DRAMA AT THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION
Annual General Meeting, April 4-7, 1994
University of Exeter
England
Reported by Sallie Goetsch
Department of Classical Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
MI 48109-1003
USA
An annual general meeting, of course, is not a conference on
theatrical performance. But the program of the 90th AGM of the
British Classical Association was in fact weighted heavily toward
dramatic production. This was thanks in great part to the efforts of
David Wiles, who assembled a 7-paper panel on theatrical space
which lasted all day Tuesday.
Leslie Read of Exeter ('The Fifth-Century Orchestra: Staging
Assumptions in the 'Rectilinear or Circular' Debate') started off the
proceedings by reexamining the evidence in light of our own
proscenium-haunted preconceptions. His conclusion was that
theaters in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE had no single canonical
shape, and that deme theaters particularly varied a good deal in
construction. This led to a good deal of speculation on the logistics
of touring the demes, a more concrete version of which Read has
promised us for Issue 5.
Rush Rehm of Stanford ('Spatial Transformation in Tragedy: The
Ritual Catalyst') distinguished theatrical, scenic, extrascenic,
extratheatrical, and metatheatrical space and argued that the
transformative liminality of ritual exists within and across them. By
evoking rituals the Athenian poets manipulated the empty space of
their stage, taking the Theater of Dionysus from public to private,
general to specific, past to present.
David Wiles of Royal Holloway ('Did Euripides Betray his
Inexperience at Alkestis 860-1?') discussed a new polarity in
Greek theatrical practice: the opposition of left and right, east and
west, and made a convincing case for the western, stage-left
eisodos of the Theater of Dionysus as the entrance from which
salvation came, whereas the eastern, stage-right eisodos led to
stagnation and destruction.
Lowell Edmunds of Rutgers ('Diegetic Space in Greek Tragedy')
used Sophocles' OC to illustrate the non-mimetic nature of space
offstage. Because the audience cannot see that space even in a
symbolic representation, the actors must create it for them out of
words, just as Antigone creates the world for her blind father by
describing it. Wiles contested Edmunds' assertion that diegetic
space is "prior", arguing that it is created not from nothing but from
the mythological, social and artistic context of the production.
Suzanne Said of Columbia ('Tragic Space Among the Barbarians')
treated a specific example of Rehm's extratheatrical space which
was also at times diegetic space. The happy Greece which
Iphigenia tries to conjure in Euripides' IT proves to be a fragile
illusion; in actuality, the poet's discourse constructs Hellenic
territory as barbarous by its parallels with the harsh land of Tauris.
Nick Lowe of Royal Holloway ('Comic Houses') characterized the
plots of New Comedy, as mapped onto the 4th-century stage, as
'Houses having sex with one another:' oikoi conspiring to
perpetuate themselves by socially approved citizen marriage. The
innovation in stage practice of a three-door skene therefore
reflects the shift in Athenian political focus at the end of the 5th
century.
Sallie Goetsch of the University of Michigan ('Staging and the Date
of Prometheus Bound'), argued that the production problems of
Prometheus are best overcome by use of mimetic dance.
Three further papers deserve mention, though they did not address
problems of staging specifically. Keith Sidwell of St. Patrick's
College, Maynooth, made a case for 'para-comedy', the parody of
characters and scenes from plays by rival poets, in his
'Aristophanes and his Rivals.' Alison Sharrock came from the
University of Keele to convince us that the really clever thing
about Plautus' Pseudolus is that he can deceive the audience into
thinking he has a plan ('A Sense of Superiority: Deceiving the
Audience in Roman Comedy'). And Richard Seaford of Exeter
explained Ajax's 'deception speech' in terms of mystery cults, an
interpretation valuable for any actor who has to undertake the part
('Sophokles and the Mysteries').
On the evening of April 5, Peter Wiseman and Mary Beard staged a
debate about performance possibilites in Rome, with Wiseman
arguing in favor of the quasi-dramatic performance of hymns and
other works at religious and private festivals.
On the evening of April 6, the Exeter drama department presented
Attis: A Performance of Catullus 63 in the Roborough studio
theater. The production was the weightiest piece of evidence which
Wiseman could have brought to bear, a powerful argument that
hymns like Catullus 63 can be and indeed should be performed,
whether or not they were in antiquity.
Inspired by Peter Wiseman and directed by Les Read of the drama
department, Attis featured 36 drama students, four masks, and
musical instruments appropriate to Cybele's rites: an oboe, drums,
cymbals, and even a pair of homemade bullroarers. The masks
were quite beautiful: Cybele in silver with gilded crown and
corkscrew curls; her lion in gold with tawny mane; Attis pale in a
red Phrygian cap; and a maenad with wild hair of twine and ivy
crown.
The masks were the province of a single actor. In the first, Latin
half of the performance, the chorus processed in, led by the eerie,
Eastern wails of the oboe, to form rows facing the audience. Men
and women alike wore plain blue, green, and brown tunics
reaching slightly below their knees. Flickering red light played over
them in the dimness, creating a powerful aura of mystery--in the
ritual sense, that is.
As they began to sing Latin galliambics, passing the words from
high to low voices through a quite beautiful harmony, the actor
stepped forward and donned the mask of Attis. He then embarked
on a vivid pantomime illustrating Catullus' hymn, gestures fluid
and precise, kneeling in a red pin-spot for the castration, holding
the maenad's mask up to dance through the woods in company,
falling in his exhaustion. At the waking and realization, he lifted the
Attis mask from an agonized face and assumed the mask and stance
of Cybele calling her wayward lover back. Finally he embodied the
lion itself, chasing Attis, and disappeared back into the chorus of
worshippers, who then exited as the lights went down.
Up came white lights to reveal Publius Clodius Pulcher in a
tuxedo, explaining about the Megalensian Games, Catullus'
authorship of the hymn, and the prohibition against Roman citizens
becoming Galli. The chorus then embarked, in more natural
lighting, on a repetition of the hymn in English, including whirling
processions around a painted design on the floor and further
enactment, shared as were the lines, of the adventures of Attis. A
single sweep of a glittering sickle sufficed for the castration--a
remarkably tasteful and effective handling of a difficult staging
problem. Cybele was portrayed by a woman enthroned with robe
and crown, and her lion was our original actor in copper lame
trousers, dancing bare-chested and long-haired.
'Drive others insane,' the hymn concluded, followed by a
blackout. The ambivalence of Catullus' poem was clear; the
imagination of the director and the talent of the performers even
clearer.
Sallie Goetsch