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Translation by Professor Robert Fagles
Monday, February 6, 2006 at 7:00 pm | Shakespeare Theatre Company 450 7th Street NW Washington, DC 20004
Under the Auspices of the Ambassador of Greece to the United States, Mr. Alexandros Mallias,TThe Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA).
In collaboration with the Shakespeare Theatre Company
This event is theater, pure theater, bringing to life the drama of the Homeric Odyssey as translated into poetic English and performed by accomplished actors. In classical Greece, the official performers of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, called rhapsodes, acted out these epics at grand festivals such as the Panathenaia, the feast of the goddess Athena in Athens. The epic performances by rhapsodes were related to the dramatic performances by actors of tragedy and comedy at the Dionysia, the feast of the god Dionysus in Athens. Rhapsodes differed from actors (hypokritai) in that these performers of epic took turns in acting not only the roles of the characters that were dramatized as speakers-such as Odysseus, Penelope, Athena, and the Cyclops Polyphemus in the Odyssey-but also the role of the character that narrates the Odyssey, the poet Homer.
In our production, these roles-including Homer as master narrator-are divided among actors who re-create the drama of the Odyssey by performing selected scenes from this epic. Interwoven with the scenes are commentaries by Harvard professor Gregory Nagy, an expert on the dynamics of rhapsodic performances of epic in classical and post-classical Athens. He is the author of Plato's Rhapsody and Homer's Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens (Harvard University Press, 2002).
Introduction and commentary by Dr. Gregory Nagy Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Directed by David Muse, Associate Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University In collaboration with Yale University
The Spartans debate whether to go to war; Pericles urges the Athenians not to yield to Spartan threats. The two sides expose the issues and considerations that historically have often led to war. Pericles delivers his famous funeral oration setting forth the highest ideals of the civilization of Classical Athens.
Commentary by Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History, Yale University Directed by David Muse, Associate Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, D.C.
Dramatic reading by professional actors from the Yale School of Drama