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Postdramatic Tragedies explores the history of classical tragedy within postdramatic theatre from 1995 to 2015, drawing on a range of case studies of productions from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and continental Europe, including both widely known productions and works largely unknown in Anglophone scholarship.
List of contents
- Frontmatter
- List of Illustrations
- 0: Introduction
- The Development of Postdramatic Theatre
- Postdramatic Tragedies, 1995-2015
- Part One: Rewriting the Classics
- Introduction to Part One
- 1: Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love
- Tragedy and the Oeuvre of Sarah Kane
- Masculinity and Sexuality in Phaedra's Love: Text and Performance
- Violence and Voyeurism in Phaedra's Love: Text and Performance
- 2: Martin Crimp's Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino
- The Postdramatic Tragic Chorus
- Socio-Cultural Politics in Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino
- The Postdramatic Aesthetic of Repetition
- 3: Tom Holloway's Love Me Tender
- The Role of Text in Australian Postdramatic Classical Receptions
- The Postdramatic Realisation of Love Me Tender: Scenes One Three
- Politics and the Postdramatic in Love Me Tender: Scenes Four Eight
- The Classical Palimpsest in Love Me Tender: Scenes Nine Fifteen
- Part Two: Devising the Classics
- Introduction to Part Two
- 4: The Wooster Group's To You, The Birdie!
- Devising via Euripides, Seneca, and Racine
- The Politics of To You, The Birdie!'s Postdramatic Form
- Gender, Class, and the Classics in To You, The Birdie!: Source Texts and Performance
- 5: The Hayloft Project's Thyestes
- Devising and Performing Thyestes
- The Gender Politics of Thyestes
- The Postdramatic Techniques and Violent Aesthetic of Thyestes
- Part Three: Transcending the Boundaries of Time and Space
- Introduction to Part Three
- 6: ZU-UK's Hotel Medea
- Analysing Emancipation
- Intellectual Agency in Hotel Medea and the Postcolonial Tradition of Medea Receptions
- Felt Agency and the Domestication of Medea
- Navigational Agency and Multi-Perspectivalism in Hotel Medea
- 7: Jan Fabre's Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy (A 24-Hour Performance)
- Mount Olympus as Postdramatic Classical Reception
- Emancipation, Immersion, and Ethics
- Mount Olympus as Modern Tragedy
- 8: Conclusion
- Endmatter
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Emma Cole is a Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Classics at the University of Bristol. She received her doctorate from UCL in 2015 and since then has published widely on the reception of Greek and Roman literature (primarily tragedy and epic) in contemporary theatre, including the co-edited collection
Adapting Translation for the Stage (with Geraldine Brodie; Routledge, 2017), and chapters and articles on the work of Katie Mitchell (2015), Martin Crimp (2016), and Sarah Kane (2017). From 2019-2021 she is completing an AHRC leadership fellowship, during which she will undertake a project investigating immersivity and the classics with a focus on British theatre company Punchdrunk.
Summary
Postdramatic Tragedies explores the history of classical tragedy within postdramatic theatre from 1995 to 2015, drawing on a range of case studies of productions from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and continental Europe, including both widely known productions and works largely unknown in Anglophone scholarship.
Additional text
The volume has much to recommend it both for theatre historians and for those whose focus is on the contemporary reception of ancient drama.
