Live From 458 B.C., What the Greeks Mean to Me
June Samaras <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.education.classics |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <CA+zSR030D62sfPckPoVFru9EXENC5-maob-W=GUmJ985Gd38dg@mail.gmail.com> |
Live From 458 B.C., What the Greeks Mean to Me
A new adaptation of “The Oresteia” reminds us that a 2,400-year-old work
can still feel appallingly familiar.
Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of “The Oresteia,” at the Shakespeare Theater
Company in Washington, feels purpose-built for our moment.CreditScott
Suchman
Image
Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of “The Oresteia,” at the Shakespeare Theater
Company in Washington, feels purpose-built for our moment.CreditCreditScott
Suchman
[image: Jesse Green] <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fby%2Fjesse-green&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036923590&sdata=alRrwInqOENZ7ofFPbgKbOO5US7nImBDuAsCIw16M%2BU%3D&reserved=0>
By Jesse Green <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fby%2Fjesse-green&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036923590&sdata=alRrwInqOENZ7ofFPbgKbOO5US7nImBDuAsCIw16M%2BU%3D&reserved=0>
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F05%2F26%2Ftheater%2Foresteia-shakespeare-theater-company.html%3Fnl%3Dtodaysheadlines%26emc%3Dedit_th_190527&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036923590&sdata=7UjnmwPmg5auagjQCP1rATvnj8%2Fr8bYT8hwBCf5CcaY%3D&reserved=0
- May 26, 2019
-
-
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fdialog%2Ffeed%3Fapp_id%3D9869919170%26link%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2019%252F05%252F26%252Ftheater%252Foresteia-shakespeare-theater-company.html%26smid%3Dfb-share%26name%3DLive%2520From%2520458%2520B.C.%252C%2520What%2520the%2520Greeks%2520Mean%2520to%2520Me%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.facebook.com%252F&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036923590&sdata=AN9ngxKrPWZx1ySlPuBtNPxNqr%2F1Zq8U8Y5k8pDw2G8%3D&reserved=0>
-
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fintent%2Ftweet%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fnyti.ms%252F2JIUeCe%26text%3DLive%2520From%2520458%2520B.C.%252C%2520What%2520the%2520Greeks%2520Mean%2520to%2520Me&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=k0e6w1AWcJ%2FebX7qHRf1DFuZAmVqZDzElh6b%2Bky0OIE%3D&reserved=0>
-
<?subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20Live%20From%20458%20B.C.%2C%20What%20the%20Greeks%20Mean%20to%20Me&body=From%20The%20New%20York%20Times%3A%0A%0ALive%20From%20458%20B.C.%2C%20What%20the%20Greeks%20Mean%20to%20Me%0A%0AA%20new%20adaptation%20of%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Oresteia%E2%80%9D%20reminds%20us%20that%20a%202%2C400-year-old%20work%20can%20still%20feel%20appallingly%20familiar.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F05%2F26%2Ftheater%2Foresteia-shakespeare-theater-company.html>
-
-
- 2
Most of us don’t know our Euripides from our Eumenides, but it turns out
we’re living in a Greek moment anyway.
That’s true even on Broadway, though it hasn’t seen a classical Greek drama
since Fiona Shaw starred in “Medea” in 2002. But if the originals rarely
get commercial stagings, their descendants are everywhere this season,
packing an ancient yet topical punch and collecting Tony Award nominations.
Take “The Ferryman
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F10%2F21%2Ftheater%2Fthe-ferryman-review-broadway-jez-butterworth.html%3Fmodule%3Dinline&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=%2FoytKfax%2BFVPqU993XfxdpElwOUNwndIfi7TINebhNU%3D&reserved=0>,”
about the seemingly unending cycle of political violence in Northern
Ireland as it affects one family in 1981.
Or “To Kill a Mockingbird
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F12%2F13%2Ftheater%2Fto-kill-a-mockingbird-review-jeff-daniels.html%3Fmodule%3Dinline&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=RTJpZch0pdKGZ7jN%2FoIujQh5pUb5586aTut0QjK7U3c%3D&reserved=0>,”
in which a Jim Crow-era jury in a trumped-up rape case makes a judgment
without finding justice.
Or even “What the Constitution Means to Me
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F03%2F31%2Ftheater%2Fwhat-the-constitution-means-to-me-review.html%3Fmodule%3Dinline&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=4aK8qKjtzIQ1GnLBn%2FLsptoua6P0meVIZy2qFi4KVpo%3D&reserved=0>,”
which asks whether we can muster the free will to correct the faults in our
foundational legal document.
It’s a pretty straight line from these three dramas to the great Greek
works, which hammer at themes of justice, fate and vengeance as played out
in bloody multigenerational feuds.
- You have 4 free articles remaining.
