Abstract
This chapter begins by introducing different conceptions of space present in the earliest performances of tragedy, using the categories of mimetic space, transformational space, community space, and agonistic space to identify the range of challenges and opportunities confronting the contemporary performer. It counters Aristotelian disdain for the practicalities of staging a play by developing a revisionary account of ancient playwrights as skilful practitioners of ‘spatial poetry’. It also draws on Viewpoints practice and Jacques Lecoq’s chorus exercises to explore how contemporary actors of tragedy can develop more attentive and provocative relationships with space, and with one another’s bodies in motion, as well as considering how current theatre-makers have re-activated ancient tragic plays in site-specific contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
Of this ancient trilogy, only one play survives, making it impossible to know for sure how the story was resolved by Aeschylus.
- 2.
All references in this chapter are to Kenny (2013).
- 3.
The absence of ancient evidence concerning the spaces of Athenian tragedy, and the specific ways in which they were occupied and traversed by performers, means drawing any firm conclusions concerning ancient performance is almost impossible. On the difficulties of interpreting surviving evidence, see Powers (11–23).
- 4.
On costume in ancient tragedy, see Wyles (2011).
- 5.
Some recent scholarship casts doubt on the theory that this space was circular during the fifth century. Hanink, for instance, asserts that ‘the word orkhestra is used of theatrical dancing space only after the emergence of round spaces during the fourth century’ (99).
- 6.
This Greek word gives us the Latin phrase deus ex machina, commonly used to describe any plot-device in which an outside power suddenly intervenes to alter the outcome of a narrative.
- 7.
The term mimesis appears in Aristotle’s Poetics, where it is used to describe the activities of different kinds of creative artists engaged in making likenesses of objects, people, or actions. Though it’s unclear exactly how the ancient philosopher defined the term, it’s usually translated as ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’ (Kenny, xv–xvii).
- 8.
Rush Rehm uses the term ‘scenic space’ to denote a comparable concept (20). The semiotic distinction between ‘mimetic’ and ‘diegetic’ space can be traced back to Michael Isaacharoff’s linguistic and semiotic studies, though the present chapter follows Wiles (1997, 16–18, 114–15) in resisting the assumption of a binary opposition between the two in performed Greek tragedy. Rehm also comments that tragedy ‘includes far more spatial play than is suggested by contemporary accounts of the onstage and offstage polarity’ (22). The following section (‘Transformational Space’) explicitly draws on Wiles’ contribution to this debate, and the terminology he formulates in Tragedy in Athens (1997, especially chapter 5).
- 9.
For a more developed discussion of tragedy as a ‘space for returns’, see Rehm (chapter 2).
- 10.
The terms used to describe colours in ancient Greece differ from our own, making direct translations of visual descriptions challenging. Taplin explains that the fabrics unrolled on Clytemnestra’s orders have been ‘dipped in the expensive purple dye derived from shellfish, porphyra’ (80). However, the play’s poetic symbolism also makes it clear that this colour is redolent of spilled blood, prompting many English translators to stress this aspect of its appearance. On ancient Greek conceptualization of colour, see Sassi (2017).
- 11.
Bakola (169–71) explores the symbolic potentials of the figures who bear the blood-coloured fabrics.
- 12.
See also Rehm (79–80).
- 13.
Rehm uses the term ‘extrascenic’ space for unseen locations, which are imagined to be just offstage, while more far-off locations are termed ‘distanced space’ (21–2).
- 14.
One later rhetorician described a dancer in an Aeschylus play as having ‘such artistry that […] he made all the actions clear through dance’ (Wiles 1997, 119). The choral dances of Athenian tragedy are irrecoverably lost, but they clearly played a major role in the visual spectacle and spatial meaning of plays.
- 15.
This Greek title means ‘Kindly Ones’, alluding to the new role the Furies will be granted at the close of the play. In English-language theatre it is common for the play to be re-named The Furies, highlighting the dramatic importance of this choral group to the play’s narrative.
- 16.
For an imaginative reconstruction of the full range of this chorus’ transformative ‘appearances’, see Bakola (2018).
- 17.
The presentation of these red robes dramaturgically balances (and perhaps symbolically resolves) Clytemnestra’s earlier deployment of blood-coloured textiles.
- 18.
This interpretation of tragic space runs counter to many classic readings of ancient plays, which conceptualize their stages as self-contained representational space. For an extended critique of this position, see Wiles (1997, 201–21).
- 19.
Other, smaller festivals punctuated the Athenian calendar, including the Lenaia (a winter festival) and the Rural Dionysia (associated with Athens’ different districts), at which plays were also performed.
- 20.
See further Wiles (1997, 26–7) and Rehm (44–6).
- 21.
The tragic skene backed onto to this sacrificial precinct, so that when Aeschylus’ Agamemnon made his final journey, he was travelling along an axis which led him directly towards a familiar site of slaughter. Wiles (1997, 58).
- 22.
It is important not to idealize Athens’ democracy (the city’s slaves, women, and foreigners were all ruthlessly excluded from the self-determination enjoyed by citizen males), or to overstate the potential of tragic plays (both then and now) to inculcate democratic virtues. See further Laera (14–16, 41–3) and Ridout (19–25), both of whom draw on Settis (2006).
- 23.
For this term’s evolution, see Wallace (2007, 11).
- 24.
Interactions between the Athenian lawcourts and tragic writing/performance are discussed in Hall (2006, 355; 366–8; 382–7).
- 25.
- 26.
Wiles dates this practice to the fourth century BCE (1997, 16), and interprets the high stage of the Hellenistic period as placing a new dramatic focus upon ‘individual psychologies’ at the expense of collective, civic self-scrutiny (1997, 36). He further contends that this practice may have come about when the roof of a fifth-century stage building (formerly associated with gods, or quasi-divine presences) came to be used as the standard platform for all principal performers (1997, 53).
- 27.
- 28.
Many of the pioneering artists exploring tragic space in the early twentieth century were dancers, whose work lies beyond the scope of this volume. For a full discussion of modern dance and Greek tragedy, see Macintosh (2010).
- 29.
For a series of Lecoq-inspired exercises which focus on physicalizing tragedy’s texts, and choral speaking, see Murray (2003, 140–6).
- 30.
Throughout The Moving Body, Lecoq insists that the playing space for some of his most famous choral exercises ‘must be rectangular’, expressing a distaste for circular performance spaces (141). He also works from the premise of physical distance between the chorus and a tragedy’s protagonists, taking as a given the (probably Hellenistic) principle that ‘the Greek chorus was not on the same level of the actors’ (140).
- 31.
The name ‘Viewpoints’ was first devised by choreographer Mary Overlie, and many practitioners have contributed to the development of this approach. Bogart & Landau (2005, 3–6). See also Climenhaga (295–6).
- 32.
This phrase adapts a common conceptual trope in site-specific theatre. See Tompkins (2012, 7–10).
- 33.
For a discussion of Complicité and Lecoq, see Murray (2003, 95–126).
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Dunbar, Z., Harrop, S. (2018). Acting Space. In: Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95471-4_6
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