The Living Art of Greek Tragedy , livre ebook

The Living Art of Greek Tragedy
The Living Art of Greek Tragedy
Marianne McDonald
 
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© 2003 by Marianne McDonald
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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDonald, Marianne.
The living art of Greek tragedy / Marianne McDonald.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-34231-7 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21597-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Greek drama (Tragedy)—History and criticism. 2. Greek drama (Tragedy)—Presentation, Modern. I. Title.
PA3131 .M38 2003
882′ .0109—dc212002152285
1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04 03
To my father, Eugene Francis McDonald Jr., who taught me the value of learning something new every day .
CONTENTS
P REFACE
Introduction
1 Aeschylus
2 Sophocles
3 Euripides
Conclusion
S UGGESTED READING AND REFERENCES
I NDEX
PREFACE
Ancient Athens in the fifth century B.C. produced the first written dramas inthe Western world. Apart from their intrinsic merit as some of the greatestplays ever written, their ideas still shape Western thought until this day. Primalquestions are raised about life and death and about what constitutes a life ofexcellence. These plays are as relevant today as they were in antiquity, whenthey were considered a necessary part of a good citizen’s education. Sadly, theyare sometimes presented as museum pieces and can be deadly dull. This introductionwill make suggestions about performing Greek tragedy in a waythat makes these plays vivid and exciting for contemporary audiences.
In teaching ancient drama to both graduates and undergraduates in a departmentof theater in California, I have not found any brief introduction thatpresents a balanced overview, adequately covering both performance and textualanalysis. Some writers put too much emphasis on the text itself and neglectperformance or consider performance paramount with little regard forthe text. Others try to combine both, but often without knowing the originalGreek or, at the other extreme, without practical knowledge of theater. Manywrite about the physical characteristics of the Greek theater without havingvisited the sites. Others write about the subject without an in-depth experienceof theater-going. And there is the pseudo-conflict about fidelity to restagingthe original as opposed to creating something new. Some stress the religiousaspects and neglect the drama.
There are questions to be addressed about language, translation, acting,movement, and set design. How long should the play be, and how shouldthe choruses be handled? Should there be an intermission? (Personally, I amagainst them for Greek tragedy.) All these questions and more arise when onewants to bring an ancient Greek tragedy to life with all the danger and immediacythat good theater requires.
What I shall do is offer a short, practical guide that gives suggestionsand general information, but not prescriptions. I shall begin with some backgroundfor the thirty-two Greek tragedies and the one satyr play which survive.I shall touch on the plot, some of the ideas, and make some suggestionsabout performance. The translations are my own. I shall also include someinformation about some of the most significant modern versions and performancesin addition to a short bibliography. There is no study yet in Englishthat covers the major versions available.
This small book should serve as a stepping-stone for directors, playwrights,actors, designers, and others in the theater who would like a briefintroduction to the world of Greek tragedy and some of the works it has inspired.I give brief plot summaries, which should facilitate choosing a text. Inthe sections on the original plays, I shall refer to some recent productions andlist even more in the sections called “Performance Tradition.” I shall select afew for more detailed descriptions. In the sections following Seneca, the versionsof the individual plays will be arranged chronologically, following thechronology of the modern versions, and then arranged according to plays. Forinstance, if Seneca wrote a Medea (which he did), I include this as the earliestsurviving version after Euripides. The later versions of Medea follow. SinceSeneca wrote no version of Alcestis, in this section Alcestis comes after Medea,although Euripides wrote Medea earlier. Then some more versions of Alcestisare arranged together. The arrangement is both chronological and thematicwhere possible. The translations are my own, unless indicated.
Greek tragedy has something to say to everyone. Greek tragedy raisesquestions and suggests answers but never insists. What these magnificent playsdo is to let us look at our deepest fears and continue to live in spite of them.These fears can come from circumstances that are external to us: the threat ofwar; the threat of a crippling or fatal disease; and the pain of living with povertyor under an oppressive government. Then there are the internal reasonsfor fear: that clock ticking inside of us all that tells us that we shall not liveforever. The fear of death can be crippling or, if we believe the existentialists,liberating.
Nietzsche used the image of Perseus, the Greek hero who slew the GorgonMedusa, fierce with her head of snakes. If a person looked at her directly, he would be turned to stone. Perseus was able to slay this monster by looking ather reflection in a shield that the goddess Athena gave him. He saw Medusa’simage in the shield and cut off her head. Nietzsche said that Greek tragedyallows us to look at Medusa and not be turned to stone.
We can look at our deepest fears through the reflective filter of Greektragedy. We identify with the people whom we see suffering. We live their livesas we sit in a theater and watch the action unfold. When the play is over, wefeel slightly drained: this is the experience that Aristotle called catharsis. Weexperience the suffering of others and pity the victims. We know that we couldbe those victims. When we leave the theater a strange thing happens. Insteadof feeling depressed, we feel refreshed and renewed. Our lives have changed,and they have changed for the better.
This is a known effect of great drama, and Greek tragedy is great drama.Its survival for over two thousand years proves this. The language is glorious.Of course, it is best in Greek: learn Greek and you will then have access to themost beautiful poetry ever written. You may ask, what about Shakespeare?What about Dylan Thomas? Seamus Heaney? You are right to ask. Later poetrymay equal the poetry of the ancient Greeks, but it is not better. Nor has anydrama ever surpassed Greek tragedy.
Modern productions can vary, and there are many approaches by differentdirectors. Some try to return to a primitivism and to include rituals as practicedin various places in the world. Peter Hall’s use of mask is said to invokethis primitive tradition. Others use a Freudian approach and emphasize thepsychological nuances of the characters. Yet another approach updates theplay to make the contemporary allusions obvious (e.g., putting Creon in a Naziuniform when Anouilh’s Antigone is staged or setting my translation of Euripides’Trojan Women in Vietnam). The original language can be eliminatedor reshaped (Stravinsky’s opera Oedipus Rex is in Latin so that people will notunderstand it, but will instead concentrate on the ritual and the music).
The comments that I make about setting, staging, or acting are not meantto be prescriptive. Obviously there are many decisions which are up to the individualdirector. There are many factors that enter the mix and can make themodern staging either exciting or dull. I like a certain naturalism which allowsone to understand the text and concentrate on what the ancient author wassaying. Stravinsky aimed for the opposite and was very effective in his OedipusRex. With no attempt at naturalism, Ninagawa’s majestic Medea is the beststaging I have seen so far. What I say about staging and performance shouldonly serve as a platform for further thought.
The Greeks began their theater to educate their citizens. As is well known,the ancient Greeks were the first to question theological explanations of the universe. They enjoyed their myths, but they wanted more than myths to explainthe riddles of the world they saw. They wanted to know the reasons forthe observable universe.
When the ancient Greeks said, “I know” (oida), they used a word which xmeans “I have seen” (based on the Indo-European word wid—from which weget video). The ancient Greeks looked at the world and at the same time as theytold the stories of the gods creating it, the philosophers gave scientific reasons.Democritus developed the first atomic theory. Ptolemy gave us a treatise onastronomy, and Euclid, geometry. Anaximander (si