Instructor: Dr. Konstantinos Blatanis, Lecturer
This course examines select and varying rewrites of ancient Greek plays authored by American playwrights and directors over the course of the past century. The students will be engaged in a study of these instances of modern drama which offer critical reinterpretations of ancient Greek drama but also constitute, at times, misrepresentations of the classics. On the one hand, attention will be given to the multiple and often debatable results this wide-ranging cultural osmosis has yielded so far. While on the other, the interest will focus on the ways in which the response to this legacy, which forms part of a broader preoccupation of American culture with classicalGreece, has shaped the trajectory of development that American drama and theater have followed throughout the twentieth century. From the canonical works of playwrights such as Eugene O’ Neill, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, to the experimentation undertaken by directors like Richard Schechner, Bob Wilson, Peter Sellars, Lee Breuer to contemporary plays which emphasize ethnic, gender, and class issues such as those by John Jesurun, Luis Alfaro, Cherrie Moraga, the course traces artistic developments which reflect larger cultural and socio-political phenomena of different historical moments. The areas of research interest around which the course revolves include the following: assessing the validity of new perspectives on these monumental works, reinventing the resilience and complexity of the targeted material, interacting and communicating with the past, approaching the classics as areas—in Peter Sellars’ schema—“meant to be lived in.”
Student evaluation will be based on participation in class discussions, oral presentations and book reviews, and a substantial research paper.