Category: Greek Drama

Classics Confidential:Prodromos Tsinikoris on Telemachos …

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

This just in:

An interview with actor and director Prodromos Tsinikoris, about his recent production ‘Telemachos: Should I Stay or Should I Go?’

“Two young Greek artists, Anestis Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris, and a distinguished German dramatist, Jens Hillje, take Greek immigrants in Germany since the nineteen sixties as their ‘living material’ in the unique spectacle they bring to the OCC stage.
The older generation of immigrants, the Gastarbeiter, and Greeks fleeing the current economic crisis meet in an on-stage production/documentary. The protagonists in this ‘theatre of the real’ are not actors but the Greeks of Germany themselves—old and young, university professors and manual labourers, casino owners and waiters. Each one a modern-day Ulysses, they tell their stories to the audience, either live on stage or in recorded audio-visual material. Alongside them, the young actor/director Prodromos Tsinikoris, who was born in Germany but lives in Greece, completes this contemporary rhapsody as another Telemachos, personifying his generation’s homeland dilemma: “Should I stay or should I go?”. Homer’s Odyssey, the monumental epic of wandering and homecoming, becomes the connecting thread running through this theatrical documentary.”

Classics Confidential: Anastasia Bakogianni on Electra Ancient and Modern

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

I think I missed this one:

This week’s Classics Confidential vodcast features Dr Anastasia Bakogianni of The Open University talking about her work on the reception of Electra in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Anastasia explains in her recent book ‘Electra Ancient and Modern: Aspects of the Reception of the Tragic Heroine’:
“Electra is a unique, complex, and fascinating Greek tragic heroine, who became a source of inspiration for countless playwrights, artists, musicians and film makers. The daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra she famously supported her brother’s quest to avenge their father’s murder even at the cost of matricide. Her passion for justice and her desire for vengeance have echoed down the centuries to the modern era. Enshrined as the mourner of Greek tragedy par excellence Electra has enjoyed a long and rich reception history.”
Our interview touches on Electra’s different treatments by the ancient tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), and aspects of her subsequent reception by later visual artists, including film directors. We also hear about how Electra’s adoption by twentieth-century psychoanalysts have influenced recent versions of her story – which continues to thrill and captivate modern audiences.