Ancient Greek Drama

One of the most powerful ways to remedy the forgetfulness that obscures ancient fragmentary drama, in other words to “establish remedies for forgetfulness” as Palamedes claims to have done for the Greeks in the fr. 578 from the homonymous but lost tragedy by Euripides, is to expose the ancient material to the circumstances of contemporary performance. The surviving fragments of ancient Greek dramas are pieces of text which by definition are out of context since they are dislocated parts of a traumatised ancient play: the connection between text and Trauma is considered to be both literal and metaphorical. Yet, there are elements of theatricality inherent to these fragments and this is why they have been used in contemporary performances in various ways and approaches. Theodoros Terzopoulos has used fragments of lost tragedies by Aeschylus to create the performance Epigonoi in 2003 which was first presented in Germany and then toured internationally. From a chorus of five men the suffering bodies of Achilles, Actaeon, Ajax, Heracles and Philoctetes stand out and expose the tragic fate of those who collide with the divine, while the female character of Europe watches the consequences of war, herself a victim of it. In this paper the use of ancient tragic fragments for the creation of contemporary performances will be discussed and evaluated whether it is an appropriate pathway to follow against letting ancient fragmentary drama be forgotten. After presenting and analysing Terzopoulos' Epigonoi, the performativity of fragments will be argued along with their suitability as theatrical material for contemporary dramaturgy that explores the issue of fragmentation in life and in the narrative and also the issue of Trauma itself.

In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.

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  Ο Διόνυσος, υιός του θεού Δία και της θνητής Σεμέλης —θεός κι ο ίδιος απ' τη σύλληψη και τη γέννησή του— καταφθάνει στην πόλη των Θηβών απ' την Ασία, συνοδευόμενος από τις «Βάκχες», τις ακολούθους του. Αυτές, ενδεδυμένες με δέρματα ελαφιών («νεβρίδες») και κρατώντας στα χέρια τους θύρσο (κοντάρι τυλιγμένο με κισσό, σύμβολο και φορέα της θεϊκής δύναμης του Διονύσου), βιώνουν την έκσταση που τους προκαλεί η μέθεξη στα ιερά μυστήρια του θεού, ενόσω βρίσκονται σε κατάσταση ένθεης μανίας —έχοντας απελευθερώσει τον νου τους απ' τα δεσμά και τους κανόνες των εγκοσμίων, και έχοντας συνενωθεί σ' ένα σώμα και σε μια ψυχή, η οποία πάλλεται στον ρυθμό των τυμπάνων και δονείται απ' το γλυκό κελάηδημα των φρυγικών αυλών. Σκοπός του θεού είναι να μυήσει τη Θήβα, πόλη της καταγωγής του, πρώτη ανάμεσα σ' όλη την Ελλάδα στη νέα αυτή ελευθεριάζουσα λατρεία.

  Με το τελευταίο του έργο, τις «Βάκχες», ο Ευριπίδης εισάγει «καινά δαιμόνια» στη γνωσιολογία της αττικής Τραγωδίας αλλά και στη δομή της θεατρικής της πράξης, προσπαθώντας ταυτοχρόνως να τα εισαγάγει και στον τρόπο αντίληψης και σκέψης των θεατών· περισσότερο, ίσως, για να τους προειδοποιήσει, παρά για να τους μεταρρυθμίσει γνωσιολογικώς. Οι «Βάκχες» αποτελούν ίσως περισσότερο μια πολιτισμική κραυγή αγωνίας και μια ποιητική διαμαρτυρία απέναντι στο διαφαινόμενο τέλος της ίδιας της αττικής Τραγωδίας, της αθηναϊκής δημοκρατίας και του κλασικού ελληνισμού, και λιγότερο ένα αμιγώς διδακτικό περιεχόμενο με σκοπό τη νοητική αυτοβελτίωση εκάστου εκ των θεατών. Ο Ευριπίδης νεωτερίζει, ανασκευάζοντας τους μηχανισμούς προσληψιμότητας (και, εν μέρει, και αισθητικής) της αρχαίας αττικής Τραγωδίας· την «καταργεί» ως διακριτό είδος ποιητικής και θεατρικής δημιουργίας και την «ενταφιάζει» (ίσως προσδοκώντας μια πιθανή επαναγέννεσή της στο μέλλον, με τρόπο παρόμοιο με τη διπλή γένεση του Διονύσου, του δημιουργού του θεάτρου), λίγο μόλις καιρό πριν κι ο ίδιος πεθάνει με τρόπο παρόμοιο με αυτόν του πρωταγωνιστή του δράματος.

