Our lack of reliable information concerning the physical and choreographic aspects of ancient tragic performance permits modern writers to construct their own imaginative re-creations of the ancient text/body relationship in a wide variety of modes. The range of ways in which texts translated or adapted from ancient tragedy are capable of…[Read more]

The translation of ancient tragedy is often considered at a linguistic level, as if the drama consisted simply of words being written, spoken and heard. This article contends that translation for the stage is a process in which literary decisions have physical, as well as verbal, outcomes. It traces existing formulations concerning the links…[Read more]

Alice Oswald’s recitation of her 2011 poem Memorial is an intensely modest, self-effacing performance. Yet it is also one which invites us to consider key questions about the ancient practice, and modern re-performance, of epic poetry. Oswald explicitly cites the antiphonal lament of Homeric funerary ritual as an influence upon her r…[Read more]

Ted Hughes’ version of Euripides’ Alcestis (1999) is a play which diverges significantly from its ancient source-text, most notably in an interpolated sequence during which the drunken Heracles re-enacts his own labours, before experiencing traumatic visions. This article identifies this un-Euripidean interlude as a characteristic instance of int…[Read more]

This review-essay discusses George Brant’s play Grounded (2013) in the context of its production at the Gate Theatre (London). It begins with a critical examination of my own “mis-seeing” of the play’s protagonist as a version of the tragic Heracles. The analysis which follows compares key aspects of The Pilot’s narrative with Euripides’ Heracles…[Read more]