These two workshops, which will accompany Professor Taxidou’s lecture, ‘Tragic Mothers’ on Monday 7 November at 2.15pm, will focus on the demands that the roles of tragic mothers place on contemporary performance. Sometimes good, sometimes good enough, and sometimes monstrous, these roles also question ideas about theatricality, representation and the ways they may or may not be embodied through the performer.

The figures of Clytemnestra, Medea, Agave and Antigone will be used as tropes of experimentation that explore the relationships between maternity and natality, nature and nurture, femininity and masculinity, role/character and performer. Extracts from the Greek plays, together with extracts from twentieth-century texts that re-imagine these roles will be distributed in advance of the workshops. Familiarity with the Greek plays is desirable but not essential.

Open to all – readers and performers alike. Booking is essential because there are a limited number of places, so please register at apgrd@classics.ox.ac.uk for one/both of the workshops.

Clytemnestra’s dream/Clytemnestra’s breast: images, objects, props

Texts:

· Aeschylus, Women at the Graveside (trans. Oliver Taplin), dream scene and breast scene

· August Strindberg, The Pelican (1907), (pp. 137-138)

· Yiannis Ritsos, Orestes (from The Fourth Dimension, 1956-1975), (Trans. P. Green, 1993)

· Judith Kazantsis, Queen Klytemnestra (from Selected Poems 1977-1992)

The second workshop takes place on Friday 11 November. Olga Taxidou will also be delivering an in-person and live-streamed lecture on Monday 7 November.