  Tο βιβλίο περιλαμβάνει το αρχικό (μερικώς ανακατασκευασμένο) αρχαίο κείμενο των "Βακχών", σε έμμετρη μετάφραση στα νέα ελληνικά. Η μετάφραση συνοδεύεται από τον σχολιασμό ενός επιλεγμένου αριθμού στίχων και από έναν εκτενή Πρόλογο —στον οποίο αναλύονται οι «Βάκχες» και το περιεχόμενό τους, συμπεριλαμβανομένης μιας σύνθετης ερμηνευτικής θέωρησης της τραγωδίας.

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  The god Dionysus —son of Zeus and of the mortal woman Semele— arrives in the city of Thebes from Asia, impersonating a mortal and accompanied by the "Bacchae", his female followers. The latter, clad in deer skins and holding in their hands the "thyrsus" (a wooden staff wrapped in ivy, the symbol and the carrier of the divine power of Dionysus), experience the ecstasy by participating in the sacred mysteries of the god Dionysus, while being at the same time in a state of divine madness —after having freed their mind from the worldly bonds and rules, united in one body and one soul; their body pulsating in the rhythm of the drums, and vibrating to the sweet warbling of the Phrygian flutes. The purpose of Dionysus is to initiate Thebes, his natal city, first among all of Greece, in his new liberating cult.

  In his last work, the "Bacchae", Euripides introduces novelties in the epistemology of the Attic Tragedy as well as in the structure of its theatrical representation; at the same time, he tries to introduce these novelties in the way of perception and thinking of the spectators (perhaps, more in an effort to warn them, rather than to reform their mindset). The "Bacchae" can be considered more as a cultural cry of agony as well as a poetic protest against the looming end of the Attic Tragedy itself, the end of the Athenian democracy and the end of the classical Hellenism, and less as a purely didactic content which aims at the intellectual self-improvement of the spectators. Euripides brutally modernizes and reconstructs the mechanisms of the theatrical receptivity (and, in part, of the aesthetics) of the ancient Attic Tragedy; he "abolishes" it as a distinct kind of poetic and theatrical creation, and "buries" it (perhaps anticipating its possible rebirth in the future, in a manner similar to the double birth of Dionysus, the creator of the theater), shortly before he himself dies, in a manner similar to that of the protagonist of the drama.

  This book includes the original (partially reconstructed) ancient text of the "Bacchae", translated side-by-side in modern greek, in verse. The translation is accompanied by commentary on a selected number of verses, and by an extensive Prologue (both in modern greek) —in which the "Bacchae" and its contents are analyzed, including a composite interpretive view of the tragedy.

Madness is captivating. As a concept it is terrifying as it transgresses social norms, yet the human tragedy of it asks for our empathy and understanding. Although this is a modern assessment of the power of madness, looking at classical Athenian drama, it is clear that Athenians felt similarly. Classical Athenian drama is filled with examples of individuals that are mad or have succumbed to madness. Madmen are found on the comic and tragic stage and in these capacities they are there to make the audience laugh and cry. But it will be argued, they also provide a valuable window into how the mentally ill were viewed by the public of Athens. It will be shown that the perception of madness found in Classical Athenian drama reveals a complex understanding of mental illness by Athenians but also a diversity of reactions to mental illness depending on how it presented itself. The plays used to explore madness in antiquity are; Euripides’ Herakles, Bacchae, Medea, and Orestes, Sophocles’ Ajax, Aristophanes’ Wasps and Menander’s The Shield

PROMETEO INCATENATO
di Eschilo | traduzione di Monica Centanni.

Con Sebastiano lo Monaco, Gianluigi Fogacci, Melania Giglio, Massimiliano Vado, Claudio Mazzenga, Mirko Rizzotto.
E con Silvia Giuliano, Angela Rafanelli, Giada Prandi, Diana Manea, Alessandra Guazzini e Maria Teresa Pintus.

scene: Piero Guicciardini
costumi: Giuseppe Avallone
musiche: Dario Arcidiacono
luci: Lucilla Baroni
regia: Roberto Guicciardini

The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro gathers together for the first time the three 'Greek' plays of the MacArthur Genius Award-winning Chicanx playwright and performance artist.

