THE NEWSLETTER OF CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY • VOLUME 19, NUMBER 1 • SUMMER 2015
Take a look at the Greek Festival with an interview with Iphigenia in Aulis transadaptor ANNE WASHBURN and Oresteia director JONATHAN VANDENBERG
CLASSIC
IN THIS ISSUE:
FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR:
CHILDREN O
It was Auden who once observed: "There could be no stronger proof of the riches and depths of Greek culture than its powers of appeal to every kind of personality… To X, the word Greece suggests Reason, the Golden Mean, emotional control, freedom from superstition; to Y it suggests Gaiety and Beauty, the life of the senses, freedom from inhibitions… The historical discontinuity between Greek culture and our own, the disappearance for so many centuries of any direct influence, made it all the easier, when it was rediscovered, for each nation to fashion a classical Greece in its own image. There is a German Greece, a French Greece, an English Greece, there may even be an American Greece—all quite different". This historical discontinuity is a profound reality and forms an essential dialectical relationship between our past and our art. It is a uniquely Western condition. The East has always been more careful in passing down its traditions, making a tight chain of transmission. Think of India's Kathakali shadow plays and Japan’s Kabuki theatre, both of which continue to form an uninterrupted passage from one generation to the next. This is not so in Western civilization. Ours is a series of broken traditions with none more difficult to recover than the Greeks. Pierre Klossowski best articulates this situation, reminding us that, "This humanity that has vanished to the point that the term 'vanished' no longer has any meaning—despite all our ethnologies, all our museums and everything else—how could such a humanity have even existed?"
But it did exist and we are driven to retrieve what has been lost to us and to bring it back to the light of day. Like Orpheus, we are compelled to brave the underworld of oblivion to bring back our beloved Eurydice. The invention of Opera in the 16th century marks the first instance of the Western impulse to try to recreate what Greek Theatre might have been. It is not by accident that many initial artists, including Angelo Poliziano, Claudio Monteverdi, Jacopo Peri, and Giulio Caccini, chose the story of Orpheus as the subject matter for their operas. They were indeed children of Orpheus, and the Eurydice that they sought to revive was the ever-elusive art known as Greek Theatre. One could argue that many of our greatest theatre movements began as attempts to recreate this unique form of artistic expression,
which remains forever lost to us. Each generation has tried its hand at cultural resurrection, starting with the 16th-century Italians and continuing to this day with our modern and post-modern artists. In the end, the Greeks have become the perfect prompt, ever tempting us to rediscover them, but allowing us to inadvertently discover ourselves in the process.
So what exactly is this art form that the Greeks called tragedy? Such a daunting question wants to be answered carefully and slowly, beginning with sensitivity to the words that were first employed to usher in this unique phenomenon. Two such words still form a central part of our own theatrical vocabulary: theatre and drama, stemming from the Greek terms theatron and dram. Theatron means "a space in which to see" and dram (from Doric Greek) translates as a "doing" or "action." Strike these words off one another, like pieces of flint and they spark the idea of theatre as "a space in which to see actions." Jean Pierre Vernant, the great 20th-century Greek scholar, finds this emphasis on "action" to be particularly telling of 5th-century Greece, which he believes was in the process of radically rethinking itself. For Vernant, the simultaneous birth of tragedy and democracy was not an accident, as both forces strived to move the Greeks from an archaic mode of being to a modern sensibility. The key to this transformation was tied to a new understanding of human action. In the Homeric past, we find Agamemnon excused for the action of stealing Briseis from Achilles simply by saying that a god entered into him and compelled him to kidnap and rape the young girl. Such explanations no longer worked for 5th-century Athenian citizens, as members of a democracy. With citizens now responsible for their actions, Greece invented theatre and law courts to educate and work out issues of responsibility that accompanied the new concept of human agency. Thus dram or “action” was at the very center of the Greek tragic universe. Two more terms form part of the vast lexical constellation that makes up the night sky of tragedy, hairesis and hamartia. Hairesis, meaning “choice,” is more straightforward to translate. Hamartia has a far more tangled etymological past; during the Renaissance it was creatively mistranslated as "tragic flaw." In reality, the word hails from the practice of archery and originally meant, "to miss the mark." By the 5th century, hamartia was used to cover all
