Dramaturgy for Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus · Dramaturgy for Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus ....

Dramaturgy for Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

translated by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (1856)

with annotations by Dr. Clara Drummond

compiled by Fly Steffens, Dramaturg

MFA Generative Dramaturgy Protocol Sample

University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film, & Television

Table of Contents

Note from the Dramaturg

Background Page 4

Aeschylus: from Critical Surveys of Literature: Critical Survey of Drama

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning: from Great Lives from History: The 19th Century

Select Production History Page 15

Timeline

Articles / Reviews

Suggested Critical Reading and Supplemental Resources Page 38

Texts available in Rehearsal Dramaturgy Library

Digital Resources

Contemporary Comparisons

Prometheus Bound: the text Page 40

Barrett Browning’s Preface to the 1833 Barrett Browning Translation

Scene Breakdown

Annotated Text: compiled by Clara Drummond

Additional Glossary and Pronunciation: Marianne McDonald

Cut Recommendation Sample

Note from the Dramaturg: Basic Protocol? When I began research for a pseudo-production of Prometheus Bound, I began my search

by solely looking for an engaging and lyrical translation. Among the thirty-plus translations and

adaptations, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 1856 translation possesses a unique lyricism I find

incredibly compelling. However, after the buoyant joy associated with finding the perfect play, I

soon was drowning in Classical scholarship, endless literary commentary, stale summations

of Greek Theatre practices, and sore arms and eyes from carrying books or boring through

obscure digital articles. I am a graduate student in their late twenties who has no experience

as a dramaturg on a Greek play; surely to understand it I need digest the thousands of years of

lineage that leads me to this moment in the first place.

Normally when I begin work on play, I do a Fuchsian close read ((see EF’s Visit to a

Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play). This tends to reveal the tautological rules and

realities – meta/physical, emotional, cultural, of the world of Prometheus Bound; such a singular

observation may help free a company from the burden of the entirety of all theatre history. What

is our – relationship to the text, now, as a group of people, in this moment? What’s going on in

this play? How do we feel about it? What is so?

The following dramaturgical materials take little of these questions into account. Instead,

they are basic and rudimentary outlines toward a conventional protocol based in historicism and

restricted by crippling precedent – by what we, what I, have been potentially conditioned to think

we need to understand and execute a Greek Tragedy in conventional theatre education and

practice. In reviewing these materials, I do not find them to be unhelpful or irrelevant, but in no

way do these materials provide a better understanding of the play.

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I am no Prometheus – my capacity as a dramaturg is not oracular nor all-knowing – but

this process has lead me to my own set questions: questions for dramaturgs working on a Greek

Tragedy. When I asked them of myself and my peers, I found that my approach to this task had

been quite misguided. If I had begun my approach into the text with these questions instead of

attempting to digest the origins of Western Theatre into something as meaningful, lyrical, and

evocative as Barrett Browning’s brilliant translation, the following materials would look very

different. Here they are:

1. What do you know about Greek Theatre?

2. When is the last time you saw a production of a Greek Play?

a. Where was it?

b. How was it staged?

c. Did you like it? Why or why not?

3. Do you prefer reading or seeing Greek Plays? Why?

4. Do you find Greek Plays difficult to understand? Why or why not?

a. What would help you to understand them?

b. Does your previous exposure to Greek Plays help you? Why or why not?

5. Do you find Greek Plays difficult to enjoy? Why or why not?

a. What would help you to enjoy them?

6. What do you think a director needs from a dramaturg to successfully stage a Greek Play?

a. An Actor?

b. A designer?

7. What does it mean to successfully stage a Greek Play?

8. What is your opinion on Greek Choruses?

a. What is successful about them? Why?

b. What do you wish was different, if anything? Why?

9. What are the benefits and consequences of removing significant context from a text, such as

historical, geographical, cultural, political, or mythological references?

10. In Prometheus Bound, there is very little physical action paired with extensive monologues.

How does this play need to be produced to stay engaging, if it isn’t already?

11. Do you think Greek Theatre is relevant to a contemporary audience? Why or why not?

a. Should it be? Why or why not?

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Perhaps I was unknowingly drawn to Barrett Browning’s translation as we are kindred

spirits in a way. In 1833 she finished her first translation of the text in just two short weeks;

subsequently Barrett Browning was horrified and disappointed at how little heart and poetry she

found in the technically perfect translation. Twenty-three years later she published her revisions,

caring not about precision of meter and definition but more on gesture, sense, and affect – she

wanted to create something that communicated to others the incredible sensation brought on by

reading Aeschylus’ original text in Greek. Though I may have little material to show for it, this

process has affirmed my instinct that pursuit of dramaturgy is borne within the heart. The

technical practice of dramaturgy is certainly useful and necessary in the creation of a production,

just as Barrett Browning required the ability to basically translate text from one language into

another. Prometheus gave humankind more than just fire; he stirred within humankind a fire of

passion. More than just science; art.

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Background

Aeschylus

Excerpts from Critical Surveys of Literature: Critical Survey of Drama

Biography

The life of Aeschylus can be pieced together from ancient sources, especially from

several biographies that survive in the manuscript tradition that are probably derived from an

Alexandrian volume of biographies, perhaps by Chamaeloon. Aeschylus was born in about 525-

524 B.C.E. in the Attic town of Eleusis. His father, Euphorion, was a Eupatrid (an aristocrat) and

probably very wealthy. As a youth, Aeschylus witnessed the fall of Pisistratid tyranny in Athens

and the beginnings of Athenian democracy, and he later lived through the Persian invasions of

mainland Greece in 490 and 480 B.C.E. He is said to have fought at Marathon in 490, where he

lost a brother, Cynegirus, and at Salamis in 480. Aeschylus's description in The Persians of the

great sea battle of Salamis suggests that he was an eyewitness. Ancient reports that Aeschylus

also fought in other battles of the Persian Wars, including Artemisium in 480 and Plataea in 479,

are more doubtful. Aeschylus's well-known patriotism may have led to the tradition of his being

involved in all these battles. Aesychlus lived in an age not only of the citizen-soldier but also of

nationalistic and political poetry, and allusions to contemporary issues can be found in

Aeschylus's plays.

[…] Aeschylus's dramatic career probably began very early in the fifth

century B.C.E. with his first dramatic production at the Greater Dionysia between 499 and 496.

His first tragic victory, for unknown plays, was won in 484, and he earned at least twelve more

victories in his lifetime and several more posthumously. […] [Aeschylus] lost in the Greater

Dionysia of [468 B.C.E] to Sophocles, who won his first tragic victory. In the next year,

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however, Aeschylus was victorious with Laius, Oedipus, and the extant Seven Against Thebes, a

tragic group often called Aeschylus's Theban trilogy. Evidence suggests that Aeschylus produced

his Danaid trilogy, including the extant The Suppliants and the lost Egyptians and Danaids, in

463, when he was victorious over Sophocles. This trilogy was formerly dated on stylistic

grounds as early as 490, but subsequently discovered evidence has caused scholars to revise their

conclusions about Aeschylus's dramatic development and about the evolution of Greek tragedy

in general. Aeschylus's surviving trilogy, the Oresteia, was produced in Athens in 458 B.C.E. and

was followed shortly by the poet's second trip to Gela, where he died and was buried in 456-455.

[…] Aeschylus had at least two sons, Euaeon and Euphorion, both of whom wrote

tragedies. In 431 B.C.E., Euphorion defeated Sophocles as well as Euripides, who produced

his Mēdeia (Medea, 1781) in that year. Aeschylus's nephew Philocles was also a tragedian;

according to an ancient hypothesis (an introductory note providing information about the play) to

Sophocles’ Oidipous Tyrannos (c. 429 B.C.E.; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715), one of Philocles’

productions was even considered better than Sophocles’ play.

Achievements

The earliest of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work is extant, Aeschylus made

major contributions to the development of fifth century B.C.E. Athenian tragedy. According to

Aristotle’s De poetica (c. 334-323 B.C.E.; Poetics, 1705), it was Aeschylus who “first introduced

a second actor to tragedy and lessened the role of the chorus and made dialogue take the lead.”

This innovation marks a principal stage in the evolution of Greek tragedy, for although one actor

could interact with the chorus, the addition by Aeschylus of a second actor made possible the

great dramatic agons, or debates between actors, for which Greek tragedy is noted.

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Aeschylus also is the probable inventor of the connected trilogy/tetralogy. Before

Aeschylus, the three tragedies and one Satyr play that traditionally constituted a tragic

production at the festival of the Greater Dionysia in Athens were unconnected in theme and plot,

and Aeschylus's earliest extant play, The Persians, was not linked with the other plays in its

group. All the other surviving plays of Aeschylus were almost certainly part of connected

groups, although the Oresteia, composed of the extant Agamemnon, Libation Bearers,

and Eumenides, is the only connected tragic trilogy that survived intact. However, the loss of

the Oresteia’s satyr play, Proteus, makes observations on Aeschylus's use of connected

tetralogies (three tragedies and one satyr play) nearly impossible. In fact, there is no certain

evidence that Aeschylus always used the connected group in his later productions, and imitations

of this dramatic form by other fifth century B.C.E. playwrights are not firmly documented. The

triadic form of the Oresteia, however, has certainly had a great influence on the development of

modern dramatic trilogies.

Aeschylus's brilliant use of the chorus as protagonist in The Suppliants may have been

another significant innovation. Until the discovery in 1952 of a papyrus text, this play was

universally considered the earliest surviving Greek tragedy, and the central place of the chorus of

Danaids was thought to reflect the choral role of early tragedy. As a result of the play's revised

dating to 463 B.C.E., The Suppliants’ chorus is now viewed as demonstrating a deliberate

attempt to make the chorus a part of the action of the tragedy. Certainly, the chorus of The

Suppliants is the earliest known example of a Greek tragic chorus, traditionally nondramatic

and reflective, transformed into a significant dramatic participant. Although later dramatists

rarely borrowed this choral technique, The Suppliants’ chorus underscores Aeschylus's

originality and experimentation in the development of Greek tragedy.

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[…] Perhaps because of the difficulty of Aeschylus's poetic language, which is generally

indirect and metaphoric, Aeschylus's extant corpus has not been as directly influential as the

works of Sophocles and Euripides have been on the history of tragedy since the Renaissance.

Nevertheless, Aeschylus is recognized today as a brilliant dramatist whose contributions to the

fifth century B.C.E.Athenian theater have made him a “father of Western tragedy.”

Analysis

Despite the fifth century B.C.E. Athenian political and religious issues that are diffused

more often in Aeschylus's tragedies than in those of Sophocles and Euripides and that demand

some historical explanation for the modern reader, the plays of Aeschylus still possess that

timeless quality of thought and form that is the hallmark of classical Greek literature and that has

made the themes of Aeschylean drama forever contemporary. Although Aeschylus's intense

Athenian patriotism and probable support for Periclean democratic reforms is fairly well

documented in his biographical sources and is reinforced by the dramatic evidence, it is his

attention to theological and ethical issues and especially to the connection between Zeus and

justice and to the rules governing relationships among humans and between humanity and

divinity that provide a central focus for his tragedies. It cannot be a coincidence that all seven

extant tragedies, while less than one-twelfth of his total corpus, reflect a constant Aeschylean

concern with the theme of human suffering and its causes. Again and again, the plays of

Aeschylus suggest that human suffering is divine punishment caused by human transgressions

and that people bring on themselves their own sorrows by overstepping their human bounds

through hybris, hubris or excessive pride. At the same time, the role of the gods, and especially

of Zeus, in this sequence of human action and human suffering is of particular interest to

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Aeschylus, whose plays seek in Zeus a source of justice and of fair retribution despite the

vagaries of an apparently unjust world.

Prometheus Bound

Prometheus Bound, the seventh play in Aeschylus's manuscript tradition, cannot be

firmly dated and contains so many problems and idiosyncrasies of meter, languages, staging, and

structure that a large number of modern scholars have come to question Aeschylean authorship.

The arguments on both sides of the authorship debate have been thoroughly discussed by C. J.