Based respectively on Sophocles' Electra and Oedipus, and Euripides' Medea, Alfaro's Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, and Mojada transplant ancient themes and problems into the 21st century streets of Los Angeles and New York, in order to give voice to the concerns of the Chicanx and wider Latinx communities.

From performances around the world including sold-out runs at New York's Public Theater, these texts are extremely important to those studying classical reception, Greek theatre and Chicanx writers. This unique anthology features definitive editions of all three plays alongside a comprehensive introduction which provides a critical overview of Luis Alfaro's work, accentuating not only the unique nature of these three 'urban' adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy but also the manner in which they address present-day Chicanx and Latinx socio-political realities across the United States.

A brief introduction to each play and its overall themes precedes the text of the drama. The anthology concludes with exclusive supplementary material aimed at enhancing understanding of Alfaro's plays: a 'Performance History' timeline outlining the performance history of the plays; an alphabetical 'Glossary' explaining the most common terms in Spanish and Spanglish appearing in each play; and a 'Further Reading' list providing primary and secondary bibliography for each play.

The anthology is completed by a new interview with Alfaro which addresses key topics such as Alfaro's engagement with ancient Greek drama and his work with Chicanx communities across the United States, thus providing a critical contextualisation of these critically-acclaimed plays.

Аннотация: Отождествление агона и конфликта в комедиях Аристофана затрудняет интерпретацию аристофановских пьес в плане содержания и композиции. Комедии без агона и комедии с двумя агонами свидетельствуют о факультативности данного структурного элемента. В работе проводится анализ места агона в структуре комедий Аристофана и его соотношения с конфликтом аристофановских произведений.
Ключевые слова: агон, Аристофан, комедия, конфликт, хронотоп.
Resume: Identification of the agon with the conflict in Aristophanes’ comedies complicates interpretation of substance and composition of his plays. Comedies without the agon and comedies with two agons prove optionality of this structural element. The article analyses role of the agon in the structure of Aristophanes’ plays and their correlation with the conflict of his comedies.
Key words: agon, Aristophanes, comedy, conflict, chronotop.

Euripides' Medea had different effects on the audience for a long time and people have judged Medea’s behaviour based on their own understanding. Carole L. Hamilton is one of those who have attempted to compare the response of the Greek audience with that of the modern reader

This chapter begins with Aristotle’s famous statement (Poetics 1453a) that a good tragic plot is one that arouses in its audience fear and pity. It presents strategies for recovering the emotional and moral dimensions of Greek tragedy through teaching ancient drama through performance. It introduces workshop exercises and writing assignments that I have used in the Theatre of Greece and Rome course to help students engage with the formalistic theatrical register of Greek tragedy, to recover the emotive potentiality of silence, and to respond on an affective level to the weighty issues explored in ancient drama.

Crises--such as COVID-19, the Great Recession, and 9/11--are often triggered by low-probability, high-consequence events. Tragedy can help us model the impact of the highly improbable because tragedy is the art form that dramatizes low-probability, high-consequence events. In this book chapter, I demonstrate how tragedy dramatizes the highly improbable in Aeschylus' SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX, and Euripides' BACCHAE. By looking at theatre from the perspective of chance and uncertainty, we may increase our awareness of how risk works in both art and in life, and, in so doing, protect ourselves by becoming antifragile.

http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/458318
This book looks at witnesses to suffering and death in ancient Greek epic (Homer’s Iliad) and tragedy. Internal spectators abound in both genres, and have received due scholarly attention. The present monograph covers new ground by dealing with a specific subset of characters: those who are put in the position of spectator to (and, often, commentator on) their own deed(s). By their very nature, protagonists are confined to the role of witness to the suffering (or deaths) they have caused only for brief stretches of time — often a single scene or even just the length of a speech — but every instance is of central importance, not just to our understanding of the characters in question, but also to the articulation of fundamental themes within the poetic works under examination. As they shift from the status of agent to that of witness, these protagonists, qua spectators to the consequences of their actions, give voice to, dramatize, and enact the tragic motifs of human helplessness and mortal fallibility that lie at the core of Homeric epic and Greek tragedy and that define the human condition, in a manner that leads the audience looking on to ponder their own.

