Programme

Day 1: Monday 29 June
Rehearsal Room 1 & 2 (West Block), Royal Central School of Speech and Drama 

10.45-11.00 Registration

11.00-12.15 Modes of viewing
Emily Poulter (Durham) – Interpreting characters’ responses to Iphigenia’s sacrifice through modern ‘gaze’ theories
Jelle Verburg (Oxford) – Polemics in a Hellenistic-Jewish tragedy
Maria Turri (Exeter) – Transference and Katharsis, Freud to Aristotle

12.15-1.15 Lunch

1.15-2.30 Dynamics of viewing across time and place
Houman Zandi-zadeh (Flinders) – Phaedra’s Love: Contemporary with a Classical sensibility 
Leyla Ozbek (Pisa) – Spectating a Stone on Stones: The Entrapment of Aeschylus’ Niobe
Sean Kelly (Notre Dame) – Deianeira and the Audience: Sophocles’ Trachiniae, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Handel’s Hercules

2.30-2.50 Coffee

2.50-4.25 Public and private viewing
Maria Haley (Leeds) – Hear No Evil, See No Evil: The Invocation and Infanticide of Seneca’s Medea on Stage and in Recitation
Etta Chattarjee (KCL) – Staging Suicide: the necessity of the onstage suicide in Sophocles’ Ajax
Estelle Baudou (Nanterre) – The Point of View of a “Spect-actor”: Spaces and Speeches of the Chorus in Contemporary Performances of Oedipus Tyrannus

4.25-4.45 Coffee

4.45 Response and Drinks Reception
 

Day 2: Tuesday 30 June
Ioannou Centre Lecture Theatre, 66 St. Giles, Oxford

11.00-12.15 Spaces and Spectating (i)
Kirsty Sedgman (Independent researcher) – ‘Love Greek Drama Love the Brecon Setting’: Audience Responses to The Persians
Mali Skotheim (Princeton) – Mixed Audiences: Spectatorship at the Greek Festivals of the Roman Imperial Period
Anna Trostnikova (RHUL) – Legislation and theatre: spectators in Augustan Rome

12.15-1.10 Spaces and Spectating (ii)
Rioghnach Sachs (KCL) – Sympotic Spectating in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes
Amelia Eichengreen (Durham) – Spectating, Experience, and the Changes under Rome at Greece's Oldest Theatre

1.10-2.10 Lunch

2.10-3.05 Spectating and State Power (i)
Evi Stamatiou (RCSSD) – Aristophanes’ The Frogs as Vehicle for a Contemporary Audience: from Spectating to Participating
Madeleine Scherer (Warwick) – Yaël Farber’s Molora 

3.05-3.15 Coffee

3.15-4.10 Spectating and State Power (ii)
Sandra Pereira Vinagre (Lisbon) – Spectating dictatorship through the Greeks in Portugal
Cristina Perez Diaz (New York) – Re-evaluating the Greek chorus: Yuyachkani’s version of Antigone

4.10-5.00 Plenary, Response from Yana Zarifi and Margaret Coldiron

5.00-6.30 Dinner

Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College
7.00 Guest Lecture: Włodzimierz Staniewski talks about his Pythian Oratorio, with excerpts performed by members of his Company, Gardzienice.
 

About the symposium

This annual Symposium focuses on the reception of Greek and Roman tragedy and comedy, exploring the afterlife of these ancient dramatic texts through re-workings by both writers and practitioners across all genres and periods. Speakers from a number of countries will give papers on the reception of Greek and Roman drama. This year’s guest respondents will be Yana Zarifi (Thiasos Theatre Company) and Margaret Coldiron (Director and specialist in Asian performance). Among those present at this year’s symposium will be Prof. Edith Hall, Prof. Oliver Taplin, and Prof. Fiona Macintosh. The symposium will conclude on the second day, in Oxford, with a talk by Włodzimierz Staniewski on the Pythian Oratorio - with excerpts performed by members of the Gardzienice Company.

Participants
Postgraduates from around the world working on the reception of Greek and Roman drama are welcome to participate, as are those who have completed a doctorate but not yet taken up a post. The symposium is open to speakers from different disciplines, including researchers in the fields of Classics, modern languages and literature, and theatre and performance studies. Practitioners are welcome to contribute their personal experience of working on ancient drama. Papers may also include demonstrations. 

Undergraduates are very welcome to attend. There will be no registration fee. Some travel bursaries will be available this year - please indicate if you would like to be considered for one of these.

Contact for enquiries: postgradsymp@classics.ox.ac.uk