Herington in The Author of the “Prometheus Bound” (1970) and by M. Griffith in The

Authenticity of “Prometheus Bound” (1977), and the debate has remained a stalemate. If this

play was written by Aeschylus, it must have been written toward the end of Aeschylus's lifetime,

probably after 460, and may have been part of a connected trilogy including the lost Prometheus

Lyomenos (unbound) and Prometheus Pyrphoros (fire-bearer).

Sienkewicz, Thomas J. "Aeschylus." Critical Surveys of Literature: Critical Survey of Drama,

edited by Carl Rollyson, Salem Press, 2003. Credo Reference.

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Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

Excerpts from Great Lives from History: The 19th Century

Biography

Elizabeth Barrett was the eldest of the eleven children of Edward Moulton Barrett and

Mary Graham Clarke. She grew up at Hope End, a large country house in Herefordshire. Both

parents, but especially her father, encouraged her to read widely; unlike most privileged girls of

her time, she was allowed free use of her father’s library and shared her brothers’ classical

tuition. Her father arranged for her epic poem The Battle of Marathon (1820) to be privately

published when she was fourteen.

In 1821 Elizabeth suffered a severe but unexplained illness that affected her spine and

lungs and left her a semi-invalid for the rest of her life. During the 1830’s, she produced her first

successful poetry: The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838) was well received and gained its

author considerable notice. At about the same time, her health broke down, and she traveled from

London to the milder climate of Torquay to recover. During her convalescence, she begged her

favorite brother Edward (“Bro”) to visit her in Torquay; while there, he drowned on a sailing

excursion. Elizabeth’s grief and guilt were so overwhelming that for the rest of her life she could

never speak or write of the event.

Somewhat recovered but still very much an invalid, Elizabeth returned to London in 1841

and plunged into literary work. In 1844 her popular two-volume Poems appeared. One poem in

this collection, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” referred favorably to the work of then little-known

poet Robert Browning. He wrote to thank her, and they began a correspondence that led to their

first meeting four months later. For over a year they wrote to each other daily (sometimes twice

daily). Elizabeth’s father had forbidden any of his children to marry, so Elizabeth and Robert

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married secretly and left for Italy in 1846. They settled in Florence, in Casa Guidi, where their

son Pen was born in 1849 and where they lived for the rest of Elizabeth’s life.

Life’s Work

During the 1840’s and 1850’s, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s major works appeared, and

her poetic reputation reached its height. Her 1844 Poems contain multiple voices, styles, and

subjects. She experiments boldly with form, especially half-rhymes, metrical irregularities,

neologisms, compound words, and lacunae. These experiments at once pleased, intrigued,

infuriated, and disturbed her contemporary readers. More recently, they have been seen (by

Virginia Woolf and others) as formative influences on later poets and harbingers of literary

modernism.

In 1850 Browning published a collection of her poetry, including the 1844 poems plus

some new material such as the famous Sonnets from the Portuguese, written secretly to her

husband during their courtship. These poems are by far her best known, less for any intrinsic

artistic excellence than for their abiding romantic and psychological portrait of developing love.

They trace the emotional state of the poet—a thirty-nine-year-old invalid wooed by a younger

man—from surprise, reluctance, and confusion to passion, trust, and hope for the future.

In addition to the sonnets, the 1850 Poems includes two poems focused on social issues. “The

Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” is an impassioned first-person poem in which a slave murders

her own child, who was conceived as a result of rape by her white master. “The Cry of the

Children” protests the inhumane conditions for child laborers in British coal mines and factories.

Not only did these poems provoke a powerful response from socially conscious readers, but they

also anticipated the overtly political concerns of Browning’s next book of poetry.

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Browning’s next book, Casa Guidi Windows (1851), revealed her interest in the politics

of the Italian Risorgimento. Casa Guidi Windows is “A Poem, in Two Parts,” the first written in

1848 and filled with the optimism attendant upon the abortive Italian revolution of that year. Part

2 was written in 1851 after the crushing defeat of the patriots at Novara in 1849 and is decidedly

more pessimistic. The poem’s confident approach is noteworthy, particularly because it was

unusual in Browning’s time for a woman poet to venture onto political terrain, which was

considered reserved for men. Casa Guidi Windows is written in a modified terza rima, and some

of its vivid ironic characterizations are reminiscent of Robert Browning’s poetry and have led

critics to assume that Elizabeth was influenced by her husband.

Throughout the 1850’s, Elizabeth and Robert traveled widely in Europe and visited

England three times, in 1851, 1855, and 1856. Upon their return to Italy after the last trip,

Browning, after ten years of work, published what she and generations of readers after her have

considered to be her masterpiece, Aurora Leigh (1857). Aurora Leigh is a novel in verse, an epic

poem in nine books inspired in part by the novels of George Sand and Charlotte Brontë but also

by the long, reflective Prelude (1850) of William Wordsworth. It tells the story of the

eponymous poet-heroine Aurora Leigh, her lover-cousin Romney Leigh, and their turbulent and

finally successful romance.

Aurora Leigh is described as a successful but lonely and dissatisfied poet. Early in the

poem she rejects the marriage proposal of her cousin Romney, a dedicated philanthropist. At that

point in the story, Romney is simply too overbearing for the self-consciously feminist Aurora,

who believes that human betterment must come through individual inspiration; Romney, by

contrast, believes in organized progress by and for large groups of people. Aurora secludes

herself and writes, while Romney embarks on several idealistic but hare-brained schemes (such

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as building a phalanstery on his ancestral estate and proposing marriage to a poor seamstress).

After Romney’s plans fail—the poor people he has installed in the phalanstery burn it down, he

is blinded in the fire, and his intended wife is tricked into prostitution—he and Aurora can finally

get together. The poem ends with their marriage, as Romney realizes that social betterment must

involve the soul as well as the body and Aurora realizes that a true artist must not separate

herself utterly from the world she hopes to influence. Ironically, for all its stated concern for the

poor, Aurora Leigh’s “moral” is a conservative one: The “mob” is to be feared, and poetry makes

a greater impact on society than philanthropic activities.

Aurora Leigh contains Browning’s highest convictions on life and art, particularly the

responsibilities of the poet. She believed fervently that a poet must bear truthful witness to the

values of her society, must “represent the age” and never “flinch from modern varnish, coat, or

flounce.” Thus her most poignant critique of both Aurora and Romney is that they are overly

theoretical. Aurora chides Romney that his “social theory” is a better wife to him than she could

ever be; she little realizes how greatly she herself is “wedded” to poetic theories.

In Aurora Leigh, Browning comes closest to integrating the idea “woman” with the idea

“poet.” In an important sense, it is about being or becoming a poet in a world that imagines the

poet as male. By positioning herself at the center of her own story, the poet Aurora disrupts

objectifying male discourse about women; she transforms herself from the object of Romney’s

gaze to the subject of her own vision and thereby enacts her liberation. Browning has taken a

quintessentially male form, the extended blank-verse epic poem, and put it to the service of

women’s concerns. At the age of twenty, Aurora is aware of herself as “Woman and artist, —

either incomplete.” By the end of the epic, ten years have passed, and Aurora has learned that

true fulfillment comes from finding completion as both woman and artist.

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Browning’s father had not seen or spoken to his daughter since she had left England in

1846. At one point, he sent her a package returning all the unread letters that she had written to

him over the years. In 1857, he died unreconciled. In 1860 Browning published Poems Before

Congress, the last volume to appear in her lifetime. Most English readers found this book to be a

disappointment, too imbued with its author’s often faulty judgments on contemporary French

and Italian politics. Browning herself described it as “a very thin and wicked brochure” and fully

expected that its pro-Italian, anti-English tone would lead to a negative public reaction.

In 1861, after a long struggle with failing health and weak lungs, Browning died in her husband’s

arms on the night of June 29. The following year, Browning’s Last Poems were published. This

volume included a variety of poems left uncollected at the time of her death: several on the

Italian political scene, one (“De Profundis”) written after Bro’s drowning in 1840 but never

published, and several passionate and lyrical poems in the author’s rich mature voice.

Significance

After the death of William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was seriously

considered to replace him as England’s poet laureate. Though she was not finally chosen—

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was—the mere suggestion that she might fill that position and speak with

that “national” voice was extraordinary in 1850. It reveals how well known and well respected

Browning was among her peers.

In the decades following her death, her poetry was nearly forgotten. By 1932, Virginia

Woolf was complaining that in the “mansion of literature” Browning had been relegated to the

“servants’ quarters.” The revival of interest in her work that Woolf had called for did not take

place until the advent of feminist literary criticism during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Since that time,

readers have focused on Browning not simply as a poet but as a woman poet. The very

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characteristics of her work that were seen as most problematic by earlier generations—intense

passion, interest in politics, feminist concerns—are now seen as the greatest strengths of her

poetry.

Browning’s work is critical to understanding the ways in which a woman poet empowers

herself to speak. Browning’s career provides a model for the relationship of a woman poet to a

poetic tradition that privileges the male voice. Moreover, she has represented a poetic

“foremother” for generations of women poets after her—a figure she herself lacked and for

whom she longed. Browning has typically been envisioned as a ringleted Victorian invalid living

out an unlikely romantic legend. It is important to remember that she was first and foremost a

technician devoted to the craft of poetry.

Meem, Deborah T. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Great Lives from History: The 19th Century,

edited by John Powell, Salem Press, 1st edition, 2006. Credo Reference.

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Select Translation/Adaptation/Production History c.456 BCE: Aeschylus writes Prometheus Bound

1518 CE: First printed edition of Aeschylus in Venice.

1663: Thomas Stanley’s Latin Translation of Prometheus Bound

1773: Thomas Morell’s Translation: first English translation of Prometheus Bound.

1777: First full English translation of Aeschylus

1789: Goethe’s Prometheus (poem)

1816: Byron’s Prometheus (poem)

1818: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein:or, the Modern Prometheus (novel)

1819: Schubert sets Goethe’s Prometheus (song)

1820: Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (play)

1833: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Prometheus Bound (translation)

1856: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s revised Prometheus Bound (translation).

1927: Eva Palmer’s Prometheus Bound at Delphi Festival. First revival of Greek Tragedy

in an Ancient Theatre

1957: Eva Palmer’s Prometheus Bound revival in NYC (in English)

1967: Robert Lowell’s Prometheus Bound at Yale University Drama School*

1968: Carl Orff’s Prometheus Bound (Opera)

1971: Classical Greek Theatre Festival at in Salt Lake, Utah opens with Prometheus Bound

1985: Richard Schechner’s The Prometheus Project with the Wooster Group (adaptation)*

1989: Tom Paulin's Seize the Fire (adaptation)

1998: Tony Harrison, Prometheus (film)

2013: Prometheus Bound at Getty Villa, translated by Joel Agee*

Works Consulted

France, Peter, editor. The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford UP, 2001.

Hartigan, Karelisa. Greek Tragedy on the American Stage: Ancient Drama in Commercial

Theatre, 1882-1994. Greenwood Press, 1995.

McDonald, Marianne, translator. Prometheus Bound. By Aeschylus, Self-published, 2008,

olli.ucsd.edu/documents/aeschylus.pdf.

Ruffell, Ian. Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012. [*Denotes supporting articles included in the following section]

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Theater: 'Prometheus Bound' Performed at Yale: Aeschylus's Play Given ...By WALTER KERR Special to The New York TimesNew York Times (1923-Current file); May 11, 1967; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Timespg. 52

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Prometheus: Hero for Our Time: 'Prometheus' 'Prometheus'By ELENORE LESTERNew York Times (1923-Current file); May 21, 1967; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Timespg. D1

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If Actress Meets Opportunity...: If Actress Meets Opportunity...By WALTER KERRNew York Times (1923-Current file); Jun 11, 1967; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Timespg. 121

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Richard Schechner

Uprooting the Garden:Thoughts around'The Prometheus Project'Richard Schechner is presently working towards a production of his The PrometheusProject, planned to open at the Performing Garage in New York before the appearanceof this issue. Simultaneously, he is trying to come to terms with his own failures ofcommunication with his eighty-year-old father. Personal preoccupations, theatricalwork-in-progress, and performance theory mesh together in what amounts to theoverview offered here of an avant-garde confronted by the prospect of globalgenocide - and, more specifically, Schechner offers an explanation of the tone of parodywhich seems increasingly to have characterized performance work. Richard Schechnertook The Drama Review from its origins as a small academic journal to a lively forum fortheatrical debate during his editorship from 1962 to 1969, by which time he wasalready directing the Performance Group, whose opening production was thecontroversial Dionysus in 69. He has been a Professor of Performance Studies at NewYork University since 1967, and resumed the editorship of TDR in 1985.

