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These essays explore aspects of historical performance in ancient Greece, linking its significance to wider reflections on cultural theory from around the world and on performance in the contemporary postmodern era. Topics include the origin of ancient tragic acting; festival performance in ancient Athens; the reflection of performance in the tragic scripts; the significance of the chorus; technology and the ancient theater; comparative thinking on Greek, Indian, and Japanese theory; the rhetoric of performance theory and postmodernism; modernism and theater; the importance of adaptation to theater; and studies of the theater and diaspora in Britain.
List of contents
Introduction Section A: Greek theatre and theory Preface (1) "Hypokrinesthai in Homer and Herodotus, and the Function of the Athenian Actor", Philologus 127.1 (1983), pp.13-29 (2) "Performance and Performatives", Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 13.1 (1998), pp.5-18 (3) "Monody, Choral Song, and Athenian Festival Performance", Maia xlv.2 (1993), pp.105-24 (4)"The Presence of the Chorus", unpublished essay developed from a paper given at a conference at Northwestern University, Chicago, October 2010. Section B: Greek theatre practice Preface (5) Graham Ley and Michael Ewans, "The orchestra as Acting-area in Greek Tragedy", Ramus 14.2 (1985), pp.75-84 (6) "Performance Studies and Greek Tragedy", Eranos 92 (1994), pp.29-45 (7) "The Nameless and the Named: Techne and Technology in the Ancient Athenian Theatre", Performance Research 10.4 (2005), pp.97-104 Section C: Performance theory Preface (8) "Sacred Idiocy: the Avant-garde as Alternative Establishment", New Theatre Quarterly 28 (1991), pp.348-52 (9) "The Rhetoric of Theory: the Role of Metaphor in Peter Brook's The Empty Space", New Theatre Quarterly 35 (1993), pp.246-54 (10) "Richard Schechner's 'The Future of Ritual': the Final Chapter", Performance Research 3.3 'On Ritual' (1998), pp.117-119 (11) "Aristotle's Poetics, Bharatamuni's Natyasastra, and Zeami's Treatises: Theory as Discourse", Asian Theatre Journal 17.2 (2000), pp.191-214 (12) "Theatrical Modernism: A Problematic", in A.Eysteinsson and V.Liska (eds.)A Comparative History of Literature in European Languages: Modernism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007: pp.531-44 (13) "Discursive Embodiment: The Theatre as Adaptation", Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 2.3 (2009), pp.201-209 (14) "The Critical Absence of a Postmodern Reception Theory of Live Performance", unpublished editorial contribution to Baz Kershaw and Graham Ley (eds.),"Beyond Postmodernism", Contemporary Theatre Review 3.18 (2008). Section D: Diaspora theatre Preface (15) "Composing a History: Problematics of the British Asian Research Project at Exeter", Studies in Theatre and Performance 30.2 (2010), pp.225-232 (16) "Theatre and Diversity" - unpublished English-language version of the paper delivered in Cologne and published in W.Schneider Theater und Migration: Herausforderung fur Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011: pp.219-28 (17) "Diaspora Space, the Regions, and British Asian Theatre", New Theatre Quarterly 107 (2011), pp.215-28 Conclusion
About the author
Graham Ley is professor emeritus of drama and theory at the University of Exeter. His books include "British South Asian Theatres," also published by the University of Exeter Press, and "The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy," published by the University of Chicago Press.
Summary
This collection of essays connects antiquity with the present by debating the current conceptions of performance theory and the insistence on a limited version of ‘the contemporary’. These essays explore historical performance in ancient Greece and link it to wider reflections on cultural theory.
