Greek Theatre and the Stage

As aspects of the design for our production of Sophocles’ Electra (adapted by Frank McGuinness) evolve and move closer to what will be the final build, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the immediate similarities between our set design and what historians have to say about the staging of Greek Theatre over 2600 years ago. According to The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre (Brown, 1995.), the Greek open-air theatre was first a circular, levelled performance space (orchestra = dance-space) located in the hollow between two hillsides. The whole area was known as the theatron — the spectacle-place or viewing-place.

The orchestra was normally circular. It was a level space where the chorus would dance, sing, and interact with the actors who were on the stage near the skene. In the centre of the orchestra there was often a thymele, or altar.

By 465 B.C. a small wooden hut or tent called a skene (hence, scene), in which the actors changed costumes, was erected behind the playing area. The skene was directly in back of the stage, and was usually decorated as a palace, temple, or other building, depending on the needs of the play. It had at least one set of doors, and actors could make entrances and exits through them. There was also access to the roof of the skene from behind, so that actors playing gods could appear on the roof, if needed. Interestingly, it is thought that Sophocles may have been one of the first to propose backdrops and such elaborate decorations for the theatre.

The floor in front of the skene was elevated, with steps leading down to the orchestra, where the chorus was located; this narrow playing level was called the proskenion (hence, proscenium) whereas the parodoi (passageways) are the paths by which the chorus and some actors (such as those representing messengers or people returning from abroad) made their entrances and exits. The audience also used them to enter and exit the theatre before and after the performance.

Whether it was unintentional or a design choice, our theatron and orchestra bears strong similarities:

Our chorus enter using the paradoi / pathways which also allows the audience to enter and exit. Our thymele / altar is downstage centre in the middle of the orchestra. We have developed a proskenion / proscenium on the audience floor level for entrances, exits and some stage action but mostly as a space that frames the action of the play. Upstage, we move up a level towards a skene / scene which acts as the exterior walls of The House of Aegisthus. It contains a door through which the majority of the titled characters make an entrance, exit or both. The skene will be painted and decorated accordingly. Lastly, the knowledge that Greek theatre was performed in the open air amidst the elements is an immediate parallel to our context of being in the Burren - the rough, the wind, the birds overhead, the sea, the waves crashing against the beach - all of those natural elements which would have had some kinaesthetic and topographical influence on the performance. 

I find it very interesting how Greek theatre, similar to Shakespeare perhaps, lends itself to be relocated elsewhere in history / the World (location, time and context) very easily however, it retains the staging conventions it was originally conceived with. Sophocles and his contemporaries understood how to involve an audience (remember, their audiences were estimated to be close to 14000 people) through creating stimulating images on stage, use of colour, shape, levels, heights and postures. More so, they had a deep understanding of how to use the stage and the aforementioned elements to both shape and build the entrances and exits, poetry, tension and dramatic action within the text. Even 2600 years later!

Paul Hannon

Our set in process.  Set Design: Nelson Barre

Reference:

Brown, John Russell. "1. Greek Theatre." The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre.                    New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 13-48. Print.

Frank McGuinness to participate in post-show talkback after 10 March 10AM Show

We are delighted to announce that playwright and adapter McGuinness will participate in a post-show talk with director Charlotte McIvor and production dramaturge, Dr. Anastasia Remoundou-Howley (also an NUI Galway alumnus) on the 10th March following the 10am performance. Speaking of his relationship to the play now, Frank McGuinness offered, “The part of Electra is the female Hamlet, calling a whole life into question, balancing pity and terror, a woman utterly exposed by her own terror.” It will be the first time that McGuinness’s adaptation of Electra has been produced in Ireland since 2002, when it had its Irish premiere with b*spoke theatre company in a production directed by McGuinness himself. 

