte von Euripides (415 v. Chr.), Jean-Paul Sartre (1965) und Ong Keng Sen (2016) verdeutlichen. Euripides’ Die Troerinnen zeigt versklavte Frauen, die ihre Trauer und ihren Schmerz durch Klage zum Ausdruck bringen, während Sartre in Les Troyennes wütende Tiraden hervortreten lässt und so weibliche Protestlerinnen darstellt. Der singapurische Regisseur Ong kombiniert wiederum in Trojan Women diese Klage und Tirade und fügt Pansori und koreanischen Pop zu Changgeuk, einer traditionellen koreanischen Oper, zusammen. Die verschiedenen Darstellungen der trojanischen Frauen lassen sich außerdem anhand der Rolle der Helena dechiffrieren, sprich eine singuläre weibliche Figur, die eine kollektive Katastrophe verursacht. Bei Euripides fürchtet sie um ihr Leben und versucht ihren Mann mit rhetorischem Geschick von ihrer Unschuld zu überzeugen. In Sartres Version tritt eine leidenschaftliche, verzweifelte Frau in Erscheinung, die immer noch in Menelaos verliebt ist, aber letzterer weist ihre Bitten scharf zurück und beschuldigt sie der Lüge. Ong besetzt die Rolle der Helena mit einem männlichen Sänger und hebt damit Gendergrenzen auf. Seine Helena ist ein grenzüberschreitender Charakter und eine Außenseiterin zugleich. In der koreanischen Oper weicht das kühle und aggressive Wesen des spartanischen Königs einer beschützenden, fast liebevollen Art, wenn er beispielsweise seine Frau in den Armen hält, um sie vor Hekabes verbalen Angriffen in Schutz zu nehmen. In der folgenden Masterarbeit werden beide Topoi untersucht, einerseits die pazifistische Geste von Euripides’ Die Troerinnen und deren Resonanzen, andererseits die grundlegend unterschiedlichen Ausarbeitungen der Rolle der Helena. Dies erfolgt durch eine multimethodische Herangehensweise, da im Hinblick auf eine Verflechtungsgeschichte der Werke von Euripides, Jean-Paul Sartre und Ong Keng Sen sowohl theaterhistorisch, inszenierungs- und szenenanalytisch gearbeitet, als auch komparatistisch wird. III Preface Euripides' Trojan Women has been with me for the last two years. I have Nicole Haitzinger, Sigrid Gareis and Ong Keng Sen to thank who made my internship in Singapore possible. Furthermore I would like to mention my colleagues at the Singapore International Festival of Arts who welcomed me in the warmest way possible and made my stay unforgettable. Especially Nicole deserves my sincere thanks, because she gave me the idea to use the stay abroad for a possible master thesis. She also holds an important position in my professional and personal career, as I was able to learn a lot under her leadership while working as her assistant. She not only gave me the opportunity to go to Singapore, but also to accompany her on a research stay at the University of Oxford where I was able to work at the APGRD, the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama under the guidance of Fiona Macintosh. My special gratitude goes to my parents and siblings, whose continuous support in good times and bad has made the completion of this master thesis possible. I have a handful of friends to thank, but since it would go beyond the scope, I will only say this much: you know who you are. There is one person outside my family who has been at my side since the very beginning of this adventure: my colleague, fellow fighter and close friend Andrea Pilz. I would not have been able to continue my work without your professional and emotional support over the past two years. IV Contents EIDESSTATTLICHE ERKLÄRUNG I ABSTRACT II GERMAN ABSTRACT III PREFACE IV 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. THE TROJAN WOMEN, EURIPIDES (415 BC) 6 2.1. THE TROJAN TRILOGY 6 2.2. EURIPIDES’ INTENTION: TROJAN WOMEN AS A WARNING OF IMMINENT DISASTER? 9 2.3. PERIPETY, IGNORING MORALITY AND HOSPITALITY 12 2.4. LAMENT AND MOURNING 18 3. LES TROYENNES, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1965) 31 3.1. SARTRE’S INTENTION: ANTI-WAR MESSAGES 31 3.2. SARTRE’S CHANGES: DEBATES AND TIRADES EMERGE FROM RITUAL MOURNING 33 4. TROJAN WOMEN, ONG KENG SEN (2016) 39 4.1. PANSORI AND CHANGGEUK 39 4.2. DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION 44 4.3. TROJAN WOMEN AT THE SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2017 48 4.3.1. CAST AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 48 4.3.2. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS 49 5. HELEN: AN INCREASE IN SORROW AND THE QUESTION OF GUILT 61 6. CONCLUSION 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY 74 ONLINE SOURCES 78 OTHER SOURCES 80 V 1. Introduction The theme of war as a social phenomenon is suitable for tragedy because all areas and relationships of human life are decisively affected. Tragic dramatists discuss and question concepts such as justice and responsibility, relationships between individuals and throughout the community as well as tensions between the divine and the human will in the exceptional situation of war. About a quarter of the tragedies that have survived refer to the topic of the Trojan War. While Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes, and Euripides’ Trojan Women, Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulis are the tragedies that explicitly refer to it, there are various mentions in other plays such as in Sophocles’ The Libation Bearers and Electra, and in Euripides’ Electra, Helen, Andromache, Iphigenia in Tauris and Orestes.1 As a warning sign of the imminent war, Euripides confronted the citizens of fifth- century Athens with the devastating effects of war on both victors and defeated through his play Trojan Women. Tragedians incorporated this topos into their works and thus kept the history and the memory of the fallen city alive – “[…] art can record what history forgets.”2. Reinterpretations, restagings and adaptations of this theme made the Trojan War part of the collective memory to this day and an example of the shattering consequences of war on those affected. Still, the Trojan War is regarded as a myth because archaeological research has not provided any compelling evidence for the events around Troy yet. The ancient Greeks believed very well that this myth was an event of their past and tried to determine its temporal classification. However, tragedians have dealt with the saga in a literary way, not questioning whether the events actually happened.3 As Froma I. Zeitlin puts it, the fate of Troy has merged into a comparatively diffuse and complex web of associations in tragedy and has a rather ambivalent dramatic potential. Euripides’ Trojan repertoire is very rich, five of his twelve transmitted tragedies deal directly with this topos: Trojan Women, Hecuba, Helen, Iphigenia in Aulis and Rhesus. Five other plays deal with 1 Cf. Pallantza, Elena.