GREEK THEATRE PROGRAM SUMMER 2024 HIGHLIGHTS
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Greek Theatre Program Course Director Paul O’Mahony shares highlights from the 2024 Greek Theatre Program. |
BADA’s second-ever Greek Theatre Program cohort joined us this summer for an incredible month of study and practice which left an inspirational and indelible mark on all of us. The course is designed to explore Greek theatre from its origins in 5th Century BCE Athens to the present day, and we programmed an extraordinary array of theatre practitioners and academics in England and Greece. Every day on the course provided a rich and complementary combination of classes and experiences for the students. We started with 10 days in London with regular classes led by Marcus Bell from Goldsmiths in collaboration with Professor Fiona Macintosh, the director of Oxford University’s Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. The classes covered the origins of theatre in Athens, and the vital civic role it played. The group read and studied plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and were introduced to modern adaptations as we explored their enduring influence in the theatrical landscape. Alongside classroom sessions, students had regular acting classes led by me and Evelyn Miller, and choral movement classes with Joyce Henderson (Associate artist of Complicité). Students were assigned scenes, speeches and choral odes to work on, which we continued to develop throughout the course.
We spent a fascinating morning at the British Museum exploring their Greek collections spanning from the Cycladic era all the way through to the Hellenistic Period. This was a great chance for us to see how Greek culture has been received in the modern world, and it laid the groundwork for important discussions about ownership and interpretation. We spent a good deal of time with the Parthenon Marbles which were controversially taken from Athens by Lord Elgin in the 19th Century. We’d see most of the other surviving Parthenon sculptures when we reached Athens.
We saw three shows while in London – the hit musical Hadestown ingeniously adapts the Orpheus myth in spectacular fashion and is now a fixture in the West End. Fabulous Creatures was presented at the Arcola Theatre and was a cabaret style show retelling the stories of women and female ‘monsters’ in the Odyssey. We were subsequently joined by director and writer Emily Louizou for a masterclass session on adaptation. I was delighted that we also saw the excellent production of Richard III at The Globe – a great opportunity to see outdoors theatre in a space with echoes of original Greek performance practice. We were also hugely fortunate to host a masterclass with Greg Hicks who reflected on his experiences in seminal productions of The Oresteia, Oedipus and the Bacchae.
Our 10 days in London positively flew by, and then it was time for us to actually fly – to Greece. After a very early flight from London to Athens, our first stop was Delphi. What a place to begin our Greek journey, filled with mystery, excitement and its own unique serenity.
On our first morning we woke early and walked to the ancient sanctuary of Delphi. There we had a guided tour of the Sacred Way and Treasuries and encountered our first ancient amphitheatre. We sought out shade next to the Temple of Apollo and read the opening passage from Aeschylus’s Eumenides, when Clytemnestra rouses the Furies who are sleeping in the temple and instructs them to pursue Orestes to Athens:
“Pay me attention, chthonic goddesses:
this dream that summons you is
Clytemnestra, me!
You’re fast asleep, and feel no pity for my pain. I am the mother that Orestes killed – he’s got away.
You cry aloud, yet stay asleep. Get up, I tell you.
What’s your function other than inflicting pain?
Exhaustion joined in league with sleep
have drained the menace of your snakes.
Get him! Get him! Get him! Get him!
Look, here’s the trail!
You run in hot pursuit of your dream-prey
with yelping like a dog intent upon the chase.
Yet you are doing nothing!
Get up, I tell you!
Don’t let weariness subdue your power;
don’t let slumber lull you senseless.
Feel stabbing in your guts from my reproaches,
blast him with your bloody breath,
and shrivel him with scorching from your womb.
Go after him; once more pursue, and bleed him dry.”
It was the first of many extraordinary moments, when we were able to encounter the texts in the locations in which they’re set.
After the sanctuary we visited the Archaeological Museum which houses many of the incredible works of art discovered when Delphi was excavated in the 19th Century. Particular highlights include the famous Charioteer statue (in its original bronze), and the first known written example of musical notation. The rest of the day was filled with acting classes and a fabulous evening meal in a restaurant with a stunning view down to the Gulf of Corinth.
Our next stop was wonderful Nafplio, the first capital of the Greek Republic, situated on the Argolic Gulf. This was our base for 5 days, and we were fortunate to be hosted by Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and the University of the Peloponnese. We ran acting classes in their spaces and were joined by David van Schoor (from Emory University) for a day in which we workshopped his new translation of Lysistrata. This was a fabulous opportunity to put our theory into practice, and to explore a new translation in the classroom and on our feet.