I WANTED to talk to my father, but he waseighty by then and if we hadn't talked up to thatpoint how could we? I grabbed him as he camedown the stairs of the house my mother's fatherbuilt while she, my mother, was still a girl. I satmy father down on the second step down fromthe second floor landing. I took hold of hiswrists, I leaned close into his face.

'Pop, Pop,' I said. 'Pop, Pop.'He stared at me. His eyes were very wide. His

mouth was moving open and shut, open andshut, the way a fish on land grabs silently,dumbly, but desperately for air. How can thisfish be suffering? It isn't making a sound.Screaming, shrieking, howling, lamentation, andmoaning are media of pain. When those whosuffer are silent we are permitted the illusion thatthey are also peaceful. They can be 'regarded' -looked at from a distance, admired for thebeauty of their appearance: aestheticized.

Ironically, Brecht — who worked to open twospaces in performance, one between characterand performer, the other between stage imageand spectator, so that he would have room toinsert political thought - actually paved theway for today's (too) aestheticized theatre.Brecht is one of the forerunners of RobertWilson, Pina Bausch, Richard Foreman, and

Mabou Mines. It is from Brecht that thesecontemporary masters learned two things: toinsert their own consciousness between the'characters' (who for ever more need quotationmarks to distinguish them from 'real people' -characters in another mode of performativebehaviour) and the spectators; and to looktoward Asia for concrete ways of achieving thiseffect. An effect Brecht called verfremdung — nottranslatable but meaning, roughly, to be madenew, strange, distant, objective.

The Asians - take for example Japanese Noh,Kabuki, and Bunraku — use verfremdung easilyand gracefully. The Noh actor wears a mask thatis too small to conceal his face; the masterBunraku puppeteer is unmasked so thatconnoisseurs in the audience can better enjoy hismanipulations. And the Kabuki mie is defined as'a picturesque and striking pose taken by anactor at a climactic moment in a play in orderto make a powerful impression on the audience....Normally wooden clappers are struck andmusic is played as the actor takes his pose.'1

The Kabuki jiien (in the American version com-piled by Samuel L. Leiter) lists no less than ninedifferent mie. Equally elaborate instructions -transmitted not in textbooks but through whatPhillip Zarrilli calls 'in-body' methods2 -exist

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for Indian, Javanese, Balinese, and other Asiancultures.

The past, then, has a double reference in theperforming arts and rituals - as history, acollection of 'facts'; and, more important, aswhat is learned and passed on in training for andin the act of performing itself.

In his own production of Mother Courage andHer Children, when Brecht wanted his audienceto think about why Swiss Cheese had beenexecuted (because of his mother's greed, albeitan understandable greed), he instructed HeleneWeigel, playing Mother Courage, to utter a' silent scream' converting an audience (listeners)into spectators (lookers). Courage suffers butwe, instead of empathizing with her suffering,are able (maybe) to leam from it. She is not atragic heroine but an exemplum.

In a similar way people look at, learn from,and enjoy paintings of the martyrs. Because heis silent and still, the arrows piercing St.Sebastian's flesh don't arouse our pity or horrorso much as our curiosity. People even enjoyMunch's silent scream (possibly a model forBrecht's-Weigel's). Listening to the martyrssuffer, actually hearing their screams - even ifrendered 'artistically'- would be too much:silly, like a bad movie if done 'in art' andunbearable if done 'in life'.

That's why it is impossible to fictionalize inany mimetic way the Holocaust:3 the historicalmoment has not yet come for it. That's whywhen TV catches some actual horror - ashooting, a fire where humans are burning todeath, the starving of Ethiopia - very quicklythe picture goes silent except for the smoothvoice of the reporter. It is so much easier toclose the eyes or turn the head than to stuffthe ears.

Not that there aren't many who savour 'realdeath'. A videotape of just that - executions,fires, murders, air crashes: people in theimmediacy of their dying - is one of thebiggest-selling items in America's video stores.But here too what might be happening is anattempt to escape deathly futures fantasized,foreseen, or just vaguely felt by bathing in thecruel 'immediacy' of someone else's dying. I put'immediacy' in quotation marks because this is,after all, a videotape: a trace of things alreadyin the past.

The comforting aspect of quiet - the at-leastwestern identification of 'peace and (with)quiet' - explains some of the immense successof the 'theatre of images', where suffering ismostly silent and thereby rendered beautiful.This theatre of images - Phillip Glass's Satya-graha or Robert Wilson's Civil Wars: a Tree IsBest Measured When It Is Down, for example, arefull of images of war, beating, and assassinationthat are more beautiful than frightening. If aremedy is called for it is not socialist realism.

Of late the theatre of images has been findingits voice and showing its willingness tosurrender some of its prettiness: it is good tolisten to the dancers of Pina Bausch or WilliamForsythe talk, even if what they say is banal; orto hear their breath and see, even smell, theirsweat as they work through physically demand-ing dances such as Bausch's Bluebeard orForsythe's LDC.

The sister to the dancer - and the actortoo - is the athlete as much as the painter. Yes,there are indications of a serious attempt tobridge, even eliminate the gap between thegenres of music, dance, theatre, and sports.There is plenty of room both for 'independent'and 'integrated' genres, for purebreeds andhybrids. And, learning lessons taught bypostmodern dance and Happenings alike, tointegrate ordinary movement, athletics, andspeech with classical and modern dance.Forsythe, artistic director now at the FrankfurtBallet, sets his explosive and sometimes verbalchoreography on ballet dancers - who take toit. Not that all performance ought to beintegrated - but we need more integration thangrand opera or pop music.

Back to silence. The comfort of quiet may alsoexplain the rough treatment accorded NewYork's Wooster Group (successor to thePerformance Group), certainly the noisiest, leastpeaceful, and most savage, of today'savant-garde.

Doesn't this...what shall I call it? 'bourgeoisneed'? for peace and quiet also help explain themodulation of the blasts of 'seventies punk intothe more moderate tones of today's pop musicscene? Not to mention Reagan's soft radio-voice, so soothing that people just don't com-prehend, or even really listen, to what it is heis saying.


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The masters of silent film slapstick knew howmuch quiet took the sting out of mayhem. Theirmovies are epitomes of violence, but the silenceof the medium leaves room for roars of laughterin the house. The screams of the slapped, beaten,flattened, car-crashed, and crushed are neverheard.

At Auschwitz the screams were alwaysthere — except from the two most infamousbarracks: the 'hospital' where Mengele carriedout his 'experiments', and in Barracks 11, theGestapo's torture and special punishmentbarracks. These places were shut off from therest of the camp. An attempt to hide and mufflewhat was happening? Between the two barrackswas the Wall of Death, where thousands ofnaked prisoners were shot at close range, oneat a time usually, in a seemingly endlessprocession of the murdered.

The screams of history have a hard timegetting through. There are those - more thanyou might think — who deny the Holocaust.And one of the functions of the Vietnammemorial wall in Washington, and all the mediaattention given to it, is to soften the screamsheard at My Lai ('And babies too? Yes, babiestoo.') We protest Reagan's visit to Bitburg - butare German soldiers any more individuallyguilty than American GIs? And where were theNuremberg trials for those who constructed andconducted the Vietnam War? I mean theleaders — our leaders — who surely knew whatthey were doing.

So I could not really speak to my father. Andhis silence protects me still from whatever it ishe has failed through four generations to say tome. Or whatever it is I have refused to hear. Myencounter with him on the stairs is both muteand pregnant with inexpressible (for me andhim) meanings. Probably this inexpressibility iswhat keeps me going, both in and out of thetheatre.

Yes I have worked on this problem: speakingto my father - and through him, by this means,to his father's father, and to all the others before:mothers and sisters and daughters as well asfathers, brothers, and sons. All. If we are relatedto each other around the world - and we are - itis no phony relation but a genetic webHebraically expressed in the story of Adam, butas well explained by the Vedic Purusa: 'In the

beginning this universe was the Self alone - inthe likeness of a person. Looking around, thisperson saw nothing other than itself....It wasafraid, this person, and it took thought, and said,"Since nothing exists other than I, of whom (orwhat) am I afraid?'" Soon thereafter this primalperson split and then split again and again,through copulation, genetic multiplication, andbirth, into all the beings that are. A chainreaction.

In uncovering the past, digging into my ownspecial silence, what have I been seeking? Echoesof tradition? In my production of Oedipus - notSophocles' but Seneca's - 1 asked the actors toperform atop of and then dig into the three feetof earth we shovelled into the PerformingGarage. Under that soil each night the masks theactors wore were found, and on its surface themeeting of the three roads where Oedipus slewLaius was mapped out. The earth itself signifiednot only the covered up past but blood.

Naked, except for the blood from hisgouged-out eyes, which in this production wasthe mud of his extraordinary pastness, Oedipusgoes into exile. Jocasta is not so lucky. She hascarried the knowledge of who this young manis inside her, just as she carried his four children:her fecund revenge for the babies Laius did notpermit her to have - after Oedipus. And whenthe secret comes out she impales herself on aspear blade dug up from the earth - shoving itup through her vagina into her womb. The eartheach night was stained by deep red (stage)blood.

There was room for lots of blood becauseJocasta wore a large hollow body mask fromneck to thigh. In the Performance Groupproduction this body mask worn by JoanMacintosh as the pregnant Jocasta was cast onher when she was eight months pregnant withour child. Within a month after Oedipus closedthe marriage was over. Where was the pastnessin all that?

If theatre is to dare call itself an art it mustalways risk the actual life-histories of those whomake the performances. That's what shamansdo; and we - performers, scenographers, costu-mers, musicians, directors - must find our ownways of doing the same.

I know it's possible to make performanceswithout such intense, intimate investments — but


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I am not interested in those kinds of per-formances. And whenever I have met a greatperformer who seemed to be working solely'from tradition', very little digging convincedme that here too - among the masters ofKathakali and Noh - whole lives were at stake:the climax of a family's line, secrets passed onacross generations.

The imagery/actions in my work are alwaysextremely personal as well as consciouslytraditional. In performance there is no place fora past that is abstract history lived by others.The magnificence of Asian training is that inputting the dance (or character or song) into thebody the past is also put there. The history ofthe genre culminates right here, in this person,as she/he works.

Western dance has some of that, but theatrevery little. It is the ambition of theatre, thesedays, and rightly, to be more like dance. Theroots we dig at, and up, must be our own. Thegarden uprooted is the garden we are endlesslyreplanting.

This digging at the roots is what many peoplein experimental theatre/dance are doing. For theavant-garde these days is looking very hardbackward. I don't mean that negatively, but asthe recognition of necessity. Roots = routes =ways: distinct kinds of in-body knowledge. Andexperiment = ex per and/or ex peri: to gothrough or beyond the boundaries.

From the nineteenth century to the 1970s theavant-garde thought these boundaries werebourgeois sensibilities, and to experiment meantto shock or epater le bourgeois. Then came theexperiments of Grotowski during his 'poortheatre' phase from 1959 to 1967. Here classicworks - playtexts, novels, sacred literature -were cut up and reconstituted in performativecollages that also displayed the most intimateaspects of the performers' own lives. But theseintimacies were not seen directly, 'as is', but asmasked or reclothed in Grotowski's intense,often harrowing mise-en-scenes.