OF ORPHEUS manner of mistakes. For the Greek tragedians it came to signify a simple act with colossal consequences. Vernant notes, "Tragedy presents individuals engaged in actions. It places them on the threshold of a decision, asking themselves what is the best course to take." Think of Agamemnon's dilemma in Iphigenia in Aulis, where he must choose between sacrificing his daughter for a wind to take his ships to Troy or sparing her life and forever thwarting his war effort. He must make a hairesis and hope that he has not committed a hamartia. The goal of Greek tragedy, in Versant's reading, is to move an audience toward an appreciation for informed decision-making. The ancient poets tell us that innocence is dangerous as it can attract wolves, but in Greek tragedy, there is no escaping the wolves. The choice our hero makes inevitably "misses the mark" and brings forth two final words in our zodiac of tragedy: the vaguely familiar sounding peripeteia and the more inscrutable anagnorisis. Peripeteia is also known as a “reversal of fortune” (almost always for the worse) and the more elliptical anagnorisis is defined as “the moment at the end of a tragedy when ignorance crystalizes into a sharp and cutting knowledge.” In this respect, tragedy's education is one of via negativia: the hairesis leads to a hamartia that results in a peripeteia that ends in a sobering form of anagnorisis. This is tragedy's brutal equation and it is as exacting as Kepler's second law of thermodynamics.
As beautiful as this argument is for the origin of tragedy, it does not necessarily explain why this Greek invention continues to capture the imagination of generation after generation of artists and audiences. Holderlin, the 18th-century German poet, cryptically writes, "Tragedy is a metaphor for an intellectual intuition." But of what? Perhaps if we begin to understand what it is that tragedy seems to intuit, we can then better understand its hold on our collective imagination. It is common place to state that the original audience walked into the theatron knowing these stories and how they would end. Less understood is the way in which Greek tragedians would significantly alter a given story, giving it a fundamental variation. No myth was passed on without some slight or significant revision. These variations would cast a new light on a given myth, helping to explain and deepen the potential meaning of its outcome,
but the outcome itself remained fundamentally inviolable. No matter what variation occurred, the heroes could never escape their destined ends. There is something very powerful between the illusion of freedom that variation seems to promise and the hard reality of an end that is ultimately unalterable. Behind tragedy's modernizing impulse and flirtation with free will, there lies at the heart of Greek tragedy a very ancient concept of fate, which the Greeks, for all their growing sophistication, could not shake. Fate is made manifest through time and there is, perhaps, no greater time-based art than theatre itself. Felt time may elude us during a given day, as we often say at the end of a day, "where did the time go?”, but time is made material in theatre, we can feel it and it becomes palpable. One Greek word for time is hora which can also mean "season" or "seasonality"; it is the moment when "things come to fruition." The word hora becomes our English word hour, as in: "the hour is near." It is a kind of temporality that is particularly felt in the theatre, when suddenly everything points to a given end. Perhaps it is right here, at this very instant, that we discover Holderlin's notion of "Tragedy is a metaphor for an intellectual intuition." We, like the Greek tragic hero, have been unaware, in denial, or in active disavowal of our end and yet, no matter what we do, no matter what variation life gives us, the end that we avoid moves inextricably toward us. Time, ultimately being the distance between us and our end, drains away moment by moment in the trajectory of tragedy. Most of us try to keep this unbearable reality at bay, burying it from the light of our consciousness, but such an endeavor is ultimately doomed. Time goes about its patient work and slowly, year by year, reminds us, ever more insistently, of its ever-encroaching, unalterable ending. Tragedy, like time, brings this end to light and asks us how we will meet it and how can we sharpen our life choices by it. Tragedy prepares us for the working or rather the un-working of time. Perhaps this is its enduring and sobering gift to each generation.
