Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy

Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and the Director's Vision provides a wide-ranging analysis of the role of the director in shaping adaptations for the stage today. Through its focus on a wide range of international productions by Katie Mitchell, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Peter Sellars, Rimini Protokol, Jan Fabre, Robert Wilson, Tadashi Suzuki, Yukio Ninagawa, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Stein, Dimitris Papaioannou, Wole Soyinka and Richard Schechner, among others, it offers readers a detailed study of the ways directors have responded to the original texts, refashioning them for different audiences, contexts and purposes. As such the volume will appeal to readers of theatre and performance studies, classics and adaptation studies, directors and theatre practitioners, and anyone who's ever wondered 'why they did it like that' when watching a stage production of an ancient Greek play.

Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy is divided in three sections: the first section - Global Perspectives - considers the work of a range of major directors from around the world who have provided new readings of Greek Tragedy: Peter Sellars in the US, Katie Mitchell in the UK, Peter Stein in Germany, Ariane Mnouchkine in France, Tadashi Suzuki and Yukio Ninagawa in Japan, and Theodoros Terzopoulos in Greece. Their work on a wide range of plays is analysed, includingTrojan Women, Electra, Oedipus the King, The Persians,Iphigenia at Aulis, and Ajax.

Parts Two and Three - Extreme Punishments and Unsightly Deaths - focus on a range of productions of key plays from the repertoire, includingAntigone, Medea, The Bacchae, Women of Trachis, Orestes andHippolytus, among others. In each the varying approaches of different directors is analysed, together with a detailed investigation of the mise-en-scene. In considering each stage production, the authors raise issues of authenticity, performance practice, spectatorship, directorial control/auteurship, and adaptation.