What Chorus? Using Performance to Appreciate the Chorus of Menander’s Dyskolos
By Emmanuel Aprilakis
The history of the dramatic chorus is one of decline in both capacity and centrality, and the altered position of the chorus has been labeled a most noticeable differences between Old and New Comedy (Maidment 1935; Csapo/Slater 1995). That we have no choral odes of Menander, whether because they were considered unworthy of publication or simply never existed, is an indubitable testament to the decline of the chorus apparent late in the fourth century.
Burning Down the Fifth-Century Stage
By Daniel Anderson
In this talk, I look at specific evidence for the staging of the final scene of Clouds II, and discuss interpretative implications of possible stagings. There is now a significant body of scholarship arguing that Clouds II was written in order to be staged (Revermann 2006: 326-32, Biles 2011: 167-210, Marshall 2012), and there has been important work on staging of the final scene in particular (Kopff 1977, Harvey 1981, Revermann 2006: 224-6).
Prometheus Bound in a Sicilian Performance Context
By Colleen Kron
The Prometheus Bound presents many scholarly entanglements regarding its textual transmission and performance history. Issues of authorship, date, and staging have plagued larger questions of interpretation and meaning for this play. Griffith especially (1976, 1978, 1983, & 1984) has suggested that several peculiarities of Prometheus Bound indicate that this work was not, in fact, composed by Aeschylus. This argument is echoed by Taplin (1977, 1978, & 2007), Ruffell (2012), and Sommerstein (1996).
The Performance of Ezekiel’s Exagoge Re-Addressed
By Jonathan MacLellan
The seventeen fragments of Ezekiel’s Exagoge, a Hellenistic tragedy written by a Jewish author whose plot is lifted from the translated Book of Exodus, present several problems with respect to the play’s performance.