The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas

by Bosher, Kathryn; Macintosh, Fiona; McConnell, Justine; Rankine, Patrice

• ISBN13: 9780191756801
• ISBN10: 0191756806
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2015-12-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas is the first edited collection to discuss the performance of Greek drama across the continents and archipelagos of the Americas from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present.

The study and interpretation of the classics have never been restricted by geographical or linguistic boundaries but, in the case of the Americas, long colonial histories have often imposed such boundaries arbitrarily. This volume tracks networks across continents and oceans and uncovers the ways in which the shared histories and practices in the performance arts in the Americas have routinely defied national boundaries.

With contributions from classicists, Latin American specialists, theatre and performance theorists, and historians, the Handbook also includes interviews with key writers, including Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Charles Mee, and Anne Carson, and leading theatre directors such as Peter Sellars, Carey Perloff, Hector Daniel-Levy, and Heron Coelho.

This richly illustrated volume seeks to define the complex contours of the reception of Greek drama in the Americas, and to articulate how these different engagements - at local, national, or trans-continental levels, as well as across borders - have been distinct both from each other, and from those of Europe and Asia.

Author Biography

Kathryn Bosher was Assistant Professor of Classics at Northwestern University.

Fiona Macintosh is Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) and Professor of Classical Reception, University of Oxford

Justine McConnell is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford.

Patrice Rankine is Dean for the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Classics at Hope College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Note on Nomenclature, Spelling, and Texts
Part I: Theories and Methods
1. Introduction, Fiona Macintosh, Justine McConnell, and Patrice Rankine
2. An Archival Interrogation, Susan Curtis
3. New Worlds, Old Dreams? Postcolonial Theory and Reception of Greek Drama, Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson
4. Grecian Theater in Philadelphia, 1800-1870, Lee T. Pearcy
5. Thebes in the New World: Revisiting the New York Antigone of 1845, Fiona Macintosh
6. Julia Ward Howe's Hippolytus, Helene Foley
7. Professional Tragedy: The Case of Medea in Chicago, 1867, Kathryn Bosher and Jordana Cox
8. Barbarian Queens: Race, Violence, and Antiquity on the Nineteenth-Century American Stage, Robert Davis
9. When Greeks Stand You Up, Invite Romans: The Ancient World on the Nineteenth-Century American Stage, David Mayer
Part III: Modernisms in the Americas (1900-1930)
10. The Migrant Muse: Greek Drama as Feminist Window on American Identity, 1900-1925, Edith Hall
11. Iphigenia Amongst the Ivies, 1915, Niall W. Slater
12. Treading the Arduous Road to Eleusis, Nationalism and Feminism in Early Post-World War I Canada: Roy Mitchell's 1920 The Trojan Women, Moira Day
13. Greek Theater in Modern Dance: An Alternative Archaeology, Artemis Leontis
14. Eugene O'Neill's Quest for Greek Tragedy, Vassilis Lambropoulos
Part IV: The Living Pasts (1925-1970)
15. Choreographing the Classics, Performing Sexual Dissidence, Susan Manning
16. Greek Drama in Mexico, Francisco Barrenechea
17. Moving and Dramatic Athenian Citizenship: Edith Hamilton's Americanization of Greek Tragedy, Judith P. Hallett
18. A New Stage of Laughter for Zora Neale Hurston and Theodore Brown: Lysistrata and the Negro Units of the Federal Theatre Project, Lena Hill
19. Aristophanic Comedy in American Musical Theater, 1925-1969, John Given
20. Cubanizing Greek Drama: Jose Triana's Medea in the Mirror, 1960, Konstantinos Nikoloutsos
Part V: Creative Collisions (1948-1968)
21. Revolutionizing Greek Tragedy in Cuba: Virgilio Pinera's Electra Garrigo, 1948, Rosa Andujar
22. Alfredo Dias Gomes' O Pagador de promessas and Antigone's Dilemma, Paul Dixon
23. The Darkening of Medea: Geographies of Race, (Dis)Placement and Identity in Agostinho Olavo's Alem do Rio (Medea), Jose de Paiva dos Santos
24. The Frontiers of David Cureses' La frontera, Anibal A. Biglieri
25. Brothers at War: Aeschylus in Cuba 1968 and 2007, Isabelle Torrance
Part VI: The Search for the Omni-Americas (1970s-2013)
26. Metaphor and Modernity: American Themes in Herakles and Dionysus in '69 , Thomas E. Jenkins
27. Lee Breuer's New American Classicism: The Gospel at Colonus's Integration Statement, Justine McConnell
28. Afrocentrism or Assimilation: The Case of Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz
29. The Power of Medea's Sisterhood: America(ns) on the Margins in Cherrie Moraga's The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea, Katie Billotte
30. August Wilson and Greek Drama: Blackface Minstrelsy, 'Spectacle' from Aristotle's Poetics, and Radio Golf, Patrice Rankine
31. 'Aeschylus Got Flow!': Afrosporic Greek Tragedy and Will Power's The Seven, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr.
32. Visibility Strategies: Multiple Antigones on the Colombian Twenty-First Century Stage, Moira Fradinger
33. Democratic Appropriations: Lysistrata and Political Activism, Dorota Dutsch
34. Reclaiming Euripides in Harlem, Melinda Powers
35. Oedipus Tyrannus in South America, Maria Florencia Nelli
36. Greek Drama on the West Coast, 1970-2013, Mary-Kay Gamel
37. Performing for Soldiers: Twenty-First Century Experiments in Greek Theater in the U.S., Laura Lodewyck and S. Sara Monoson
38. Greek Tragedy in Canada: Women's Voices and Minority Views, Hallie Rebecca Marshall
Part VII: Practioner Perspectives
39. Countee Cullen's Medea: Daniel Banks on Adaptation and Change, Daniel Banks and Patrice Rankine
40. This Bird That Never Settles: A Virtual Conversation with Anne Carson about Greek Tragedy, Yopie Prins
41. An Interview with Heron Coelho, Cesar Gemelli
42. An Interview with Hector Levy-Daniel, Maria Florencia Nelli
43. Charles Mee's '(Re)Making' of Greek Drama, Erin B. Mee
44. An Interview with Peter Meineck, Lynn Kozak
45. An Interview with Carey Perloff, Margaret Williamson
46. Eclectic Encounters: Staging Greek Tragedy in America, 1973 - 2009, Rush Rehm
47. The Shock of Recognition: Nicholas Rudall's Translation of Greek Drama for the Chicago Stage at Court Theatre, Justine McConnell and Patrice Rankine
48. In Conversation with Peter Sellars: 'What Does Greek Tragedy Mean to You?', Avery Willis Hoffman
49. Women and War, Peggy Shannon
50. Dionysus in 69 in 2009, Shawn Sides
51. Talking Greeks with Derek Walcott, Helen Eastman
Afterword
52. Audiences Across the Pond: Oceans Apart or Shared Experiences?, Lorna Hardwick