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"Only Helene Foley could have written this book. The combination of meticulous classical scholarship with a lifetime of accumulated experience of the US contemporary arts scene has produced a stylish, exciting, and energising read. Mandatory reading for anyone who loves either Greek or American Theatre.”—Edith Hall, author of Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun
“This eagerly anticipated volume covers enormous ground with great skill and insight. It demonstrates unequivocally that the ancient plays have not simply been central to life within the American academy; they have also routinely been at the forefront of innovation and debate within the American theatre.”—Fiona McIntosh, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford.
"A magnificent work, impressive in its scope and learning, yet accessible and engaging—an extraordinary, indeed indispensable contribution to reception studies of Greek tragedy."—Mary Kay Gamel, Professor of Classics, Comparative Literature, and Theater Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE. Greek Tragedy Finds an American Audience
1. Setting the Stage
2. American Theater Makes Greek Tragedy Its Own
CHAPTER TWO. Making Total Theater in America: Choreography and Music
1. Hellenic Influences on the Development of American Modern Dance
2. American Gesamtkunstwerke
3. Musical Theater
4. Visual Choreography in Robert Wilson’s Alcestis
CHAPTER THREE. Democratizing Greek Tragedy
1. Antigone and Politics in the Nineteenth Century: The Boston 1890 Antigone
2. Performance Groups in the 1960s–1970s: Brecht’s Antigone by The Living Theatre
3. The 1980s and Beyond: Peter Sellars’s Persians, Ajax, and Children of Heracles
4. Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound in the United States: From the Threat of Apocalypse to Communal Reconciliation
CHAPTER FOUR. Reenvisioning the Hero: American Oedipus
1. Oedipus as Scapegoat
2. Plagues
3. Theban Cycles
4. Deconstructing Fatality
5. Abandonment
CHAPTER FIVE. Reimagining Medea as American Other
1. Setting the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Medea
2. Medea as Social Critic from the Mid-1930s to the Late 1940s
3. Medea as Ethnic Other from the 1970s to the Present
4. Medea’s Divided Self: Drag and Cross-Dressed Performances
Epilogue
Appendix A. Professional Productions and New Versions of Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Electras
Appendix B. Professional Productions and New Versions of Antigone
Appendix C. Professional Productions and New Versions of Aeschylus’s Persians, Sophocles’ Ajax, and Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound
Appendix D. Professional Productions and New Versions of Oedipus Tyrannus
Appendix E. Professional Productions and New Versions of Euripides’ Medea
Appendix F. Professional Productions and New Versions of Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis and Iphigeneia in Tauris
Appendix G. Other Professional Productions and New Versions
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Helene P. Foley is Professor of Classics at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the 2008 Sather Professor at UC Berkeley. Her many books include Ritual Irony and Female Acts in Greek Tragedy .
Summary
Explores the emergence of Greek tragedy on the American stage from the nineteenth century to the present. This book shows how plays like Oedipus Rex and Medea have resonated deeply with contemporary concerns and controversies - over war, slavery, race, the status of women, religion, identity, and immigration.
Additional text
"[A] monumental mosaic of a book."