In this aspect of his work - using the personallives of performers in the service of an'objective' performance text - Grotowski wasfollowing directly in the footsteps of Stanislavski.He no longer works that way, but fellow-PoleTadeusz Kantor does. Kantor's performancesfrom The Dead Class through Die Kiinstler Sollen

Krepieren are obsessive permutations on Kantor'sown memories of pre-war Poland. Kantor ispresent at and in each of his group'sperformances. He 'directs' as they perform-suspending himself between the roles ofpuppeteer and orchestra conductor. Some ofKantor's interventions are spontaneous, somerehearsed. In either case he is always mumblingto himself, running his own endless interiortapes.

In all these classical works of the avant-gardethere is little comic irony, but much parody — asLinda Hutcheon uses the term:

The auto-reflexivity of modern art forms often lakesthe form of parody and, when it does so, it providesa new model for artistic process. In an effort todemystify the 'sacrosanct name of the author' andto 'desacralize the origin of the text', postmodernistcritics and novelists... have argued for the complemen-tarity of the acts of textual production and reception.The writer must 'stand on equal footing with thereader/listener in an effort to make sense out of thelanguage common to both of them'. ...Parody,therefore, is a form of imitation, but imitationcharacterized by ironic inversion, not always at theexpense of the parodied text*

Need I add that 'text' includes 'performancetext' - acts done, gestures made, effectsevoked; previous performances, films, orations:anything that is 'on record' either by virtue oftradition or the new mechanical/electronicmeans of preservation.

Today's experiments are full of ironic andparodic encounters. These often do not take theform of satires: they are not 'making fun' ofearlier works. Rather they are 'quotations',backward references - sometimes to classics,sometimes to modern works, sometimes to theperformers' own lives. These references underlinewhat deconstructionist theorists such as JacquesDerrida et al. mean when they say texts are'open', full of holes, waiting for readers not somuch to finish them as to keep them in thefullness of their unfinishedness: a mutualattempt to 'make sense' out of the old texts - tocomprehend incomprehensible pasts.

This decoding is what I am trying to do withmy father. The openness literary works can onlyindirectly have, performed works have absol-utely. Each performance is a revision of what


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has gone before, and every performance isprovisional.

What contemporary performance artistsrealize more clearly than their predecessors isthat there are no settled texts 'behind' or'before' the performance text. The performancetext is what it is not: present concretely inseeming completeness and yet open to immediaterevisions. Revisions are in fact made on thespot — even in the most conservative andclassical genres. Zeami advises Noh shite to lookat the audience prior to selecting what costumesto wear and to adjust the rhythms and intensityof the performance on the basis of what kind ofaudience has gathered.

Every performer knows, of course, that theminute details of any given performance varyfrom show to show, adjusting in tone, pace, andintensity to the situation at hand. These minuteparticulars are not incidental to the performance,they are the core of the performance text. As therasa theory of Indian classical dance theatreasserts most forcefully: the experience of aperformance can be located neither in theperformers nor in the spectators, but in thevirtual time/space between them.

Quotations are often from the experiences ofthe performers. These quotations from everydaylife can be given in a cold, almost cybernetictone. What is happening is very different fromthe impassioned dismembering/remembering ofGrotowski, or the obsessive replays of Kantor.

Postmoderns like Wilson, Bausch, and For-sythe are referring, not reconstructing. They areintentionally not engaging in Stanislavski's'emotional recall' work. While quoting they arekeeping their distance from the quoted materials.The performers are not exposing intimateand/or painful moments of their lives a lapsychodrama. Instead, performers utter refer-ences and identifications as a way of plugging-up the aporia endemic to performance texts.

What the postmodern quotations are about,I think, is an attempt to 'recite' a 'sayable past'.History has lost its authority, ethically speaking;and artistically western theatre and dance havearrived at Artaud's condition of 'no moremasterpieces'. In this condition banalities of theperformers' lives can be presented side-by-sidewith the classics.

When there are attempts to quote recent

works - to 'rework' them, as the WoosterGroup's LSD did with Arthur Miller's TheCrucible - trouble follows. Director ElizabethLeCompte insists that LSD was not meant todebunk Miller's play, only to squeeze it so thatit yielded its essential action.

Dialogue was recited, even sung, too quicklyto be comprehensible; the action took place ata long table with the performers facing straightout: the references to the McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunt of the 1950s which inMiller's play were subtextual were in LSD madevisually obvious; Tituba was played in hideous,hilarious black-face taken from racist minstrelshows (and Wooster Group's own Route 1 & 9,a self-quotation).

Too much quotation, however, runs againstthe property interests, the copyright, of authors.Lawyers arrive like flies on shit.5 The WoosterGroup was instructed to cease and desist usingMiller's script. But only through unlimitedaccess to material - new even more thanclassical - will a vital repertory emerge. Whatneeds protecting, if anything, are authors'pocketbooks - so authors should be paid whensomeone quotes them. But the material itselfmust be available: the great ages of performanceare ages of piracy, plagiarism, and parody.

But if I could not, cannot, speak to my ownfather on the steps of my mother's ancestralhome, what right have I to talk to anyone aboutthe past? Sitting there on those steps I thoughtthe land would open up and swallow me.His mouth just kept opening and closing. Icould utter nothing more than 'Pop'. Like akid's cork gun.

At least let me try to tell you.Tell you in terms of a theatre-dance piece I

am in the process of working on, The PrometheusProject, an active meditation on nuclear wars pastand future. I want to help sustain a collectiveneed to pre-experience what we must neverexperience: performance as vaccination ratherthan catharsis. Or, in old-fashioned Christianterms: to know enough about hell to take stepsto avoid going there.

I began working on Prometheus in 1982.6 It'staking me a long time to finish and maybe Inever will. Like talking to my father, it hangs onme. There are problems, relating not only to thesubject matter but to parody and quotation, that

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I am having a hard time resolving.What if, I say, Prometheus was wrong?

Humans - men especially, their guns alwayscocked - cannot be trusted with fire. What ifPrometheus is hung up there on his mountain -yes, Christlike - mumbling like Kantor a longmonologue of self-justification? The audienceonly hears some of this seamless monologue.Prometheus is crazy — wouldn't you be if yourliver was eaten away each day, and the roundof this torture was unending, and yet you could,by virtue of your name, see the future?

Prometheus the trickster, the thief, the friendof man, knows something has gone wrong,something is not working the way he plannedit. 'They got the light wrong', he keeps re-peating. But the focus of my play is not Pro-metheus — we all know his story — but Io, themad woman who dances into Prometheus' sightand then away again.

Why her? Because somehow I feel the futurebelongs to (or ought to belong to) herdescendants. Remember Io? Zeus took a likingto her. She resisted, he 'visited' her in dreamsnight after night, and aroused her. Or maybe itwas the other way around: she desired theattentions of the god and aroused him. Sooneror later Hera found out, was enraged. Zeus, toprotect Io, transformed her into a cow. Hera sethundred-eyed Argos to guard the heifer-woman.Zeus had Argos murdered. Hera set the stinginggadfly on Io - and off she went on herworld-wanderings.

Io danced to the very limits of the world theGreeks knew: across into Asia Minor, onthrough Iran to the snowy slopes of theHimalayas, and then back again across theBosphorus (of course) into Africa down as far asthe great (Victoria) falls, the source of the Nile.Finally Io comes to Canopus at the mouth of theNile where she is 'healed'.

Io's story intersects Prometheus' when one ofIo's descendants frees him. But this resolution isonly obliquely in my production - as a readingfrom Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives.Re: Colonised Planet 5: Shikasta. I assume Lessingmeans the Canopus in the sky, but can she beunaware of Io and the Canopus at the mouth ofthe Nile? What I have selected from Lessing hasnothing to do directly with freeing Prometheus -such an event, or even any reference to the

Greek god, is nowhere in Lessing's novel. Theredemptive passage quoted concerns the 'condi-tion of Shikastans [earth people] now'.

Io is pursued by Zeus, a male, and thisprompted an exercise in workshop where theactresses/dancers playing Io told stories ofbeing pursued by men — their own stories,actual or invented (I don't know which, anddon't want to know: as long as the stories areconvincing). Tape recorded, these tales form theundertext of the section of Prometheus Projectcalled 'Io'.

But, I emphasize now (August 1985), this isall pro-visionary: what I and the people I'veworked with have come to. It might not be thisway in the next — final? — version of PrometheusProject. This very writing here now is justanother step in the ongoing process of makinga performance text. Such a text is necessarilyopen and unfinished. It is completable onlyprovisionally each time it is co-created with thespectators.7

These texts and actions are played in front ofscreens on which are projected slides of nuclearand post-nuclear visions. What it looked like atand from the perspective of ground-zero atHiroshima. I intentionally avoid pictures of theblast from a distance, the hypnotically beautiful/phallic mushroom cloud. Avoided also arepictures from nuclear tests showing explosionsin slow motion. All these aestheticize nuclearwar.

I believe I will also use slides made frompictures drawn by the hibakusha, people whowere in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August 1945.(One unfortunate man experienced bothbombs.) And a set of slides from a book madefrom a 1970s animated film, Pica-Don. All these'Japanese documents' are offset by personalslides supplied by the performers, pictures fromtheir own daily lives past and present. And a fewslides taken during rehearsals and/or earlierversions of The Prometheus Project. Quotationswithin quotations.

These are the visuals: but what might anaudience hear? During the section called 'Zero',while performers split into two groups - oneheaded toward Ground-Zero, there to receivethe hydrogen communion: an instant, painless,but irreversible vaporization; the other headedtoward evacuation, and an existence in the

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condition of nuclear winter — the audiencehears, concurrently and sometimes simulta-neously : a black Gospel version of the Baptisthymn, 'Peace Be Still', Max Bruch's Kol Nidre(live and on Walkman), 'Duck and Cover', asong taught to school kids in the 'fifties urgingthem to 'take cover whenever an atomic bombgoes off', and Mendelssohn's aria of warning,'Hear Ye, Israel'.

Zero is sad and elegiac, filled with sounds andsights of regret: whichever way we choose togo - toward vaporization or nuclear winter -we have lost the game. Somehow we collec-tively must find a way never to have to makethat choice. Horrific pictures are looked atthrough a web of the performers' slow motionmovements, regarded through an aural haze ofthe music. The spectators/audience are reposi-tioned as beings from a distant future, or anotherplanet, regarding these primitive, touching,stupid, lovely, pitiable earth people.

Were this the all of Prometheus Project I wouldbe subject to my own criticism of aestheticizingevents too painful to look at in a cold light andlisten to with open ears. But other sections, like'Io', are more violent, parodic, farce-like, andangry. In 'Zero' I saw no way to avoid silenceand beauty.

My file called 'Doomsday' fills up withdippings of all kinds of dead-ends we humansseem intent on heading toward, and I don't meanonly the dead-ends that will lead to ultimatestillness; the removal of human ears to listen, butalso the deprivations of quality - the decline infeeling, in appreciation for suffering, that weappear to be heading into. This is the 'newmedievalism' I sense all around me: anacceptance of the (bad) way things are, a needfor all kinds of 'mystical' belief systems, and astability born from profound but nearlyinexpressible fears.

Hell exists again for intellectuals, sceptics,artists, and atheists as it has not for centuries.We can see (but just barely hear) us all going tohell, if not for our sins then for our stupidity andgreed. It is this hell that Prometheus knows,regrets, and sings about: and his hell is to be ableto hear ours.

So the 'past' - in my present vision of theatreat least - is more and more the future. I must putit in such a slippery way because I am groping,

trying to find in what I stage as well as in whatI write a hold, a voice, some kind of rationalstatement, for what I feel and can express best(but how inadequately!) in almost silentpictures.

May I suggest to you that we are living ina convergence of epochs: one which we thoughtwe had collectively escaped from — pre-industrialtheocracies and city-states forever at war witheach other, wholly caste-bound societies - andone coming at us from the nuclear andecological tomorrow: a crowded, uncomfortable,dangerous world that can only be controlled byarousing and exploiting humanity's deepestfears.

Can we ever buy enough LPs to endstarvation in Ethiopia? Yet what else canordinary people do? And don't such gestures do'at least a little' good? But how many are readyto admit that what people really want is to stophearing the shrieks that manage to get throughall the muffling?