Playwright and adapter Frank McGuinness

Broadway Playbill for original production of McGuinness's adaptation of Electra starring Zoe Wanamaker

Mourning Becomes Revenge: Electra’s Reception History on the Greek and International stage.

 by Dr. Natasha Remoundou-Howley

"When “the Repressed” of their culture and their society come back,

it is an explosive return which is absolutely shattering , staggering, overturning,

                                                       with a force never let loose before."                                                                                

                                                                      Hélène Cixous  

 Ding dá adhmad féin a scoilteann an leamnhán[1].

In contemporary Irish adaptations of Greek tragedy, Electra seems to elude us.  Unlike Antigone, Medea, Oedipus, and Philoctetes, Agamemnon’s troubled daughter is not the most popular tragic heroine among the characters proposed by Greek tragedy for the Irish theatre. Sophocles, however, remains the most adapted tragedian in Irish drama with at least 17 adaptations, versions and translations. In this long and impressive list, Frank McGuinness’s version written in 1997, is the only one that revivifies Sophocles’ Electra, the embodiment of eternal sorrow and revenge. Taking note of McGuinness's adaptation, this essay seeks to highlight the wide diversity and complex interconnections between different theatrical traditions, performance styles and scenic vocabularies that inform the body of productions of Electra.

                                                      The Lion Gate at Mycenae, Greece.

Aeschylus' The Oresteia dealt with the curse of the house of Atreus (the Atreides), Electra’s forefather and her dysfunctional family, long before Sophocles. It is interesting to observe that on the antipodis of one sole Sophoclean Electra adapted by Frank McGuinness, the Aeschylean trilogy or some of the individual plays that construct it have been adapted in Irish drama a few times: Edward and Christine Longford adapted The Oresteia in 1935, Louis MacNeice wrote his Agamemnon in 1936, and more recently, Tom Murphy's The Sanctuary Lamp in 1975, Tom Paulin’s Seize the Fire in 1990, Marinna Carr’s Ariel in 2002, and Simon Doyle’s Off Plan in 2010, are all examples of Irish playwrights that have been inspired by the mythical saga of revenge and violence proposed by Aeschylean drama. In the poem "Mycenae Lookout," Seamus Heaney writes that there is "No such thing / as innocent / by-standing," employing the myth of the curse of the Atreides in a work that alludes to the politics of Northern Ireland, in particular the IRA ceasefire that began in August, 1994. Through the lens of the Troubles in the North, the poem does something greater: Heaney rereads and rewrites lyrically the mythological Aeschylean oeuvre to interrogate how the violence of a community affects humans and restrains the individual to act autonomously within the collective. More importantly it scrutinizes cultures of silence suggesting that connivance of others' crimes cannot bring about resolution nor redemption. In the end, there will always be a tragedy. The poem suspends meaning in a grey area, inscribing a question mark very similar to the one Sophocles leaves us with in the end of his Electra: "What happens to Electra after the deed is done?"  

                            The encounter of Electra and Orestes at the tomb of Agamemnon (4th century BC).
                                                    

Greek tragedy, as a convention, has long been employed as a medium of public discourse to critique political and social injustices at important historical junctures. Because the subversive plots it proposes have the power to serve as useful disguises for the expression of prohibited views and censored ideas, artists and dissidents have turned to the genre in order to use it as a vehicle for protest. Interest in Greek tragedy as a body of texts whose heroes and heroines are icons of political resistance, has also long formed an undercurrent to Ireland’s postcolonial writing. From Derry to Athens, the Electras, the Antigones, the Medeas are all fighting against oppression of every kind and magnitude. The diverse productions and texts of Electra that have reemerged, grapple with a series of questions as they try to re-imagine her on stage.  These are plays that restage over and over a call for new spaces and new possibilities in political and ethical thought that resonate with contemporary society’s preoccupations without eschewing the aesthetic point tragedy makes. 