This is an abridged multimedia compendium of Sophocles' Antigone: It may be used as an educational tool for facilitating theatrical immersion of students in ancient drama as an effective method for improving their knowledge of Ancient Greek as a Classical Language (AGCL).

The compendium includes selected excerpts from six acts of Antigone. Every Ancient-Greek word is herein hyperlinked to the on-line classical-works database of the PERSEUS DIGITAL LIBRARY of TUFTS UNIVERSITY. Moreover, for every selected passage of Antigone, three web links to pertinent video clips of a performance of Antigone in Ancient Greek are included: first, with subtitles in English; second, with subtitles in Ancient Greek; and third, with optional subtitles (English, Ancient Greek, or no subtitles).

The English translation of the original text is by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE).

That performance of Antigone was given by a joint cast of high-school students of two lyceums: the ECCLESIASTICAL LYCEUM OF RIZARIOS SCHOOL and the HIGH SCHOOL OF AGIA PARASKEVI FOR HEARING-IMPAIRED STUDENTS, under the auspices of the Hellenic National Commission for UNESCO.

Initially the performance was given in the school campus of the renowned ECCLESIASTICAL LYCEUM OF RIZARIOS SCHOOL  (June 22, 2015) and later in the headquarters building of the MINISTRY OF EDUCATION of Greece (Dec 4, 2015) by an international cast of high-school students (from Greece, Ukraine and Albania) that was bilingual in Ancient Greek and the Greek Sign Language: On stage, the hearing members of the cast recited the original Ancient-Greek text with classical Hellenistic pronunciation and chanted choral excerpts with original byzantine music composed by the student actors themselves, while their hearing-impaired fellow students interpreted Antigone in the Greek Sign Language.

In this context, the performance has been acclaimed as groundbreaking, i.e. “the first in history bilingual performance of ancient drama in Ancient Greek and Sign Language” and also the “the first performance of ancient drama that was given in Ancient Greek in Greece in the last 111 years”.

The unabridged 76-page edition of the compendium is also posted at academia.edu with the following URL:

https://www.academia.edu/33338991/Sophocles_Antigone_Hyperlinked_compendium_for_ancient-drama_immersion_of_English-speaking_students_in_Ancient_Greek_--_UNABRIDGED_version.

Διαβάζοντας την εργασία αυτή ο αναγνώστης θα περιηγηθεί καταρχάς στις προσωπικότητες που επηρέασαν το Γιάννη Τσαρούχη ως εικαστικό και ειδικότερα ως σκηνογράφο, καθώς και στα σημεία αναφοράς για αυτόν, τα σημεία της περιρρέουσας ατμόσφαιρας από τα οποία άντλησε υλικό και κατόπιν μετουσίωσε σε Τέχνη. Πρόκειται για τα στοιχεία που αποτελούν ερμηνευτικά κλειδιά της σκηνογραφικής του Τέχνης. Η παρούσα εργασία φιλοδοξεί, επίσης, να αποτελέσει μια συνοπτική παρουσίαση των σκέψεων και δοκιμών του Γιάννη Τσαρούχη πάνω στην όψη του αρχαίου δράματος. Η τελευταία ενότητα είναι αφιερωμένη σε μια πιο ενδελεχή παρουσίαση των δυο πιο σημαντικών δοκιμών του, οι οποίες θεωρούνται σημαντικοί σταθμοί στην αναβίωση του είδους μεταπολεμικά. Αναφέρομαι στις παραστάσεις των Ορνίθων του Θεάτρου Τέχνης του 1959 και των Τρωάδων του 1977. Στόχος είναι να εξετάσουμε πώς ο δημιουργός τους μετουσιώνει τις σκέψεις του σε θεατρική πράξη και γιατί οι εν λόγω παραστάσεις θεωρούνται από τους ειδικούς ορόσημα στην ιστορία του μεταπολεμικού μας θεάτρου.

This article argues that the “hauling scene” (458–728) of Aristophanes’ Peace is modeled on a distinctive fishing technology, the beach seine, and not, as is commonly held, on the hauling of heavily freighted commercial vessels into port. The dance and song of the comic chorus’ halieutic rescue of the goddess Peace evoke mythological and aetiological narratives of the recovery of talismanic objects from the sea and the confinement of maidens with strong fertility associations. The netfishing theme contributes to the creation of a comic succession myth in which Peace is characterized as a maternal figure whose procreative capacities are obstructed by the personified War, who seeks to prevent the flourishing of human and agricultural fertility.