Human shrieks. When the Air India jumbo jetdropped into the Irish Sea in June 1985, theInternational Herald Tribune reported: 'TheObserver story also said that Irish air trafficcontrollers at Shannon had recorded "a dullbang, a gushing noise, and finally a humanshriek" in the seconds before the jet crashed.'My report of a report of a report of a report.And I can tell you that at this instant, as I write,out on Eighth Avenue seven floors below me,a man is roaring. A Prometheus manque.

So some people might say that what mycolleagues and I are constructing in ThePrometheus Project is an unfunny parody ofAeschylus. Aeschylus because he is the father ofwestern dramaturgy, the first playwright anddirector in our tradition, and, as such, the sourceof our theatrical patriarchy: with Aeschylus theactor displaced the dancer. Prometheus Project isintended both to continue and refute PrometheusBound, to restore the dancer to primacy whilenot entirely rejecting the actor.

I am trying not to complete Aeschylus but toopen him up: as if western dramaturgy - andthe various systems it suggests, intends,supports, and reflects - could be restarted.Absurd, of course, for here we are, in the 1980s,if not at the end, at least recognizing that wecould be at the end: it is within our 'power' to


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make it the end. The end of what, though? Ofthe patriarchy? Surely. Of the world? Maybe.

But everyone knows it won't be, can't be, theend of 'the world'. How many times musthistory teach us that humankind does not equal'the world'? What we are up against is the endof human life, that is human experience, as wehave known it. This is the message so many ofour artists, scientists, intellectuals, and evensome politicians have been trying to deliver:that no matter what, human life - its socialarrangements, its political-economic arrange-ments, and even the structures of its conscious-ness - is on the cusp of change, maybe hasalready changed, will either change or else.

Should theatre be concerned with such'issues'? Yes, but how? Surely not by soupy'ritualized' performances full of candles andincense. Nor by sentimental 'docudramas' likeThe Day After. Issues that teeter between politicsand metaphysics deserve farce and tragedy astheir modes, but if these genres are too innocent,then give me parody. If we are emerging froma period of aestheticized (I would even sayanaesthetized) theatre into one of integration -not only of dance, music, and theatre, but alsoof the 'unthinkable', with the 'playable' - thensurely what we need to think most aboutis...what we can hardly dare play with.

That is maybe why such a period as ours isso full of parody. Through parody the past isaccepted and rejected at the same time. It isquoted, even made fun of, but still re-presented.Artaud wanted no more masterpieces. Possiblyhe was a bit hasty. Parody invites us to examinethe masterpieces - of art, of thought, ofevents — holographically: to turn them around,over, upside down. Parody can be at onceplayful, scientific, disrespectful, and open:subversive and restorative simultaneously.

To go beyond modernism without re-medievalizing, won't we need parody and hersister processes? So I am glad ours is (andincreasingly so) a period of genre-mixing andgenre-busting, sceptically but playfully confusingthe short story and the essay, Derridiantheoretics and the novel, theatre and ritual,tragedy and parody.

Just a few days ago I broke the silence withmy father. On the porch of that same house Iasked him if he ever thought about death. 'Not

much', he said. Or did he say, 'Of course'? Idon't remember which. Nor do I rememberasking him if he was afraid of dying - but I knowthat I am afraid of his dying: he that has beenin my life since its very beginning and who,therefore, represents immortality to me: thePurusa from which I am.

I do recall clearly the next bit of dialogue. Iasked him, 'Do you believe in life after death?''Yes, yes I do', he replied. Then he got up fromhis seat on the porch and walked inside to playsolitaire.

I don't believe in life after death, but I'mnot as old as he is, not as 'original'. I'm abreaker-maker. And what I believe in is acontinuous deconstruction and reconstructionof realities - an incessantly processual playful-ness: life after life.

Notes and References1. See Samuel L. Leiter, Kabuki Enq/dopedia: an English-Language

Adaptation of Kabuki Jiten (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,1979), p. 232-4.

2. Zarrilli is a scholar and practitioner of Kalarippayatt, a southIndian (Kerala) martial art connected to both Kathakali andKutiattam. From his work in Kalarippayatt, Zarrilli has developedideas detailing how 'performance knowledge' which resides in thebody of the performer is transmitted. See especially his 'Doingthe Exercise': the In-body Transmission of PerformanceKnowledge in a Traditional Martial Art', Asian Theatre Journal, I,2, p. 191-206. Eugenio Barba in his International School of TheatreAnthropology has been investigating the same problem. SeeBarba's 'Theatre Anthropology', Drama Review, XXVI, 2 (1982),p. 5-32. See also my 'Performer Training Interculturally', inBetween Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1985), p. 213-60.

3. The only performance I've seen that is' satisfying' in dealingwith the Holocaust is Leeny Sack's one-performer piece, TheSurvivor and the Translator. Sack relates her own 'translations' -both literal and figurative - of her grandmother's recollections (inPolish, German, and English) of the Holocaust. The perspectiveis clearly Sack's own - and her need is that so widely felt by thechildren and grandchildren of survivors: to knit this intractableexperience into the rest of their lives. Otherwise not enough'cultural time' has elapsed to put the Holocaust into mythology(as the Egyptian enslavement, the Exodus, and the establishmentof the first state of Israel has been mythologized in the OldTestament.) What we 'have' of the Holocaust today are survivors,testimonies, data, relics, historical interpretations, and art works.Histories, novels, poems, and short stories, from Raul Hilberg toEli Weisel to D. W. Thomas, can be more direct than what seemsto be possible in the theatre. There the subject can be approachedonly obliquely, as with Grotowski's Akropolis, Sack's Survivor/Translator, or The Diary of Anne Frank. Documentaries like TheInvestigation are less successful. Is it that the unsayable can be readbut not heard/seen/enacted? Is this performative silence a

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necessary and proper respect, avoidance, or both? I really don'tknow.

4. See A Theory of Parody (New York and London: Methuen,1985), p. 5-6.

5. In LSD the Wooster Group, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte,deconstructed, conflated, reduced to 'pure' sound, and parodiedMiller's The Crucible. The author was not amused. He saw theproduction several times, shilly-shallied about whether to grantthe Group rights to continue, and finally decided not to. The Millerpart of LSD was rewritten by Michael Kirby who wanted to keepthe rhythms of LeCompte's mise-en-scene intact. Because he wasperforming in LSD he was very familiar with these rhythms — inrewriting the Miller parts he was interested only in these rhythms,not in character or plot. See David Savran, 'The Wooster Group,Arthur Miller, and The Crucible', and Arnold Aronson, 'TheWooster Group's LSD', both in Drama Review, XXIX, 2 (1985),p. 99-109, 65-77.

6. I first had the idea for Prometheus when, while leading aworkshop at the University of Mexico, I was taken by NicolasNunez and Helen Guardia to the ' Sculpture Garden' near UNAM'sperforming arts centre. This garden was a circle of monoliths facingin on a field of naked black cold lava. The volcanic rocks werefrozen liquid - twisting, bulbous, frothy, living. Immediately Iproposed doing Prometheus on this site. But when the peso was

devalued soon afterwards the project was suspended. In thesummer of 1983 Carol Martin and I led a workshop on Prometheusat NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. On the final day of thatworkshop we and the students showed more than three hours ofdancing and scenes. In January 1984 I, and my assistant directorMatthew Silverstein, went to the University of Texas, Dallas,where we staged a version of The Prometheus Project with studentsand professional performers from Dallas. This work-in-progresswas performed three times, on 7, 8, and 9 February 1985. Atpresent, I am planning another revision of Prometheus at thePerforming Garage for December 1985.

7. The key deconstructionist concept of open text negotiatedduring each performance or reading is prefigured in classical Indian'rasa theory'. Rasa — the flavour or juice of a performance - doesnot exist except at the interface where the actions/sounds of theperformers interact with the expectations/knowledge of thespectators. This theory was first written down in the Natyasastra,a performance treatise compiled between the second century BCand the second century AD. The Natyasastra has been commentedon, elaborated, and practised ever since. Rasa reworked in variouspermutations is also fundamental to Chinese, Japanese, andsouth-east Asian aesthetics. See my Between Theater andAnthropology, and Pramod Kale, The Theatric Universe (Bombay:Popular Prakashan, 1974).

British AlternativeTheatre Directory1985/86edited by Catherine Itzin

" . . . the little sister of theBritish Theatre Directory".

Trestle Theatre Company in 'HangingAround'. From left to right, TobyWilsher, Joft Chafer and Alan Rlley.

If you are at all interested in the development of contemporary theatre you must have a copy of the BritishAlternative Theatre Directory. This detailed guide to the fringe and touring companies and venues offers the mostcomprehensive Information about the groups operating today.

It features over 500 companies — including small and middle scale touring companies, community theatre groups,dance, mime and children's companies, performance artistes, puppet companies and TIE organisations. Each entrydetails the company's policy, origins, subsidy and personnel, as well as listing its productions, equipment andpreferred audiences.

This section is complemented by a directory of the small scale touring venues in England, Scotland and Wales,featured in similar detail. There are 250 of these and their entries contain all the technical and programminginformation necessary to mount a tour.

Finally, there is a reference section that features the organisations and associations that serve the alternativetheatre movement, from the Arts Councils and Regional Arts Associations to the Theatre Writers Union and theIndependent Theatre Council. There is also a directory of the Principal National Festivals and a map of LondonFringe Theatres.

The British Alternative Theatre Directory is published annually and the 1985/6 edition is now available.

Price: £7.95 (plus £1.50 post and packing).

Available from:John Oflord Publications, 12 The Avenue, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN21 3YA. Telephone: 0323 645871.

11


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Theater: Schechner's 'Prometheus Project'By WALTER GOODMANNew York Times (1923-Current file); Dec 27, 1985; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Timespg. C8 Steffens31

A rehearsal of the Center for New Performance's "Prometheus Bound." (Photo by Scott Groller)

PREVIEWS | SEPTEMBER 2013 | SEPTEMBER 1, 2013 | 0 COMMENTS

In the Wheel World With ‘Prometheus Bound’

The Getty Villa presents a new take on the Greek classic.

By Rob Weinert-Kent

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MALIBU, CALIF.: A clock, a cross, a Ferris wheel, a horoscope, a torture rack—all these associations, and a few more besides, are handily evoked by the ve-ton steel wheel that anchors the Center for New Performance’s production of the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound, at Getty Villa, Aug. 29–Sept. 28. Ron Cephas Jones plays the grounded god, lashed to an inner wheel that rotates more or less freely within the overarching wheel structure.

“I felt an obligation to bring a kind of weight and excitement to the project,” said director Travis Preston, who heads CNP, the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts (where Preston is also dean of the theatre school). “The wheel was my response to the challenge of Prometheus being bound throughout; because of the smaller inner wheel, he’s still bound but can move. It gave us the ability to create some dynamism.”The structure, assembled by LA ProPoint, also allows the play’s 12-member chorus to participate acrobatically in the action, in harnesses provided by Flying by Foy.

“Seen from the front, the wheel is almost like a vortex going back in space,” said Preston. And back in time. “As someone who is immortal, Prometheus’s being bound ties him to time.” Preston cited Prague Orloj, the medieval astronomical clock in the Czech capital’s town square, as a model for the wheel’s design. And he feels that the work’s “proto-Christian” aspects—the image of cruci xion and sacri ce—emerge starkly in this setting.

The outdoor amphitheatre, which overlooks the Paci c Ocean, has the classical-styled Getty Villa as its backdrop, along with the verdant hills of Malibu. But this is not an idyll; Preston feels that classics, including this one, have a prophetic power that remains unsettling.

“The interesting thing about the piece—and this is how I generally feel about the Greeks and Shakespeare—is that when you engage these plays, they are reenergized, and they give you access to exciting aspects of, and insights about, modernity.”

Prometheus’s crime—sharing the secret of re with humans—links him, Preston feels, “to the origins of human consciousness. In a sense, he is the creator of humanity; it’s essential to the evolution of humanity in modern and postmodern history, this transgressing on the territory of the divine that both condemns and de nes us.”