Brian Kulick Artistic Director
TOGGLING BETWEEN IRONY AND GRAVITY A Conversation with Iphigenia in Aulis Transadaptor ANNE WASHBURN What attracts you to the Greeks? AW: Sheer entertainment value: big, round characters, crazily tense plots, singing, and dancing. You've adapted Orestes, which deals with the tail end of the story of The Oresteia, and now with Iphigenia In Aulis, you are exploring the beginning or seeds of the tragedy. You seem much more interested in Euripides’ telling of this story than, say, Aeschylus’. Can you talk about the differences between these two writers and why you gravitate toward Euripides? I love Aeschylus. I love The Oresteia, Agamemnon in particular. I love the humanity and holiness of Aeschylus, the richness of the language, and the way in which he is both very grand and very human. I was first drawn to Euripides because he is just so modern. In the way he toggles between a very deep sense of irony and a real gravity, his work not only anticipates some of the most interesting modern experimental work, but also supersedes it. I think he’s more sophisticated than we are and so I wanted to learn more about what he was doing by working with the text. Also, Aeschylus feels so optimistic, like America in the 1950s, whereas Euripides—a man who watched his city, at the height of its powers, destroy itself in chunks in the name of piety, patriotism, and values—feels super contemporary. The desire to actually work on Orestes somehow came out of 9/11 and wanting to find a way to talk about a culture and an empire which is trembling. In Orestes, we’re seeing the cost of the war through a very personal lens; in Iphigenia in Aulis, we’re seeing how we enter into a war and all the ways in which it is not in fact inevitable. Can you talk a little bit about Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, thought to be the last (or second to last) piece Euripides wrote in
exile before his death? What do you think he was trying to tell his Athenian audience back home? I understand it as a critique of how we arrive at choices. We make dreadful decisions and won’t back away from them, because we’re afraid; we hold the course (the Athenians continue to prosecute the Peloponnesian War), although it will only lead us to disaster. I think it’s also a warning about what we may have to give up to succeed—the best part of ourselves. Many believe the play bears the marks of other writers. Do you feel that as well? Do you think this is a product of it not being finished or a desire, on the part of adaptors, to soften the blow of Euripides’ critique of a warrior society? There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that this play is the work of Euripides, Euripides’ son or nephew, who completed it upon his death, and then at some point, a century later, someone Greek scholars call “The Reviser.” The Reviser might have been an actual person—perhaps an actor or manager of some kind, or maybe a group of actors—who did a lot of rewriting to increase the spectacle and the pathos, and very occasionally, to reduce the political sting. Additionally, as it’s copied and recopied throughout the centuries, little bits get muddled and made up. Because I can’t read the original Greek (making this, I relied on very close translations and detailed commentaries), I can’t pick up on changes in language, but I can feel out changes in tone and mentality. Scholars don’t agree on which parts of the work are interpolated, so I’ve used their comments as a starting point, and then used my playwright head in making my own judgments on what I think will make the best and sturdiest play. This version does include trims around soggier areas I feel are probably from The Reviser.
PHOTO: BEOWULF SHEEHAN
You've decided to follow many of the "rules" that the Greeks followed in productions. You've asked that all speaking roles be divided up amongst only three actors, which means each actor must play double or triple roles. How did you decide who would double as what, and what has this doubling or tripling taught you about Greek Theatre? I did [choose to follow the rules of the Greeks], but not because it was the Greek way of doing it. In working on the two adaptations, I feel like I’m always having to work on ways to counter the reverence and the related disinterest we bring to the plays, which hinders our understanding of the degree to which they remain fully functioning and effective theatrical vehicles. Orestes, especially, is a wild play full of all kinds of arch metatheatrical hijinks, but it just isn’t in us to think of the Greeks as playful in that way. So in making these adaptations, I’m always thinking of equivalencies, of ways to supply the lost quantity of theatrical oomph which we’re not going to credit the original as having. Multiple casting the roles does that. I divided up the roles according to the way they were done in the original, which is easy to intuit because it’s the only way to get everyone on and off stage at the right points. The original divisions are juicy ones; actors play characters who are in real tension with each other, so that Menelaus, who is gunning for Iphigenia to die, is played by the same actor who plays Clytemnestra, who wants nothing more than for her daughter to live. The actor who plays Iphigenia also plays the messenger who announces her death, and Agamemnon and Achilles are very much opposites: a consummate politician versus a man who is blunt to a fault.