One of the most complex scenes in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon is the carpet scene, which builds up the tension that is to be released in Agamemnon’s murder after Clytemnestra welcomes him into an ‘unexpected home’ (δῶμ᾿ ἄελπτον [Aesch. Ag. 911]). Lebeck (1971) and Zeitlin (1996) among others have identified the carpet scene as most crucial and have investigated aspects of its complex language, such as the use of the many metaphors. Grethlein (2013) has pointed at the potency of metaphors in the Oresteia, and reads their frequent reoccurrence as a narrative framing tool that helps the audience understand important motifs in the trilogy.
While scholars such as Lebeck (1971) have suggested helpful readings of e.g. the path and the garment metaphors in the carpet scene, two crucial aspects remain unaddressed in scholarship: one, the layering of metaphors in this scene upon another, and two, the extent to which the metaphors in the speech acts correspond with the action of the carpet scene and the prop used on stage – the carpet itself.
This paper suggests a reading of the carpet scene that sheds new light on the twofold nature of the carpet as a metaphor and as a physical path on stage. Inspired by Grethlein’s approach, I argue that Clytemnestra employs the potential of both the path and the garment metaphors, built up previously in the Agamemnon and applied on the carpet, to manipulate and obstruct the reintegration of Agamemnon into his home. Further, I argue that these metaphors enhance her scheming as they manifest in the physical prop, the carpet on stage, that now also exhibits the metaphysical properties of the metaphors applied to it. In conclusion, by examining two little recognized aspects about metaphors in the carpet scene, this paper helps understand how Clytemnestra succeeds in making Agamemnon’s nostos unsuccessful.

A typological pattern is provisionally proposed of the written records of ancient Greek drama, based on literary, epigraphic and iconographic testimony, and on the most up-to-date critical debate on several related topics. The historical context of aurality and performance culture proper to classical Athens (5th-4th centuries BCE) is firstly considered, before focusing on the spread of (re)performances as well as the increasing of private reading of written literature and the birth of scholarship in the Hellenistic era (3rd-1st centuries BCE). The suggested typology includes ‘proleptic’ records, such as the autograph and the scripts copied for performers (actors, chorus), and ‘analeptic’ records, such as scripts for posthumous reperformances, scholarly editions, and copies for private reading. As a result, the essay underscores the need for a reassessment of the traditional aims, targets and means of classical philology when it points towards the products of ancient Attic drama.

The exhibition “Greek set and costume designers and ancient drama” was co-organised by the Faculty of Theatre Studies at the University of Athens. Regarding the approach to this essentially un-researched theme, two years were required and a great deal of research by thirty students, undergraduate and graduate alike, at the University of Athens Faculty of Theatre Studies, which was carried out within the context of the  academic courses of Helen Fessas-Emmanouil.  The exhibition was held in the Kostas Palamas Building of the University of Athens from 31 March to 30 April 1999. A section of the exhibition travelled to nine Greek cities from 1999 to 2001. In November and December 2000 the exhibition was included in the “Culture Train” of “Artists without Borders” and presented in various cities abroad (Belgrade, Zagreb, Vienna etc.).
To accompany the exhibition, a large catalogue was published entitled ‘Ελληνες σκηνογράφοι – ενδυματολόγοι και αρχαίο δράμα (Greek Stage and Costume Designers and Ancient Drama), which contains a prologue by Spyros Evangelatos, theoretical studies by Walter Puchner, Kostas Georgousopoulos, Agnes Mouzenidou and Helen Fessas-Emmanouil, together with presentations of the work, and the views of forty-nine Greek artists on the staging of ancient drama.________________________________________Η έκθεση «Έλληνες σκηνογράφοι – ενδυματολόγοι και αρχαίο δράμα» συνδιοργανώθηκε από το Τμήμα Θεατρικών Σπουδών (ΤΘΣ) του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών. Για την προσέγγιση αυτού του ουσιαστικά αδιερεύνητου θέματος απαιτήθηκε διετής και πολύμοχθη έρευνα τριάντα φοιτητών ―προπτυχιακών και μεταπτυχιακών― του Τμήματος Θεατρικών Σπουδών του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, η οποία διεξήχθη  στο πλαίσιο των μαθημάτων της Ελένης Φεσσά-Εμμανουήλ. Η έκθεση πραγματοποιήθηκε  στο Πολιτιστικό Κέντρο του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών – Κτήριο Κωστή Παλαμά από 31 Μαρτίου έως 30 Απριλίου 1999. Κατά τη διετία 1999-2001  ένα τμήμα της έκθεσης περιόδευσε σε εννέα ελληνικές πόλεις. Τον Νοέμβριο και Δεκέμβριο του 2000 η έκθεση περιελήφθη στο «Τρένο του Πολιτισμού» των «Καλλιτεχνών χωρίς Σύνορα» και παρουσιάστηκε σε διάφορες πόλεις του εξωτερικού (Bελιγράδι, Zάγρεμπ, Bιέννη κ.ά.).
Στο πλαίσιο της Έκθεσης εκδόθηκε μεγάλος κατάλογος – βιβλίο με τίτλο Έλληνες σκηνογράφοι – ενδυματολόγοι και αρχαίο δράμα, στον οποίο περιλαμβάνονται πρόλογος του Σπύρου Ευαγγελάτου, θεωρητικά μελετήματα των Βάλτερ Πούχνερ, Κώστα Γεωργουσόπουλου, Αγνής Μουζενίδου και Ελένης Φεσσά-Εμμανουήλ και παρουσιάσεις του έργου και των απόψεων σαράντα εννέα ελλήνων καλλιτεχνών επάνω στη σκηνική παρουσίαση του αρχαίου δράματος.