When it comes to tragic transgression, humanity is always on a roll.

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Getty Villa's 5-ton wheel keeps 'Prometheus Bound' centeredThe monumental wheel at the heart of the Getty Villa's 'Prometheus Bound' works in concert with the actors to tell an ancient tale of ahero against the gods.

August 31, 2013 | By Mike Boehm

At first, director Travis Preston wanted to seat the audience for "Prometheus Bound" at the Getty Villa where the actors would normally be: on the plaza infront of the museum that doubles as a stage for the Getty's annual late-summer outdoor productions of ancient plays.

The drama would unfold high above the crowd, in the vacated rows and aisles of the Villa's steeply sloped Roman-style theater. The switch made sense for aplay whose hero is chained to a mountainside above an ocean for having thwarted Zeus' plans.

Preston's idea was shot down for logistical reasons, so the veteran stage director, dean of the California Institute of the Arts School of Theater, needed to comeup with a Plan B.

Set designer Efren Delgadillo Jr. was sitting with Preston on the theater's steps one day, looking out at the plaza and the museum and trying to figure out whatto do next, when the director pulled out a paper napkin and drew a circle.

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"He said, 'I want a big wheel,'" Delgadillo recalled. "Actually, his words were, 'I want a big … wheel.'"

And that's what Delgadillo gave him, with help from LA ProPoint, a fabrication company that specializes in theme park rides and unusual stage machinery.The steel wheel is 23 feet tall and weighs 5 tons, not counting its untold metaphorical heft as a symbol for Time, the Cosmos, Fate, the Wrath of Zeus and whathave you.

Getty officials enthusiastically agreed to Plan B and have proudly sported the wheel as a Villa adornment since mid-July, well before the Getty and the CalArtsCenter for New Performance present poet Joel Agee's new translation of the 2,500-year-old-piece, which runs Sept. 5 through 28.

When they arrive at the doorstep of one of America's leading collections of ancient Greek and Roman art, museumgoers encounter a monumental modernistcontraption that looks as if it could have strayed from Fritz Lang's classic 1920s silent film, "Metropolis."

"Prometheus Bound," commonly attributed to Aeschylus although scholars have serious doubts, is about as thematically large as fiction can get. Prometheushas stolen fire from the gods and given it to the human race, throwing in mankind's first tutorials in science, medicine, technology and the arts. Now we watchhim pay the price and are asked to consider whether it was worth it.

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Besides the metaphoric weight, the wheel bears about three-quarters of a ton of acting talent. In some scenes, Preston's 12-woman chorus of CalArts studentsand recent graduates clambers aboard, joining the hero on whom they alternately shower pity for his suffering and chastisement for helping those ridiculoushumans and refusing to free himself with an apology.

Preston says the challenge of deploying a full-sized Greek chorus of actor-singer-dancers initially drew him to "Prometheus Bound." Getting to arrange themon a big wheel just ups the ante.

After watching the chorus sing in unison while dancing in ranks on the plaza flats during a recent rehearsal, the director turned them toward the wheel andthey began ascending in waves. The soundtrack was L.A. jazzman Vinny Golia working an arsenal of reed and percussion instruments as the play's liveaccompanist.

Also audible was the clanking of metal safety clips attached to body harnesses worn by each actor. In addition to their lines and their moves, they've learned toclamp themselves to one of the wheel's rims or spokes before every step, to prevent falls.

"Your ascent is the ascent of humanity," Preston told the chorus after its surge up the wheel. "It has to be smooth. It doesn't have to be fast. We'll be looking forthe timing to be slower than you've done, so the drama of the rising on the wheel gets enough time."

During a break, Kaitlin Cornuelle, a chorus actor in her first production since graduating from CalArts in May, said the rigor of dealing with the wheel is lessphysical than psychic. The job calls for graceful, well-timed movement while clearly intoning lines in unison with 11 others and hitting the right emotionalnotes, while also carrying out special safety protocols. After each rehearsal, she said, "It's not, 'Oh, my thighs hurt.' It's 'Oh, my mind hurts.'"

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Like everyone else in the chorus, her gear included a triangular pelvic harness shaped like a bikini bottom, with straps attached for the climbing clips. Theapparatus comes from Flying By Foy, the Las Vegas airborne performance effects company engaged by the production to provide equipment and safetytraining.

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At first, said Gary Kechely, a CalArts faculty member and production manager for "Prometheus Bound," Flying By Foy hesitated because it specializes in flying,not climbing. "We said, 'We want to make use of your expertise. Whether it's flying or suspended, there's a commonality" in not wanting to see actors fall andbreak their necks.

Kechely said the first round of rehearsals with the wheel last winter at CalArts' Valencia campus and this summer's preparations at the Getty have beenaccident-free.

Topmost in the cast credits, and on the wheel, is Ron Cephas Jones, an experienced New York actor making his Los Angeles stage debut as Prometheus. Eventhough he'll spend the play bound by the wrists in a crucified-Jesus pose, Jones will be surprisingly mobile: his perch is a smaller wheel-within-the-wheel thatcan circle the big one like the hand of a clock.

"I'm hoping I don't have to scratch my nose or sneeze," said the lean, bony-faced actor, who won a 2007 Obie Award for "sustained excellence of performance"in off-Broadway shows. Jones has played his share of legendary characters, including Odysseus in Sophocles' "Ajax," Pontius Pilate in Stephen Adly Guirgis'"The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" and Shakespearean turns as Richard III, Othello, Caliban in "The Tempest" and the demonic avenger Aaron in "TitusAndronicus." Prometheus is his first immortal.

His 2011 experience in "Titus Andronicus" fed Jones' confidence about hitting the heights as Prometheus — in his exit scene at New York's Public Theater, he'ddefied ancient Rome from a platform high above the stage. Here, he'll defy the gods from a peak elevation of 18 or 19 feet.

"Actors love challenges, and this presents a wonderful challenge," said Jones, who wears military dog tags from a past costume as a reminder that when he'sperforming he's "a soldier of the theater."

Mirjana Jokovic, director of performance at CalArts, will ascend the wheel as Io, another victim of the gods. It's the first stage role in seven years for theSerbian actress. Now she'll ascend to Prometheus' perch to receive a pep talk from the all-foreseeing Titan on how, thanks to her offspring, the wheel willeventually turn, metaphorically speaking, and humans will one day dethrone Zeus.

"This wheel deserves to be seen," Jokovic said. "It's a special work of art on its own."

But doesn't that make it dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with slips and falls? Might not this exceptionally distinctive set piece upstage the 20-member cast it's meant to hold?

No, says Jokovic. The 10,000-plus pound circle of steel makes a collaborative performance partner. "The wheel is our world, our microcosmic unit," she said."We're not separate from it or against it. It helps to get us centered."

"One of the challenges is to constantly draw the audience into the story," Jones said. "If we tell the story, the wheel will become a byproduct of the story andnot the story a byproduct of the wheel."

Preston does not believe his napkin scrawl birthed a Frankenstein's monster that could eat his production.

"That can happen with any piece of scenery if it's gratuitous," he said. "What we're dealing with here is pretty essential and utilitarian. Originally it was goingto be 30 feet high" — nearly a third bigger than it wound up. "We feel this is the right proportion for the space and that it paradoxically creates a certain kind ofintimacy."

Designer Delgadillo says he made sure to imbue the wheel with a special measure of beneficent karma, insisting that an actual ship's wheel serve as its primarycontrol, rotated by a single technician at its base.

"They were going to fabricate one, but I was real picky" about hunting on EBay to find a used steering wheel from a yacht. He says the text itself dictated this asa spiritual necessity. Chained above the ocean, Prometheus ends by defying the gods to bring it on, knowing they can unleash nature's full force:

"Now all the winds are at each others' throats, the sea is mingled with the sky. And here it comes, in plain view, the onslaught sent by Zeus."

At a time like that, Delgadillo said, a production and its hero should be able to depend on a device that has braved the elements at sea.

[email protected]

'Prometheus Bound'

Where: Getty Villa, 17985 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Sept. 28.

Tickets: $38 and $42

Contact: http://www.getty.edu (310) 440-7300

MORE

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Review: 'Prometheus Bound' is a graceful revival at Getty Villa'Prometheus Bound,' directed by Travis Preston and starring Ron Cephas Jones, makes Aeschylus play feel new at Getty Villa.

September 06, 2013 | By Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times Theater Critic

Prometheus has long been a symbol of the rebel hero, a revolutionary challenging an oppressive order. Dubbed "the patron saint of the proletariat," he is a godwho sided with mankind against the immortals, bestowing on them enlightenment and the great gift of fire, crimes for which he is punished by Zeus, theuniverse's reigning tyrant at the time of the myth.

In Travis Preston's gracefully lucid staging of Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" at the Getty Villa's outdoor Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater,Prometheus is carted out on a wagon that, were he not a deathless god, might be mistaken for a bier. As played by Ron Cephas Jones, this champion ofhumanity, already limp with pain before being enchained to a giant 5-ton wheel, brings to mind images of Jesus at the crucifixion.

"Prometheus Bound" is rarely performed, and with good reason. An immobilized protagonist presents undeniable dramatic problems, but perhaps even moredifficult are the theatrical challenges posed by a playwriting imagination that conscripts into service a chorus of ocean nymphs, a few outlandish deities, and avictimized young woman transformed into a heifer and harassed by a gadfly, all of whom drop by to pay their respects to a prisoner being tortured on a far-flung mountainside.

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Imagine the stillness of Beckett's "Happy Days" crossed with the wildness of James Cameron's "Avatar" and you'll get a sense of the scale of the staginghurdles.

But the text (generally attributed to Aeschylus though questions remain) is so complexly woven and philosophically rich that it cries out for a director boldenough to meet its unorthodox demands. Preston, working with a new translation by Joel Agee that is smooth and clear without being reductive, negotiates anintelligent compromise between innovation and restraint.

His production — a collaboration between the Getty and CalArts Center for New Performance, in association with Trans Arts — is never in competition withAeschylus' tragedy, never experimental for experiment's sake. A meditative rhythm, enhanced by an original jazz score by Vinny Golia and Ellen Reid, keepsthe focus on the play's religious and political depths.

The 23-foot-tall rotating steel wheel dominating Efren Delgadillo Jr.'s set design may sound gimmicky, but the machinery is conservatively employed. Itspresence is more sculptural than athletic. (Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics aren't part of the equation.) This scenic approach taken by Preston, dean of theCalArts School of Theater and artistic director of the CalArts Center for New Performance, suits a play that is static on the surface yet nonetheless coursingwith revelations.

"Prometheus Bound" harks back to an older style of tragedy than the one endorsed by Aristotle's "Poetics." There's drama, but as often with Aeschylus, it's amatter of intensification of theme. The protagonist's growing conviction in the righteousness of his resistance to Zeus' tyranny substitutes for rising action.

The plot, lyrically handled, revolves around a series of exchanges between Prometheus and his visitors. The chorus of ocean daughters, who speak, sing andmove in unison, plead for stories. Full of sympathy, they want to know everything Prometheus knows. "Tell us, unless telling adds to your pain" is their refrain.

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Prometheus obliges them. He will not, however, relent in his defiance of the current brutal Olympian regime. When Okeanos (Joseph Kamal), the father of thechorus, preaches the wisdom of political expediency, Prometheus only becomes more adamant.

Prometheus' encounter with Io (an emotionally supercharged Mirjana Jokovic), the innocent lass whose life was derailed by Zeus' lust, takes us inside theinner workings of his mind. The fates of these victims of Zeus are entwined. It's a complicated tale but suffice it to say that Prometheus, whose name is derivedfrom the Greek word meaning forethought, sees far into the future and knows that the arc of the moral universe is bending infinitesimally toward justice.

This faith sustains him when Hermes (Michael Blackman) races in with more threats from Zeus. Prometheus' suffering will be excruciating, but it won't be fornaught. No wonder he has come to epitomize, despite the fanaticism of his character, the courageous nobility of principled dissent.