Can you talk a little bit about the nature of translation and adaptation? Has this work impacted your own original work? If so, can you talk about how? I haven’t done so much of it. I think of it in the nature of an apprenticeship. You serve the original—and my goal is very much just to bring the original to life—by giving it the kind of rhythms and mouth feel that make it speakable for actors. In return, you get a much, much deeper understanding of a work you admire. Both this [Iphigenia in Aulis] and Orestes are, for the most part, line by line renderings of the originals. I will sometimes cut discussions or inferences which meant something to ancient audiences, but which I think are theatrical dead weight for this one. I will sometimes expand a thought if it seems necessary to tease out backstory or assumptions for our audiences. Every now and then I’ll indulge myself with an entirely new line or thought. The work on Orestes had a lot to do with the writing on another play of mine, Mr. Burns. I couldn’t say how exactly, apart from the fact that they both involved singing and dancing, but I know that the one informed and empowered the other. What is your translation?
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I would love to work on The Agamemnon. I’d like to work on The Seagull someday. There’s a wonderful contemporary Hungarian playwright, Peter Karpati, who has a play called Totferi, which is supposed to be untranslatable, which I’d really really like to take a whack at.
GIVING BODY TO DRAMA
A Conversation with Oresteia Conceiver & Director JONATHAN VANDENBERG point for this theatre project is, “What is a future tragic form?”
The Oresteia is an inexorable exploration of human nature and also a theological drama. It is the only surviving trilogy of Ancient Greece, though its satyr play is lost. There is an opportunity to ask, “What is indestructible here? What in this material has endured through time?” In your work there are images and soundscapes, but very little dialogue. Why are you interested in eschewing speech in your work?
PHOTO: PISA WAIKWAMDEE
What attracts you to the Greeks and specifically The Oresteia? In this work, we are always seeking a future theatre. For me, this is a universal theatre, capable of reaching anyone, regardless of culture, age, or language. In this research, it became necessary to return to the Ancient Greek poets, because their drama founded the Western tradition. Athenian tragedy is a point of origin from which we depart, charting our own evolving tradition, indifferent to literary conventions. Salvator Settis has written, “Rebirths feed off fragments of the past.” For a radical new theatre, we excavate its classical origins.
Ancient Greek drama also facilitates an exploration of tragedy, which is the most powerful art form I have encountered. Of course, today we cannot experience Athenian tragedy as it was conceived. The situation is quite different without the socio-political context, architecture, festival, etc. Our relationship to tragedy is also different. In our media-saturated age, this term has become Quotidian. But the potency and universality of the concept remains. So the starting
This work is not a comment on or interpretation of a pre-existing text. Instead, it aims to give body to a drama. A theatrical body: the production. It is a non-hierarchical theatre, wherein no single element dominates. This opens up theatre as an art capable of incorporating many different arts. So when we do utilize speech, its aural qualities may be as important as any literal meaning. Nevertheless, when a project’s source of inspiration is a text, such as with Oresteia, there is still a deep relationship to the original text. Its catalytic elements are used in the evolution of a new theatrical language. Theatre can venture beyond speech. An example is the prologue of our Oresteia, the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Due to her innocence, our Iphigenia is a child. Aeschylus’ chorus stops narrating when they reach Iphigenia’s death. They are at a loss for words. This is a good place for research to begin, “How can we represent what is unspeakable?” When working on this scene, we discovered that theatrical language could acknowledge its own limitations, and thus, transcend them. Agamemnon first pours a bottle of stage blood over the child’s head. It is only afterwards that he makes the killing gesture. This sacrifice is staged as simply as possible, accepting that we cannot do this scene literally. There is only the act. No more is necessary because there are no words for such a scene. How do you build a piece? Do you begin with a script or do you create the piece in rehearsal?