I care not to live by such law: Electra in Ancient Greece

Among the Electras of the ancient world, the Sophoclean Electra haunted Western drama like no other. I say this in light of the fact that Euripides also wrote an Electra and Aeschylus presented her in his Libation Bearers, before Sophocles. Aeschylus' work is preoccupied with Atis (divine wrath) and Dike (Justice), while Sophocles dealt with the question of autonomy, that ethical dilemma that baffles man at the crossroads of decision-making: here the line between personal duty and tragic choice is indistinguishable. The Euripidean premise projects the issue of vengeful passion and the demythification of Gods and heroes. The common feature of all of these ancient versions of the myth of the Atreides is the language of humanism and their main theme, the human condition.  Is man indeed the measure of all things? How can man act autonomously with and without the gods?

Electra forms part of the so-called Trojan epic plays and it was sub-categorized into the Nostos cycle (nostos in Greek means “the strong desire, longing, yierning for the day of returning home”- note the irony behind this term in the context of the unfolding drama). The profoundly abyssal measure of Electra’s despair, her wrath, her hatred, her readiness and decisiveness to commit matricide unaided and unaffected by any mortal or immortal agent, her emotional turbulence that constructs the theatrical anagnorisis (recognition) with her brother Orestes and the sibling exoneration from divine and mortal sanction in the end of the play are just a few of the features that collect the personality puzzle of a radically provocative dramatic persona. However, the trait that seems to fascinate dramatists, is that Electra alone remains dedicated to her desire, unapologetic and unrepentant just like another Sophoclean heroine, Antigone. Throughout the tragedy she remains proud, obstinate, a living dead, all for the love of a memory. In Electra’s case that memory is both fond and traumatic: it is the remembrance of her beloved father Agamemnon and his violent death by her mother Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.  In fact, Electra’s figuration as the ultimate avenger informs her reception history in Western drama. That this avenger happens to be female complicates her representation on many levels.

             

The theatre of Dionysus on the outskirts of the Acropolis in Athens.

During the 5th century BC, when Electra was first staged at the Theatre of Dionysus,  legend has it that the Greek actor Polos impersonating Electra on stage, held on tight to the urn containing the ashes of his own dead child. Polos' empeirical acting technique could not be any closer to spychological realism. Like a metonymic trope for the art of theatre and the blurry line between reality and illusion, the image stays with us for its evocative dramatic force. It constitutes the most memorable scene in the play, along with the poignant scene of recognition and matricide.

Polos and the other distant forefathers of theatrical performance in the Great Dionysia were actors of  exceptional technique and phonetic supremacy, but above all, they were masters of the “three-actor” rule: this translated into an ability to play multiple roles, to metamorphose into different characters, from one mask to another. From the middle of the 5th century, when the acting prizes were introduced for the protagonists, an actor was highly esteemed. The most famous performers, followers of God Dionysus, were the first professional actors: they toured their plays around Greece and they were getting very well-paid for their craft. Simultaneously, the evolution of the tragic mask, the stage, and costume design, set the foundations for later theatrical conventions.

The subsequent developments in direction and performance along with the textual adaptations of the various tragic texts form a vast repository of theatrical traditions and histories that is defined by sheer evolution.  Like tracing the multiple layers of a palimpsest, texts acts as parchments upon which different readings and writings are inscribed, erased and reinscribed in a number of languages and interpretations, times, and cultures. This addition of new elements is incessant and organic: while new readings/writings emerge, the old ones cannot be completely efaced.  The material of the ancient text remains intact through time, but every new staging, every new performance regenerates the meanings of the old text and creates new readings and new interpretations. From this mythological womb arise the various adaptations, rewritings, and rereadings of the Greek tragedy.