Jones' performance lets you feel the emotional weight of Prometheus' position. He speaks less in anger than in weary determination. The cost of his agonizingordeal isn't skimped over.

For Aeschylus, wisdom doesn't replace suffering. It can, however, accompany it. There's pain and there's progress. This double reality is captured in Jones'portrayal of a character who is indeed larger than the drama containing him. (Don't blame Aeschylus: "Prometheus Bound" is the only surviving play in whatmay have been a trilogy.)

The production doesn't crack the conundrum of the chorus. The young women assuming these impossibly ethereal roles, which may be more sea bird than seamaiden, haven't yet found a tone that harmonizes with the gravity of Prometheus' predicament, and Mira Kingsley's choreography for them is still a work in

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progress.

This "Prometheus" may not be the most radical production in the Getty Villa's annual outdoor staging of an ancient classic, but it is one of the clearest and,notwithstanding a few shaky spots, the most theatrically assured. Best of all, it establishes a dialogue between the world of 5th century B.C. Athens and ourown. Truly, this is a revival.

[email protected]

--

'Prometheus Bound'

Where: Getty Villa's Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Ends Sept. 28.

Tickets: $42

Contact: (310) 440-7300 or http://www.getty.edu

Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

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Suggested Critical Reading and Supplemental Resource List

Texts Available in Rehearsal Dramaturgy Library:

McDonald, Marianne. The Living Art of Greek Tragedy. Indiana UP, 2003.

This very brief and accessible introduction covers both textual and performance traditions

and methods, considering the practical challenges presented by Greek Tragedy such as language,

translation, voice and movement performances, and scenic design. McDonald explores each of

these areas for the major plays of three major Greek Tragedians, including Aeschylus and

Prometheus Bound.

Taplin, Oliver. Greek Tragedy in Action. Methuen, 1978.

Although this book has now graced the shelves of libraries for forty-years, Taplin’s short

text remains informative and inspiring for anyone with an interest in Greek Tragedy – from the

student actor to the seasoned director, the experimental designer or the Classical intellectual.

Especially useful are the sections illuminating how to transport the text of a Greek Tragedy into

the perfomance, including thoughts on staging, entrances and exits, movement and gesture,

props, and orientation of the house. While constant in its practicality, Greek Tragedy in Action

returns in each section to questions of meaning and interpretation: what does emotional and

narrative authenticity mean when we stage Classical work for contemporary audiences? What are

our responsibilities as directors, actors, designers, and dramaturgs to the Greek Tragedian, our

audiences, and ourselves?

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On Greek Mythological Figures:

Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology, Marshall Cavendish Reference, 2012, Credo Reference.

General Entries on Background and Artistic Representation (digtal links): Prometheus Hephaestus Oceanus Nymphs Hermes Zeus

On Aeschylean Tragedy (digital links):

Said, Suzanne. “Aeschylan Tragedy.” Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World: A

companion to Greek Tragedu. Justina Gregory, Editor. Wiley, 2005. Credo Reference.

Brief and accessible overviews historical and mythological contexts, major thematic

concepts, and Aeschylean style. A very short critical history of Aeschylus and his major works

are included at the end of the entry, pointing toward resources regarding the major trends in

Aeschylean Criticism, including: major commentaries on the plays, the critical introductions,

stagecraft, language, and politics.

Contemporary Comparison: Aeschylus and Beckett

Available in the Rehearsal Room:

Chioles, John. “The Inner Eyes of The Prometheus Bound.” Aeschylus: Mythic Theatre, Political

Voice. University of Athens Publications, 1995, pp.428-431.

These few pages from Chioles extensive study on Aeschylean Dramaturgy provide an

excellent entry point into Prometheus Bound for current artists with familiarity and foundations

in Modern, Post-Modern, and Experimental Theatre, bridging the potential divide between

antiquated and contemporary practices.

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http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcgods/prometheus/0?institutionId=6437

http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcgods/hephaestus/0?institutionId=6437

http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcgods/oceanus/0?institutionId=6437

http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcgods/nymphs/0?institutionId=6437

http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcgods/hermes/0?institutionId=6437

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Drummond, Clara. Two Translations of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Proquest Dissertations and Theses, 2004. Proquest.

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SCENE BREAKDOWN

SECTION CHARACTERS LINES PROLOGOS Strength

Force (silent) Hephaestus- Prometheus (silently bound)

Prometheus

1–98

99-142

PARODOS Chorus Prometheus

143–33

EPISODE I Chorus Leader Prometheus

Oceanus Prometheus

234 – 332

333 – 461

STASIMON I Chorus Prometheus

462–504

EPISODE II Chorus Prometheus

436–594

STASIMON II Chorus Prometheus

595 - 647

EPISODE III Io Chorus Prometheus

648 - 1040

STASIMON III Chorus Prometheus

1041-1074

EXODOS Chorus Prometheus

Chorus Prometheus Hermes

1075 – 1121

1122 - 1285

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Glossary and Pronunciation Guide from Marianne McDonald’s Notes and Translations

AETHIOP (EE-thee-op) River, “Black” river, possibly the Niger, or the Nile in Egypt.

AMAZONS (AM-ah-zons), warlike women.

ARGOS (ARE-gos) an area of the Peloponnesus (southern Greece).

ARIMASPS (AR-i-masps), one-eyed people who lived in the far north, between the Issedones and the

Hyperboreans.

ATLAS (AT-lass), brother of Prometheus. He carries the heavens on his shoulders because he was one of the

Titans who opposed Zeus.

CHALYBES (KA-lib-eeze), iron workers who live in Asia Minor near the Pontus.

CANOPUS (Ka-NO-bus), city at Nile’s mouth, in Egypt, near the later Alexandria.

CAUCASUS (KAW-ka-sus), mountain chain that extends from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.

CERCHNEA (kerk-NYE-a), lake near Argos.

CILICIAN CAVES (si-LI-sian) caves in Cilicia located in Asia Minor, west of the Euphrates river.

CIMMERIAN (SIM-meer-ian) ISTHMUS or BOSPORUS (BOS-por-us), passage of water that lies between

the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Bosporus means “cow’s ford” referring to Io herself passing over it

in a cow’s shape.

CISTHENE (sis-THEE-nee), far eastern plains where the Gorgons lived. Proverbial for a far away place.

COLCHIS (KOL-kis), country to the east of the Euxine (Black) Sea.

CRONUS (KRON-us), youngest son of Uranus and Gaia, and among the first gods before the Olympians. He

deposed his father, and in turn was deposed by Zeus.

DELPHI (DELL-fee), oracular seat on the side of Mount Parnassus, where the Pythia delivered Apollo’s

oracles.

DODONA (doh-DOH-nah), sanctuary of Zeus in Epirus with a grove of talking oaks whose messages were

interpreted as oracular pronouncements.

EPAPHUS (ee-PAPH-us), son of Io and Zeus, founder of Memphis in Egypt.

FURIES, (also called Erinyes, ER-in-ee-ez), elemental forces of familial vengeance who later become

Eumenides (you-MEN-ih-deeze) ‘kindly ones’ or benevolent goddesses of fertility. They are earth

goddesses in contrast to the Olympians, Apollo and Athena.

GAIA (GUY-ah), earth, consort of Uranus, also another name for Themis.

GORGONS, three sisters: Stheno (STHEN-o) “Strength,” Euryale (your-RYE-ah-lee), “Wide-leaper,” and

Medusa (me-DOO-sah), “ruler,” who have snakes for hair (Medusa, whose gaze turned people to stone,

was the most famous).

GORGONIAN (Gor-GO-nian) PLAINS, where the Gorgon’s dwell.

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GRIFFIN (GRIFF-on), huge mythical birds with powerful wings, lions’ bodies and eaglebeaked.

HADES (HAY-deeze), the underworld, and also king of the underworld.

HEPHAESTUS (hef-FES-tus), god of fire, blacksmiths and artisans. He was conceived by Hera, queen of the

gods, with no male help. Athena likewise was Zeus’s child alone, with no mother.

HERA (HAIR-ah) queen of the gods, married to Zeus.

HERACLES (HAIR-ah-cleeze), son of Zeus and Alcmena, Hera forced him into performing labors. He

eventually killed the Eagle feasting daily on Prometheus’ liver.

HERMES (HER-meeze), messenger god and half-brother of Apollo.

HESIONE (hes-EYE-oh-nee), Oceanid, wife of Prometheus.

HIPPOCAMP (HIP-po-camp), front horse, rear sea serpent, and sometimes represented with wings. An

amphibious form of transportation for sea-deities.

HYBRISTES (hu-BRIS-teeze), river in Asia Minor, whose name means “audacious.”

INACHUS (IN-ah-cus), founder and ruler of Argos, father of Io.

IO (EYE-oh), daughter of Inachus. Zeus pursued her which resulted in her being changed into a white cow and

pursued by a gadfly (because of Hera’s jealousy). She wanders over the world until she comes to Egypt

where she will regain her human form and give birth to Zeus’s son, Epaphus. Heracles will be his

descendent.

IONIAN (IO-nian) Sea, located off the coast of western Greece.

LERNA (LER-nah), lake in the Peloponnese, near Argos. Meadow nearby where Io met with Zeus.

MAEOTIS (may-OH-tis), large lake or body of water (Sea of Azov) between Asia and Europe, north of the

Black Sea.

OLYMPUS (oh-LIMP-us) tallest mountain in Greece and home to the gods who were called Olympians.

PELASGUS (pe-LAS-gus), name of early king of Sicyon, and Pelasgian comes to mean Greek, usually

referring to the Peloponnesians, who lived in Southern Greece.

PHORCYS (FOR-kis), sea god, father of the Gorgons and the Graeae, old women (Pemphredo, “wasp,” Enyo

“war,” and Deino “terror”), who share one eye and one tooth.

POSEIDON (pos-EYE-don), god of the ocean.

PROMETHEUS (pro-MEE-the-us), cousin of Zeus. Titan who sided with Zeus in his war against the giants,

but who stole fire from the gods and is punished for that theft. Heracles will eventually shoot the eagle

that is feeding on his liver.

RHEA (REE-ah), wife of Cronus, mother of Zeus, and his brothers and sisters (Olympians). Rhean Gulf is the

Adriatic Sea, north of the Ionian Sea.

SCYTHIA (SITH-ee-a), land northeast of the Black Sea.

TARTARUS (TAR-tar-us), another name for Hades, the underworld, also the section of Hades where the worst

offenders were punished.

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THEMIS (THEM-is), daughter of Uranus and Gaia (also another name for Themis), mother of Prometheus by

Zeus.

THEMISCYRA (them-is-KYE-ra), town where Amazons lived in Cappadocia in Asia Minor, next to the

Thermodon river.

THERMODON (THER-mo-don), Cappadocian river that flows into the Black Sea.

THESPROTIS (THES-pro-tis) and MOLOSSIAN (mo-LOS-sian) Plain, areas in Epirus (North-western

Greece), near Dodona.

TITANS (TI-tans), children of Uranus and Gaia, large immortals who were the generation of gods before Zeus

and the other Olympians.

TETHYS (TETH-is), daughter of Uranus and Gaia and wife of Oceanus.

TYPHON (TIE-fon), hundred-headed giant who opposed Zeus and was buried under Mount Etna.

URANUS (YOUR-ah-nus), pre-Olympian king of the heavens, a sky god who was deposed by his son Cronus.

ZEUS (ZYOOSE), king of the gods.

Work Cited:

McDonald, Marianne, translator. Prometheus Bound. By Aeschylus, Self-published, 2008,

olli.ucsd.edu/documents/aeschylus.pdf.