As much as possible is planned before rehearsal. This includes a script and design. There is often a developmental workshop to experiment in different directions. Rehearsal is a combustible process: the collision of abstract ideas with reality. The piece metamorphosizes and expands due to the work of the performers. It evolves again later, when the spectators are present. You gravitate toward using non-actors. Can you talk about casting—what are you looking for in an ensemble member? It’s true that there are modern acting and casting traditions that I deviate from. Performers must find a certain presence and also, stillness. There is no facade to hide behind, no illustration. So, I am skeptical of technique. I work with all kinds of performers, trained and untrained, experienced and inexperienced. All bodies deserve to be seen on stage. Performers may be cast because of their shape, gait, energy, the sound of their voice, etc. There is always a dramaturgical reason. More generally, a diverse group of bodies and backgrounds populates the world of the piece. This is a Greek idea, that there is a community on stage. Sometimes there is a particular need for a certain figure. In The Oresteia, Agamemnon is conquered rhetorically by Clytemnestra, who convinces him to walk on the tapestries. Our Agamemnon is a deaf actor. For him, speech is already problematized. He does not need to act an inability to speak. He was born deaf, so he has a completely organic relationship to gesture and his body because they are his native tools of communication. His movement is majestic.
better understand the physicalities of the ensemble, how each instinctively moves, what kind of gestures they make, their preferred tempo, and so forth. This is the beginning of a shared vocabulary that makes the rehearsal process possible. Sometimes, this brief, early research has an osmosis-like impact on the piece, directly or indirectly. I plan basic movements, but it’s not choreographed in the manner of, say, Robert Wilson. The movement is a skeletal foundation. Working with the performers, we always search for the simplest way possible. There are discoveries made. In truth, the performers’ work is a mystery to me. Introducing the soundscape is very delicate. The sound is developed concurrent to rehearsals. It must emerge from the world, rather than be grafted upon it like a soundtrack. Sound is usually introduced late. Otherwise, it subjugates the performers. What do you hope the audience walks away with after seeing this piece? Inevitably, this raises the question of catharsis, which is a very mysterious concept. What did it mean for an Ancient Greek audience? Is it possible today? In a larger sense, The Oresteia connects to the immensity of human experience, our power and our frailty. The events of the House of Atreus reverberate throughout its universe, such that we sense the end of an age and the birth pangs of a new, uncertain one. Each spectator will have his or her own understanding. The senses are impacted during the performance. The mental experience may occur then, or afterwards, in reflection.
Can you talk about your rehearsal process? At the very beginning, there are a few ensemble exercises. The performers make short, wordless pieces. This introduces working simply and austerely using one’s entire instrument. It also permits me to PHOTO: CAROL ROSEGG
Arete Foundation Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Nick & Julie Sakellariadis
GREEK FESTIVAL SUPPORTERS
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Special thanks to the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for supporting Classic Stage Company.
Marc Abrams Paul Blackman Justin Blake Walter Bobbie Mary Corson D. Rebecca Davies Denise Dickens Raymond DiPrinzio Steven L. Holley Brian Kulick Tony Kushner Barbara Marks Debra Mayer Marla Schuster Nissan Maeve O’Connor Nicola Christine Port Thomas A. Teeple
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Matthew J. Harrington Therese Steiner Rosemarie Tichler
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Lynn F. Angelson, CHAIR Kenneth G. Bartels, VICE CHAIR Edwin S. Maynard, VICE CHAIR Donald Francis Donovan, CHAIR EMERITUS
Jeff Griffin MANAGING DIRECTOR
Brian Kulick ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
August 10 - September 27, 2015 For tickets, visit classicstage.org or call 866-811-4111 • CSC Subscribers call 212-677-4210 x 11
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