Subscribe to The Times
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%3FcampaignId%3D7UU8U&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=kzpCXCIkX2WkAw6F9zJIQ8uP0J44bhegbKLs5Y61F4I%3D&reserved=0>
That connection became especially clear to me earlier this month at the
Shakespeare Theater Company <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shakespearetheatre.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=JzracbAFnh8FTmdjp63BcUiPXQGKuFloQO%2FQJ%2BvoVV4%3D&reserved=0> in
Washington. There, halfway between the White House and the Capitol, I
caught Ellen McLaughlin <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ellenmmclaughlin.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=WPXsfad%2BzLLwWbDpfUqbYtFwg0x7zTjWN5zLNm6ULUY%3D&reserved=0>’s adaptation of
“The Oresteia” in a blistering production directed by Michael Kahn
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shakespearetheatre.org%2Fabout%2Fpeople%2Fartistic-director%2F&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=keZMCBROiFzg08oKaJjVM9lbmZUYbrlnIN%2F0Y0o95HA%3D&reserved=0>.
Zoë Sophia Garcia as Cassandra in “The Oresteia.”CreditScott Suchman.
Image
Zoë Sophia Garcia as Cassandra in “The Oresteia.”CreditScott Suchman.
Ms. McLaughlin has adapted many Greek dramas — “The Persians
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2003%2F06%2F11%2Ftheater%2Ftheater-review-empire-and-the-pride-before-a-fall.html%3Fmodule%3Dinline&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=lkzGQG3jbok4KZNyUDdE3nebtin97qFKPxdcw7OHVaU%3D&reserved=0>,”
“Iphigenia in Aulis” and “The Trojan Women
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F09%2F02%2Ftheater%2Ftrojan-women-review.html%3Fmodule%3Dinline&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=T9RS1P2HvPsD6bYIaAKmx2TONs5sxl2qhE3cnOiLukU%3D&reserved=0>”
among them — but perhaps “adaptation” isn’t the right word for her
“Oresteia,” which feels so new. Though it is faithful in many ways to the
Aeschylus trilogy, especially in the bare facts of the main plot, it slowly
reveals itself to be purpose-built for our moment, addressing eternal
issues from a radically different perspective.
“This is not an ‘Oresteia’ for classicists,” Ms. McLaughlin — a playwright,
actor and old friend from college — told me later in New York.
She was understating. For one thing, her version, which runs through June
2, is a swift two hours and 20 minutes instead of the dawn-to-dusk event it
would have been back in the day. (She estimates that the three plays lasted
three hours each, with breaks and a now-lost satyr play
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apgrd.ox.ac.uk%2Fancient-performance%2Fperformance%2F147&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=kYQOSL0cQlV47Fm6GVa4%2BQO4hIrJ5s1zUcy0MjyLglQ%3D&reserved=0> filling out
the run time.) Her version is also performed unmasked.
But those are superficial alterations. To understand how powerfully urgent
this new telling is, and how it speaks to our time in a different voice,
you have to look to the reasons Aeschylus wrote his version and Ms.
McLaughlin wrote hers.
There weren’t Tonys back then, but Aeschylus did win first prize for “The
Oresteia” at the <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Ftopic%2FGreat-Dionysia&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=bcRjz5cTFLNuBJDKuJ3LCdQb9I2IQglFP4Y7VE3q%2Bug%3D&reserved=0>Dionysia
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Ftopic%2FGreat-Dionysia&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=bcRjz5cTFLNuBJDKuJ3LCdQb9I2IQglFP4Y7VE3q%2Bug%3D&reserved=0> dramatic competition in
458 B.C. (According to some sources, Sophocles came in second.) The
Dionysia was fundamentally a religious festival, and there’s no reason to
think the playwright was anything but a man of literal faith in the gods.
In his version of the Orestes tale, the immortals play a crucial role, both
inciting the tragedy and trying to corral it.
Humans are their pawns. The goddess Artemis basically blackmails Agamemnon,
who insulted her, into sacrificing his daughter as expiation. In turn, his
wife, Clytemnestra, kills him; their son Orestes, egged on by Apollo, kills
her; and the vengeful Furies drive Orestes mad.
It’s only then, near the end of the third play, that Athena enters with a
novel proposition. Instead of further killings, she suggests, why not have
a trial? Let a jury of humans — men, that is — decide human fate.
Aeschylus, writing at the start of the Greek Classical Age, was describing
what he saw as the recent emergence of organized justice from the spilled
guts of vendetta. Though officially a tragedy, his “Oresteia,” in that
sense, has a happy ending.