  

The Sophoclean Electra might not have enjoyed the rich dramatic and philosophical career that Oedipus and Antigone have, however it would be fair to admit that she has a long tradition in performance history as an “unpopular” tragic heroine. Violent, barbarous, hysteric, scandalous, devoid of remorse, are just a few of the derogatory terms attributed to Electra through the centuries. Regardless of interpretations, mistrust in Electra as a pure, noble heroine of the stature of an Antigone lies in Sophocles’ own portrayal of her in his text. Not only does Electra not feel sorry for her desire to kill her mother for 1200 lines uninterruptedly -in a total of 1500,- but Sophocles incorporates a paradox on top of her lack of remorse: she is murderous, savage, and wild (foniki) but also virginal (parthenos kore) and thus fragile and pure. The Greek Canon contains a series of female avengers like Clytaemnestra who kills her husband and Medea who kills her own offspring, none of which, obviously, are virginal.  Electra would have also shocked and terrified 5^th century audience members for she is Greek, unlike the barbarian Medea. {Athens vs. Athens (Sophocles interrogating Athens)}. Nor is Electra blinded by ignorance, a divine plan, or her destiny like Oedipus. Her hatred, liminally standing between mourning and revenge, remains up until the very end of the tragedy like no other:  it is as excessive, obsessive and incessant as in the opening scene of the play. She is eager to kill without the contribution of any mortal and especially without the demand or order of any immortal. Like the foreigner Medea, the indigenous and virginal Electra survives and unlike even the Euripidean Electra, she is unrepentant. Her mea culpa is never uttered, articulated or even hinted at, in Sophocles' text.


Natasha is participating as a dramaturge in the production of Frank McGuinness's Electra. 
Bibliography: 

[1] Irish proverb. Its translation from the Irish is: “The elm is split with a wedge of its own wood.”

Bibliography:

Dunn F. M., Sophocles’ Electra in Performance, M & P: Stutgart, 1996.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theatre. Routledge:        

       London, 2005.

Remoundou-Howley, Anastasia. Palimpsests of Antigone: Contemporary Irish Versions of Sophocles' 
        Tragedy. Doctoral Thesis, National University of Ireland, Galway, 2011.

Divine Justice in the world of "Electra"

We are now in week four of rehearsals and though we have spent many hours perusing the text of the play there are still some elements of the world of Electra that evade us. I think this has to do with the fact that the foundations upon which the world of the play are built, a world that is ruled by Gods that are vengeful, capricious and mean, crumble when we try to slot in characters that are born of our world: modern day Ireland. 

Laura Webb and Oisin Robbins working on the opening scene.
Photo: Natasha Remendou

I had originally intended to talk about how in Catholic Ireland our concept of God is that of a loving, gentle and forgiving being who is sure to let you into heaven as long as you turn up to mass on a Sunday. Or every other Sunday. Ok, just Christmas mass and the occasional wedding. Ok, sometimes you don’t go to Christmas mass but it’s grand ‘cause God is sound like that and he wouldn’t want you worshipping with a headache anyway. But in fact, Atheism amongst Irish people has risen four hundred percent in the past ten years so the idea of setting our moral compass by a higher power is even less likely.  

So what does this mean for our production? Well, the question of murder, justice and revenge for us today means lawyers, court proceedings and jail time. Even if a crime is committed, there is every chance one could get away with it and if you do not believe that your salvation lies with God, then what happens to our concept of justice? To consider these ideas in the world of Electra  brings a whole new layer of depth and meaning to what we are doing. The action that takes place in Electra cannot be taken at face-value and is not as simple as “crime and punishment”. In our story Electra’s decisions may incur the wrath of the very active, very real Gods. For Electra, these are not Gods that she can say a few Hail Mary’s to but who will destroy not only herself but her family and if the mood takes them, her entire bloodline or her whole world.

To put this into context of our rehearsals, our job within this production has been to create a world where all this really happens. For us it means creating spaces, atmospheres and  characters who really inhabit this world and who are really aware of the consequences of their actions. I think for me this has been the most interesting idea to explore while rehearsing the play because it is one that I think has been most removed from us as a society. In our society and culture which has become less restricted and more morally ambiguous, it has been a challenge to imagine ourselves in a world where all of our thoughts and actions can have tangible, dire consequences.