Компарацијата помеѓу ликовите на Антигона и Креонт цели
да ја спореди и објасни разликата во интерпретацијата на волјата на боговите која во грчката митологија никогаш не е унифицирана. Следствено на тоа се поставува тезата дека и двата лика кои се водени од сопствените верувања, чувства и интереси сами ја креираат сопствената судбина, а Софокле во преден план го става развојот на карактерите претставувајќи ни ги како два совршени ривали.

Este breve estudo comparativo das comédias de Aristófanes Os Cavaleiros e Os Acarnenses pretende abordar a forma pela qual política do representante democrático da Atenas do século V a.C. era vista por Aristófanes, tal como a crítica que o comediógrafo faz da situação política da pólis, tendo em consideração o alvo maior da crítica nas duas peças, o representante político Cléon.

Rappresentazione teatrale | dal 31 luglio al 28 agosto 2021 Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 18 agosto 2020 Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 20 luglio 2019 Segesta | 5 gennaio 2019, Teatro Massimo Comunale - Siracusa | 1 agosto 2018, Teatro romano - Ascoli Piceno | 14-15 luglio 2018, Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 25-26 agosto 2017, Valle dei Templi - Agrigento | 9 agosto 2017, Fano |  | 30 luglio 2017, Sarsina, Arena Plautina | 21 febbraio 2008, Teatro Goldoni - Venezia  | 27 agosto 2005 Gipsoteca canoviana, Possagno

Con Sebastiano Lo Monaco.
Testo di Monica Centanni.
Da Omero, Eschilo, Lucrezio, Virgilio.

Un nuovo rapsodo ci racconta, ci ricorda, la guerra di Troia. La voce del cantore riannoda e ricompone i fili della narrazione omerica e la storia della spedizione achea contro la rocca di Priamo viene narrata così dall’inizio alla fine: dagli amori di Elena e Paride, fino all’inganno del cavallo, la conquista e l’incendio della città.

Storie di eroi – Achille Ettore Aiace Ulisse Diomede – che nell’impresa mettono alla prova il limite e la qualità del loro singolare valore e intanto, insieme, disegnano la variegata costellazione dei valori su cui si fonda, nel bene e nel male, la nostra civiltà occidentale: amicizia, coraggio, lealtà, carattere, astuzia, passione, ragione.
Storie di dei – Atena Poseidone Ares Afrodite – che si schierano in battaglia al fianco degli uomini per dar prova non solo del loro potere, ma della loro stessa esistenza.

L’attore si presenta nelle vesti di un moderno cantore che cuce in una nuova rapsodia i brani degli antichi racconti; ma presta anche corpo e voce agli attori del mito, dei ed eroi. Il testo è composto incastonando nel racconto epico dell’Iliade anche brani tratti dall’Odissea, dall’Agamennone di Eschilo, dal De rerum natura di Lucrezio, dall’Eneide di Virgilio, e dai poemi epici minori sulla conquista di Troia.