Editors’ PicksLiving With Lyme Disease, Stronger With Love
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F05%2F24%2Ffashion%2F24VOWS-Sonoma.html%3Ffallback%3D0%26recId%3D1LpZ6EsN52FFCAgIpP4SgNkjmsV%26locked%3D0%26geoContinent%3DNA%26geoRegion%3DON%26recAlloc%3Dstory%26geoCountry%3DCA%26blockId%3Dhome-featured%26imp_id%3D539630333&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=oojGWpJeuf65KMKWZQ%2BKjGaNQhpanGjT5fVRHQGoAC8%3D&reserved=0>The
Legend of the Ridiculously Long Montauk Bathroom Line
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F05%2F24%2Fnyregion%2Fmontauk-surf-lodge-bathrooms.html%3Ffallback%3D0%26recId%3D1LpZ6EsN52FFCAgIpP4SgNkjmsV%26locked%3D0%26geoContinent%3DNA%26geoRegion%3DON%26recAlloc%3Dstory%26geoCountry%3DCA%26blockId%3Dhome-featured%26imp_id%3D929219858&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=MWmDzlMoLccgIACjy7H0GSw%2B6AYtw8wYdNtz6042mb0%3D&reserved=0>I
Can’t Hate My Body if I Love Hers
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F05%2F24%2Fstyle%2Fmodern-love-college-cant-hate-my-body-if-i-love-hers.html%3Ffallback%3D0%26recId%3D1LpZ6EsN52FFCAgIpP4SgNkjmsV%26locked%3D0%26geoContinent%3DNA%26geoRegion%3DON%26recAlloc%3Dstory%26geoCountry%3DCA%26blockId%3Dhome-featured%26imp_id%3D35350135&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036933590&sdata=jySgC5QnzeZOP65L79nPUpYkO%2Bzcgi25q2BT92FFOE8%3D&reserved=0>
Not for Ms. McLaughlin. “I couldn’t have the triumph of the patriarchy be
the happy ending,” she said.
Josiah Bania, left, and Rad Pereira in the play.CreditScott Suchman.
Image
Josiah Bania, left, and Rad Pereira in the play.CreditScott Suchman.
Nor could she endorse a conclusion in which people are ineffectual in
shaping their fate: Orestes is spared only when Athena breaks the jury’s
deadlock. Especially after the election of President Trump, she found
herself “stumped” as she tried to resist the play’s implicit passivity.
Most of the changes she had been making in the first two acts were to
unclutter the story and focus attention, without anachronism, on the way
the text speaks to contemporary cycles of tribal bloodshed.
But Mr. Kahn, who has been the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theater
since 1986, urged her to move further from the source to find a satisfying
ending that also implied a solution. So Ms. McLaughlin asked herself: When
have people ever done the right thing in the aftermath of terrible violence?
When a friend suggested South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2003%2F03%2F22%2Fworld%2Fsouth-african-commission-ends-its-work.html%3Fmodule%3Dinline&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036943584&sdata=Oi1VPZ005EzJLqdJfvlPUYQyKJgB7C5FDXPi28vd8Cg%3D&reserved=0>
as
a model, she had her answer.
The commission, she explained, “was based on the idea of gathering the
perpetrators and the victims of apartheid in one place, promising nothing
but that they would listen to one another — which is also the fundamental
proposition of theater.”
Sign up for the Theater Update Newsletter
Every week, stay on top of the top-grossing Broadway shows, recent reviews,
Critics’ Picks and more.
SIGN UP
So, in her version of “The Oresteia,” the gods are gone entirely — an
amusing twist from a woman who began her career playing the Angel in
“Angels in America.” <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsGSETCmLOYw&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036943584&sdata=BX%2FgcH344DxFlGJp7x8%2FVmyIEclgko%2FGgRsiD1CI%2BvA%3D&reserved=0> The only
Furies are the ones inside people’s troubled minds. And instead of
different choruses for each act, hers, from the start, are the domestic
workers of the House of Atreus, cleaning up their masters’ messes. That
they now have Orestes’ fate in their hands is a wonderful irony: “as if
Trump were on trial,” Ms. McLaughlin says, “and women who worked in his
hotels were the jury.”
But first this jury must accept its charge. Some, too stunned by the
realization that “this is where we live now,” don’t; others are implacable
on one side or the other. Nevertheless, deciding that to give up would be
to “abandon themselves,” the chorus members proceed.
The long, polyphonic scene in which they work out the human meaning of
justice is the moving culmination of a play in which words have mostly been
weapons.
But if their work is the beginning of something new, it is also something
vulnerable; Ms. McLaughlin leaves the jury hung, with no Athena to
intervene. Still, in a haunting final gesture, she and Mr. Kahn suggest
that where justice cannot be determined with certainty, there can still be
mercy, which may be the same thing.
The same issues are still in play in the current theatrical season. “The
Ferryman” has the true Aeschylean tone, almost wallowing in the way
violence tells an archetypal human story. But plays like “Mockingbird” seem
to pick up the struggle right where Ms. McLaughlin leaves it, arguing that
failures of fairness do not give us permission to stop trying.
“What the Constitution Means to Me” likewise pushes back against blind
adherence to gods — or laws, as we now call them — that ultimately leave
many of us bereft of their protections.
All of these new plays are asking variations on the questions most
piercingly dramatized in this “Oresteia”: In the absence of gods, how do we
make our own justice? In the absence of gods, how do we make ourselves
human?
The Oresteia
Through June 2 at Shakespeare Theater Company, Washington; 202-547-1122,
shakespearetheatre.org
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shakespearetheatre.org%2Fevents%2Foresteia-18-19%2F%23&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cf1efb4346f8e4ad178fc08d6e2dde713%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636945840036943584&sdata=CnlhsuiGm4raWjqQ0XJu1b9tA0EmhiWme60JJRlQByA%3D&reserved=0>. Running time:
2 hours 20 minutes.
--
June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : [email protected]