New Approaches to Spectatorship

When the Romans incorporated the Mater Deum Magna Idaea into Roman civic religion in 204 BCE, they deliberately introduced theater games into her public festival, the Megalensia. During these games, the audience experienced the play not only as a theatrical event, but also as a form of religious communion.

“More than most plays, the Ecclesiazusae negotiates the conditions of its own reception with its audience” (Slater 1997:96). In this talk I explore this proposition in a fresh way combining performance studies with a cognitive approach drawing on “Theory of Mind” and George Butte’s concept of “deep intersubjectivity” (2004; 2017).

Is the eponymous hero of Oedipus at Colonus ugly — and if so, what makes him appear as such? This paper studies how Sophocles’ final play frames the theatrical spectatorship of its protagonist in order to underscore the drama’s central thematic concerns.