Tragedy in Athens
Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning

This book examines the performance of Greek tragedy in the classical Athenian theatre.

David Wiles (Author)

9780521666152, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 19 August 1999

244 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.335 kg

'… genuinely original treatment … every page demonstrates that new and important things can still be said about the tragic playwrights of 5th-century Athens'. The Anglo-Hellenic Review

This book examines the performance of Greek tragedy in the classical Athenian theatre. Whilst post structuralist criticism of Greek tragedy has tended to focus on the literary text, the analysis of stagecraft and the theatre has been markedly conservative in its methodology. David Wiles corrects that balance, exploring the performance of tragedy as a spatial practice specific to Athenian culture, at once religious and political. Athenian conceptions of space were quite unlike those of the modern world. After reviewing controversies and archaeological data regarding the fifth-century performance space, Wiles turns to the chorus and shows how dance mapped out the space for the purposes of any given play. The book shows how the performance as a whole was organised and, through informative diagrams and accessible analyses, Wiles brings the theatre of Greek tragedy to life.

1. The problem of space
2. The theatre of Dionysus
3. Focus on the centre point
4. The mimetic action of the chorus
5. The chorus: its transformation of space
6. Left and right, east and west
7. Inside/outside
8. The vertical axis
9. The iconography of sacred space
10. Orchestra and theatron
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]