We are still a few weeks from staging our play, and we still meet with challenges every day, but I think when we begin to reflect on some of these ideas, we are reminded why we devote our time to creating this kind of theatre and why ultimately we look forward to the next challenge.

Laura Webb

Why Not Greek Tragedy? Some Thoughts from our Pylades

When planning the production of any Greek play, the question will invariably be raised, ‘Why?’. What need have we for Greek drama nowadays? What is the significance of this play to a group of people so far removed from the original text? Beyond Greek drama, this question is now immediately being raised about the production of any play which dates from before a time period which we seem to have unanimously, wordlessly agreed to be our own. It is a question which bothers me to a certain degree. It is presented as though to say, ‘Why bother with this play which may as well have been written by a race from a distant galaxy, operating on an entirely different set of morals and interests to those with which we are familiar?’ True, Aristotle maintains the notion that the primary purpose of Greek tragedy was Catharsis, so that we may all know just what is expected of our behaviour upon leaving the theatre, lest we diverge from the path which society has drawn. Certainly, I am of the opinion that Aristotle’s writings are the root of this terrible ‘Why?’, so taken are we by the notion of free will and expression. If we could all just ignore the Why, however, we may begin to see Greek drama just as it is: a relic of one of mankind’s greatest creations, which has persisted for thousands of years; and is that not so exciting, that we may stop trying to rationalise its production in a modern setting, and instead, just be content that we are constantly contributing to this ever-changing canvas which the Greeks have given us?

Roisín Egan as Chrysothemis and Annie Clery as Electra during the first run-through of Electra on 15/2/14

Before being offered the role of Pylades, my primary function was that of being the understudy for all the male characters of the play. I believe this to be what may be defined as ‘mixed emotions’. The first was of delirious apprehension at the sheer number of lines which lay before me. This was somewhat diminished, however, upon seeing the task which lay before the woman to play the part of Electra. The second emotion was that of the excitement which may only be found when I find myself entirely rapt in awe of the artistic brilliance of any piece of work. It was not long before I found myself pacing from one end of my bedroom to the other, trying to shake the association with learning essays for Leaving Cert Irish, speaking to the ether which surrounded me, ‘Son of Agamemnon, this is your father’s land, the ancient city of Argos…’ and so on. The excitement of learning cannot be forced, but it can absolutely be found in Frank McGuinness’ masterfully crafted adaptation of Electra. The text carries such a familiar note throughout, that I would often find myself repeating the same line of Orestes’ for the simple sake of digesting its poetry.

                  

Frank McGuinness’ words manage to effortlessly translate the electricity of the play, which is at the root of my anti-rationalisation stance on approaching a Greek tragedy. Through this text, I feel so much excitement to be taking part in this production, knowing that the Pylades who performed in the first showing of the Sophoclean text is the same Pylades whom I now portray. As with any language or a copper structure which gradually turns from brown to green, Electra is a play which is in perpetual motion, and its winding up in our hands is indicative of little more than the brilliant force of human curiosity. So far during rehearsals, our Electra is shaping up to be one which taps into the terrifyingly animalistic elements of the characters’ behaviour, which is, to me, a step in the right direction. Of course, the adaptation which we are using facilitates our being able to move away from the intimidatingly rococo style which is synonymous with classical tragedy in many people’s minds. It is truly thrilling to see our production take shape over the mould which has been passed down over thousands of years, so that, ultimately, people like us and the audience who will see it will be transported to our unique Electra. Although academia would frown upon me saying so, there is an obvious answer to the question of ‘Why produce Electra nowadays?’, and that answer is simply: For the thrill of creativity and artistic evolution taking place before our eyes. I feel privileged to be so closely connected to this evolution, and it is an experience which I will take with me far beyond the final showing. I am very confident that the impact of our collaborative journey will be a hugely rewarding experience for the audience as well as us.

Mark Leahy