Greek Tragedy and the Digital

George Rodosthenous, Angeliki Poulou

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350185951
• eBook ISBN: 9781350185869
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Drama
• Index: Literature

Adopting an innovative and theoretical approach, Greek Tragedy and the Digital is an original study of the encounter between Greek tragedy and digital media in contemporary performance. It challenges Greek tragedy conventions through the contemporary arsenal of sound masks, avatars, live code poetry, new media art and digital cognitive experimentations. These technological innovations in performances of Greek tragedy shed new light on contemporary transformations and adaptations of classical myths, while raising emerging questions about how augmented reality works within interactive and immersive environments. Drawing on cutting-edge productions and theoretical debates on performance and the digital, this collection considers issues including performativity, liveness, immersion, intermediality, aesthetics, technological fragmentation, conventions of the chorus, theatre as hypermedia and reception theory in relation to Greek tragedy. Case studies include Kzryztof Warlikowski, Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, Katie Mitchell, Georges Lavaudant, The Wooster Group, Labex Arts-H2H, Akram Khan, Urland & Crew, Medea Electronique, Robert Wilson, Klaus Obermaier, Guy Cassiers, Luca di Fusco, Ivo Van Hove, Avra Sidiropoulou and Jay Scheib. This is an incisive, interdisciplinary study that serves as a practice model for conceptualizing the ways in which Greek tragedy encounters digital culture in contemporary performance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Prelude
• Part 1 The presence of the digital in Greek tragedy: Developments and encounters with technology
• 1 From the Ekkyklema to Ivo van Hove: The technology of presence in multimedia theatre and the presence of the digital in performance
• 2 Digital media and Greek tragedy: A rhizomatic dramaturgy
• 3 Digitizing the canon: Mediated lives and purloined realities in Jay Scheib’s The Medea, Wooster Group’s To You, the Birdie! and Persona Theatre Company’s Phaedra I—
• Part 2 The chorus and the digital: Rediscovering the politics
• 4 ‘Inventing’ the ancient tragic chorus: Communality and the digital in the 1999 Oresteias by Katie Mitchell (NT, London) and Georges Lavaudant (Odéon, Paris)
• 5 Augmented vocal chorus: Sounds of digital chorus in Euripides’ Bacchae
• 6 Tragedy and the digital environment: Ancient desiring machines, choruses and Oedipus
• Part 3 Avatars, masks and cyborgs: Augmenting the reality
• 7 Digital masks for ancient Greek drama: Artificiality, constraint and metamorphosis
• 8 Cassandra in PythiaDelphine21: Oracles, cyborgs and the tragedy of Cassandra and temporalities within the digital
• 9 Colonial convulsions: Akram Khan’s Xen(os) and the digital Prometheus
• Postlude Pre- and post-human(-ist) confluences in contemporary productions of Greek tragedy: The complete eradication of the live actor from the tragic stage
• In Memoriam – Michael Cacoyannis Technological triumph and Greek tragedy: Digitizing Michael Cacoyannis’ Trojan Trilogy
• Index
• Copyright