The night after re-reading sections from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon we visited ancient Mycenae to see the famous Lion Gate (where Clytemnestra welcomed Agamemnon home from Troy) and Argos where we visited the ancient theatre. This gave us a chance to test out our speeches and get a sense of the incredible acoustics. Even more memorable was the trip to Epidauros, one of the best-preserved theatres of the ancient world. As one of the students commented: “There’s something here that you can’t really get from photos. I spoke a line from Ajax and scared myself because the resonance is insane – it’s something you can’t get from video or photo….It’s absolutely incredible.”
Nafplio is a beautiful setting, and we had access to studio space that allowed us to work on scenes and speeches with new-found vigour, infused with our experience of “walking the roads”. Amidst the busy schedule there was even some free time to explore the city and the nearby beach…
This rest and recuperation put us in good stead for our next stop: Athens. Athens is an extraordinary, colourful and (sometimes) chaotic city where you find ancient ruins at the tube station, and small theatres on almost every street. We were staying in the Koukaki neighbourhood, just 5 minutes’ walk from the Acropolis Museum. The museum and the Acropolis itself were the focus of our first full day. The climb to the Acropolis took us past the Theatre of Dionysus and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, giving us the chance to reflect on original performance settings and techniques, until we reached the summit and encountered the breathtaking Periclean monuments from which Athens derived such great renown. Later on, the museum offered amazing insight into the wider historical context of the site, and also provided an illuminating counter-narrative to how so many of its sculptures had ended up in the British Museum and elsewhere.
Throughout this time we reflected on the radical, challenging and subversive nature of tragedy – how it provoked and cajoled its original audience, and how related work today engages with complex issues of identity and justice. These plays were presented in the heart of a democratic experiment which demanded direct participation from those (few) who qualified for citizenship. We visited further sites (including the Ancient Agora and Kerameikos) which reinforced this connection between citizenship and public debate, and we absorbed this knowledge and these experiences for when we revisited scene work, speeches and chorus.
We had the immense privilege of working with actor and director Argyris Xafis during our time in Athens. Argyris is one of Greece’s foremost theatre practitioners, winning numerous awards. He has performed leading roles at Epidauros, and directed the National Theatre of Greece’s production of Ajax in 2022. He is now the artistic director of the wonderful Thission Theatre in central Athens which we used for workshops and acting classes during our stay. As well as an extended, in-depth session with Argyris where he introduced students to his approach to performing tragedy we had a memorable session with theatre director and movement specialist Sofia Paschou. We benefitted from her experience choreographing major productions of ancient tragedy and comedy, giving us further ideas to apply to our own chorus work.
The course brings together so many complementary aspects, encompassing multiple ways of learning about the social and historical context of the plays and their reception, an exposure to various approaches to performance, and the opportunity to see the sites where works first saw the light of day and where they have been subsequently reimagined. Our time in Athens brought together all these facets and left us full with ideas and inspiration. On our final evening we went for dinner just below the Acropolis at a restaurant called Thespis. As we ate and reflected on our time in Greece we were presented with one final amazing sight – an incredible full moon rising just after the summer solstice.
The next day we flew back to England for the last leg of the course – a week in Oxford. We were housed at beautiful St Hilda’s College, just a short walk from the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama where we spent the majority of our week. The APGRD is at the forefront of study and research into ancient drama, and we had access to its exceptional personnel and resources. Fiona Macintosh had curated an incredible series of classes and workshops which expanded our horizons still further, introducing us to artists and practice which would offer still more avenues for exploration. Students were able to pursue individual interests (a few participated in vase handling sessions) and we met with Oliver Taplin, whose translation of the Oresteia had lived with us throughout the course.
Naturally, performance was never far away. Rehearsals and one-to-one speech work took place whenever we had a spare moment -whether in classrooms, studio spaces or on the banks of the River Cherwell which flows through St Hilda’s. We continued acting classes and presented scenes and speeches amongst the statues of the cast gallery at the Ashmolean Museum. On the very final day we attended the APGRD’s Post-graduate Symposium (hosted with Royal Holloway) and shared a mixture of speeches and choral work which we constructed with Evelyn Miller.
The 2024 GTP cohort were an exceptional and eclectic bunch. The diversity of experiences they brought with them created a powerful mixture which allowed us to examine and perform these plays in the fullest way possible. I learned so much alongside them, and I’m hugely grateful to them, and to all the practitioners and academics who were involved.