Research Catalog

Title

Reimagining Greek tragedy on the American stage / Helene P. Foley.

Author

Foley, Helene P., 1942-

Publication

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, [2012]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 375 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

This book explores the emergence of Greek tragedy on the American stage from the nineteenth century to the present. Despite the gap separating the world of classical Greece from our own, Greek tragedy has provided a fertile source for some of the most innovative American theater. Helene P. Foley shows how plays like Oedipus Rex and Medea have resonated deeply with contemporary concerns and controversies-over war, slavery, race, the status of women, religion, identity, and immigration. Although Greek tragedy was often initially embraced for its melodramatic possibilities, by the twentieth century it became a vehicle not only for major developments in the history of American theater and dance, but also for exploring critical tensions in American cultural and political life.

Series Statement

Sather classical lectures ; v. 70

Uniform Title

Sather classical lectures ; v. 70.

Subjects

• Greek drama > History and criticism
• Theater > United States > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-361) and index.

Contents

Greek tragedy finds an American audience: Setting the stage ; American theater makes Greek tragedy its own -- Making total theater in Americ : choreography and music: Hellenic influences on the development of American modern dance ; American Gesamtkunstwerke ; Musical theater ; Visual choreography in Robert Wilson's Alcestis -- Democratizing Greek tragedy: Antigone and politics in the nineteenth century : the Boston 1890 Antigone ; Performance groups in the 1960s-1970s : Brecht's Antigone by the living theatre ; The 1980s and beyond : Peter Sellars' Persians, Ajax, and Children of Heracles ; Aeschylus' Prometheus bound in the U.S. : from the threat of apocalypse to communal reconciliation -- Re-envisioning the hero : American Oedipus:- Oedipus as scapegoat ; Plagues ; Theban cycles ; Deconstructing fatality ; Abandonment -- Re-imagining Medea as American other: Setting the stage : nineteenth century Medea ; Medea as social critic from the mid-1930s-the late 1940s ; Medea as ethnic other from the 1970s-the present ; Medea's divided self : drag and cross dressed performances -- Epilogue -- Appendixes.

Call Number

MWED 13-5098

ISBN

• 9780520272446 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0520272447 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

2012000823

OCLC

772528320

Author

Foley, Helene P., 1942- author.

Title

Reimagining Greek tragedy on the American stage / Helene P. Foley.

Publisher

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, [2012]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Sather classical lectures ; v. 70

Sather classical lectures ; v. 70.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-361) and index.

Research Call Number

MWED 13-5098