Medea on the Contemporary Stage and Screen
In recent years, the afterlives of Greek tragedy have received special attention in the rapidly expanding field of classical reception studies. With reincarnations ranging from Japanese Noh theater to the Mexican screen, Euripides’ Medea is now more than ever a truly global “classic.” The time is ripe for dedicated focus on Medea and its traditions in contemporary theater and film.
The panel organizers (Zina Giannopoulou, University of California, Irvine; Jesse Weiner, Hamilton College) invite proposals for papers on receptions of Euripides’ Medea on the contemporary stage and screen, to be presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. The conference will take place Nov. 9-11, 2018 at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. Questions papers might address include but are not limited to:
- Medea assumes many roles in Euripides’ play, from abject suppliant to dea ex machina. How do recent adaptations of Medea portray Medea’s inherent theatricality?
- How have different translations of Medea affected the performance of the play?
- How have late 20th and 21st century stagings of Medea departed from previous models and trends?
- How have non-Western dramatic traditions (for example Japanese Noh) adapted Medea and how might they inflect our readings of their classical source text?
- How have recent dramatic productions of Medea staged or rewritten the infanticide?
- How have recent Medeas on stage and screen engaged with social and institutional hierarchies, including (but not limited to) issues of race, class, gender, nationality, and citizenship, and how have these issues and identities intersected with one another?
Paper proposals must be submitted through PAMLA’s online submission platform by May 30, 2018. Please contact the session organizers, Zina Giannopoulou (zgiannop@uci.edu) and Jesse Weiner (jweiner@hamilton.edu) with any questions.
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(Photo: "Handwritten" by A. Birkan, licensed under CC BY 2.0)