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CUT SCENE SAMPLE Lines 333-647, or Episode 1 through Stasimon II

Objectives and Motivations for Proposed Cut Suggestions:

• Clarify “Him” as Zeus • Create more hostility in Prometheus’ interactions with Oceanus • Pare down repetition of expository information • Remove mythological/historical/geographical references with which contemporary

audiences may be unfamiliar • Translate description of physical activities into executable stage action, then remove • Preserve stichomythia • Truncate Strophes/Antistrophes in Chorus (not necessarily maintaining integrity of

symmetry in their meter and form), while preserving Barrett-Browning’s lyricism • Focus Prometheus’ contributions to humankind • Clarify/update some obscure language while preserving Barrett-Browning’s lyricism

o not necessarily technically maintaining meter nor rhyme, to heighten the affect and immediacy of the text for a contemporary audience

• Get Io onstage faster (gratuitous cutting) [Enter OCEANUS on a giant bird] OCEANUS I reach the end of my weary road Where I may see and answer thee, Prometheus, in thine agony! On the back of the quick-winged bird I glode, And I bridled him in With the will of a god! Behold, thy sorrow aches in me, Constrained by the force of kin. Nay, though that tie were all undone, For life of none beneath the sun, Would I hope for benediction Than I hope for thine! And thou shalt learn my words are truth That no fair parlance of the mouth Grows falsely out of mine. Now give me a deed to prove my faith,- For no faster friend is named in breath Than I, Oceanus, am thine. Prometheus. Ha! what has brought thee? Hast thou also come To look upon my woe? How hast thou dared To leave the depths called after thee, the caves Self-hewn and self-roofed with spontaneous rock,

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To visit earth, the mother of my chain? Hast come indeed to view my doom and mourn That I should sorrow thus? Gaze on, and see How I, the fast friend of your Zeus,-how I The erector of the empire in his hand,- Am bent beneath that hand, in this despair! Oceanus. Prometheus, I behold,-and I would fain Exhort thee, though already subtle enough, To a better wisdom. Titan, know thyself. And take new softness to thy manners since A new king rules the gods. If words like these, Harsh words and trenchant, thou wilt fling abroad, Zeus haply, though he sit so far and high, May hear thee do it, and, so, The wrath of Zeus Which now affects thee fiercely, shall appear A mere child's sport at vengeance. Wretched god, Rather dismiss the passion which thou hast, And seek a change from grief. Perhaps I seem A harsh curse waits To address thee with old saws and outworn sense,- yetsuch a curse, Prometheus, surely waits For lips that speak too proudly!-thou, meantime, Art none the meeker, nor dost yield a jot To evil circumstance, preparing still To swell the account of grief with other griefs Than what are borne. Beseech thee, use me then For counsel! do not spurn against the pricks,- Seeing that who reigns, reigns by cruelty Instead of right. And now, I go from hence, And will endeavour if a power of mine Can break thy fetters through. For thee,-be calm, And smooth thy words from passion. Knowest thou not Of perfect knowledge, thou who knowest too much, That where the tongue wags, ruin never lags? Prometheus. I gratulate thee who hast shared and dared All things with me, except their penalty! Enough so! leave these thoughts. It cannot be That thou shouldst move HIM. Zeus may not be moved And thou, beware of sorrow on this road. Oceanus. Ay! ever wiser for another's use Than thine! the event, and not the prophecy,

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Attests it to me. Yet where now I rush, Thy wisdom hath no power to drag me back; Because I glory, glory, go to Zeus And win for thee deliverance from thy pangs, As a free gift from Zeus. Prometheus. Why there, again, I give thee gratulation and applause! Thou lackest no goodwill. But, as for deeds, Do nought! 'twere all done vainly; helping nought, Whatever thou wouldst do. Rather take rest, And keep thyself from evil. If I grieve, I do not therefore wish to multiply The griefs of others. Verily, not so! For still my brother's doom doth vex my soul,- My brother Atlas, standing in the west, Shouldering the burden of the heaven and earth, A difficult burden! I have also seen, And pitied as I saw, the earth-born one, The inhabitant of old Cilician caves, The great war-monster of the hundred heads, (All taken and bowed beneath the violent Hand), Typhon the fierce, who did resist the gods, And, hissing slaughter from his dreadful jaws, Flash out ferocious glory from his eyes, As if to storm the throne of Zeus! Whereat, The sleepless arrow of Zeus flew straight at him,- The headlong bolt of thunder breathing flame, And struck him downward from his eminence Of exultation! Through the very soul, It struck him, and his strength was withered up To ashes, thunder-blasted. Now, he lies A helpless trunk supinely, at full length Beside the strait of ocean, spurred into By roots of lEtna,-high upon whose tops Hephrestus sits and strikes the flashing ore. From thence the rivers of fire shall burst away Hereafter, and devour with savage jaws The equal plains of fruitful Sicily, Such passion he shall boil back in hot darts Of an insatiate fury and sough of flame, Fallen Typhon,-howsoever struck and charred By Zeus's bolted thunder! But for thee, Thou art not so unlearned as to need My teaching-let thy knowledge save thyself I quaff the full cup of a present doom,

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And wait till Zeus hath quenched his will in wrath. Oceanus. Prometheus, art thou ignorant of this,- That words do medicine anger? Prometheus. If the word With seasonable softness touch the soul, And, where the parts are ulcerous, sear them not By any rudeness. Oceanus. With a noble aim To dare as nobly-is there harm in that? Dost thou discern it? Teach me. Prometheus. I discern Vain aspiration,- unresultive work. Oceanus. Then suffer me to bear the brunt of this! Since it is profitable that one who is wise Should seem not wise at all. Prometheus. And such would seem My very crime. Oceanus. In truth thine argument Sends me back home. Prometheus. Lest any lament for me Should cast thee down to hate. Oceanus. The hate of Zeus, Who sits a new king on the absolute throne? Prometheus Beware of him,-lest thine heart grieve by him. Oceanus.

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Thy doom, Prometheus, be my teacher! Prometheus. Go! Depart-beware!-and keep the mind thou hast. Oceanus. I rush before; thy words drive after. Lo! Thy words drive after. as I rush before- Lo! my four-footed Bird sweeps smooth and wide The flats of air with balanced pinions, glad To bend his knee at home in the ocean-stall. [Exit OCEANUS on a bird] Chorus, [1st strophe.] I moan thy fate, I moan for thee, Prometheus! From my eyes too tender, Drop after drop incessantly The tears of my heart's pity render My cheeks wet from their fountains free,- Because that Zeus, the stem and cold, Whose law is taken from his breast, Uplifts his sceptre manifest Over the gods of old. [1st antistrophe.] All the land is moaning With a murmured plaint to-day. All the mortal nations, Having habitations In the holy Asia, Are a dirge entoning For thine honour and thy brother's, Once majestic beyond others In the old belief,- Now are groaning in the groaning Of thy deep-voiced grief. 2nd strophe. Mourn the maids inhabitant Of the Colchian land, Who with white, calm bosoms, stand In the battle's roar! Mourn the Scythian tribes that haunt The verge of earth, Mreotis' shore.

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'2nd antistrophe. Yea! Arabia's battle crown, And dwellers in the beetling town Mount Caucasus sublimely nears, An iron squadron, thundering down With the sharp-prowed spears. But one other before, have I seen to remain, By invincible pain Bound and vanquished,--one Titan!-'twas Atlas, who bears In a curse from the gods, by that strength of his own Which he evermore wears, The weight of the heaven on his shoulder alone, While he sighs up the stars! And the tides of the ocean wail bursting their bars Murmurs still the profound,- And black Hades roars up through the chasm of the ground,- And the fountains of pure-running rivers moan low In a pathos of woe. Prometheus. Beseech you, think not I am silent thus Through pride or scorn! I only gnaw my heart With meditation, seeing myself so wronged. For so-their honours to these new-made gods, What other gave but I,-and dealt them out With distribution? Ay-but here I am dumb! For here, I should repeat your knowledge to you, If I spake aught. List rather to the deeds I did for mortals!-how, being fools before, I made them wise and true in aim of soul. And let me tell you-not as taunting men, But teaching you the intention of my gifts, How, first beholding, they beheld in vain, And hearing, heard not, but, like shapes in dreams, Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time, Nor knew to build a house against the sun With wicketed sides, nor any woodcraft knew, But lived, like silly ants, beneath the ground In hollow caves unsunned. There, came to them No stedfast sign of winter, nor of spring Flower-perfumed, nor of summer full of fruit, But blindly and lawlessly they did all things, Until I taught them how the stars do rise And set in mystery, and devised for them

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Number, the inducer of philosophies, The synthesis of Letters, and, beside, That sweet muse, mother of all things: Memory. The artificer of all things, Memory, That sweet Muse-mother. I was first to yoke The servile beasts in couples, carrying An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs. I joined to chariots, steeds, that love the bit They champ at-the chief pomp of golden ease! And none but I, originated ships, The seaman's chariots, wandering on the brine With linen wings. And I-oh, miserable!- I did devise for mortals all these arts. I’ve no device left now to save myself From the woe I suffer. Chorus. Unseemly woe Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense, Bewildered! Like a bad leech falling sick Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs Required to save thyself Prometheus. Hearken the rest, And marvel further-what more arts and means I did invent,-this, greatest!-if a man Fell sick, there was no cure, nor esculent Nor chrism nor liquid, but for lack of drugs Men pined and wasted, till I showed them all Those mixtures of emollient remedies Whereby they might be rescued from disease. I fixed the various rules of mantic art, Discerned the vision from the common dream, Instructed them in vocal auguries Hard to interpret, and defined as plain The wayside omens,-flights of crook-clawed birds,- Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate, And which not so, and what the food of each, And what the hates, affections, social needs, Of all to one another,-taught what sign Of visceral lightness, coloured to a shade, May charm the genial gods, and what fair spots Commend the lung and liver. Burning so The limbs encased in fat, and the long chine, I led my mortals on to an art abstruse,

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And cleared their eyes to the image in the fire, Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this. For the other helps of man hid underground, The iron and the brass, silver and gold, Can any dare affirm he found them out Before me? none, I know! unless he choose To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole,- That all arts came to mortals from Prometheus. Chorus. Give mortals now no inexpedient help, Neglecting thine own sorrow! I have hope still To see thee, breaking from the fetter here, Stand up as strong as Zeus. Prometheus. This ends not thus, The oracular Fate ordains. I must be bowed By infinite woes and pangs, to escape this chain. Necessity is stronger than mine art. Chorus. Who holds the helm of that Necessity? Prometheus. The threefold Fates and the unforgetting Furies. Chorus. Is Zeus less absolute than these are? Prometheus. Yea, And therefore cannot fly what is ordained. Chorus. What is ordained for Zeus, except to be A king for ever? Prometheus. 'Tis too early yet For thee to learn it: ask no more. Chorus. Perhaps Thy secret may be something holy?

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Prometheus. Tum To another matter! this, it is not time To speak abroad, but utterly to veil In silence. For by that same secret kept, I 'scape this chain's dishonour and its woe. Chorus, [1st strophe] Never, oh never, May Zeus, the all-giver, Wrestle down from his throne In that might of his own To antagonise mine! Nor let me delay As I bend on my way Toward the gods of the shrine, Where the altar is full Of the blood of the bull, Near the tossing brine Of Ocean my father! May no sin be sped in the word that is said, But my vow be rather Consummated, Nor evermore fail, nor evermore pine. [1st antistrophe] 'Tis sweet to have Life lengthened out With hopes proved brave By the very doubt, Till the spirit enfold Those manifest joys which were foretold! But I thrill to behold Thee, victim doomed, By the countless cares And the drear despairs, For ever consumed,- And all because thou, who art fearless now Of Zeus above, Didst overflow for mankind below With a free-souled, reverent love. Ah friend, behold and see! What's all the beauty of humanity? Can it be fair? What's all the strength?-is it strong?

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And what hope can they bear, These dying livers-living one day long? Ah, seest thou not, my friend, How feeble and slow And like a dream, doth go This poor blind manhood, drifted from its end? And how no mortal wranglings can confuse The harmony of Zeus?

Prometheus, I have learnt these things From the sorrow in thy face. Another song did fold its wings Upon my lips in other days, When round the bath and round the bed The hymeneal chant instead I sang for thee, and smiled,- And thou didst lead, with gifts and vows, Hesione, my father's child, To be thy wedded spouse.

[Io enters.]

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