ENG 300MWomen in Ancient Theatre

Catalog

Women, such as Clytemnestra, Medea, Phaedra, Helen, Hekabe/Hecuba, Lysistrata, and Cleostrata, are among the most interesting characters developed for the ancient stage. We will look at these women as entertaining and stimulating re-presentations of the feminine and unfeminine (whatever those may mean), as perceived by the cultures that originally watched them and in our own day. This course approaches Greek and Roman dramatic scripts, both tragic and comic, as vehicles for presentation of social norms and anomalies at public festivals and for general entertainment. As public works, these plays offer us a chance to understand gender issues and social mores as presented by actors. We will also examine and practice with ancient theater techniques to better understand the presentation of females by male actors, and we will discuss the venues and genres in which women played female characters to examine the differences gender makes in perception of character and in their real lives as working women. Each play will also be investigated through modern cinematic, theatrical, dance, musical and art historical (ancient and modern) reflections and refractions of these iconic figures in theater history; for example, film from O'Neill's/Mann's Desire under the Elms (Loren) to Pasolini's Medea (Callas), Kakogiannis' Trojan Women (Hepburn, Redgrave) and Spike Lee's Chi-Raq (Parris); dance from Cocteau's Phadre to Martha Graham's Clytemnestra and Cave of the Heart to Mark Morris' Dido and Aeneas. Through evidence from Prof. Starks' own scholarly expertise studying actresses in antiquity, students will also gain rare glimpses of the lives and roles women played on ancient stages as mimes, pantomimes, dancers and singers. Students will gain familiarity with these plays and characters through ample script analysis, artistic and aesthetic interpretation, discussion, performance, feminist theoretical readings, and oral and written presentations of original work.