Book contents
- Adapting Greek Tragedy
- Adapting Greek Tragedy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Prelude
- Part I Adapting Greek Tragedy
- Part II Adaptation on the Page and on the Stage
- Chapter 5 Interlude
- Chapter 6 The View from the Archive
- Chapter 7 Compromise, Contingency, and Gendered Reception
- Chapter 8 Technology, Media, and Intermediality in Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy
- Chapter 9 Violence in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy
- Chapter 10 Adaptations of Greek Tragedies in Non-Western Performance Cultures
- Chapter 11 Cultural Identities
- Chapter 12 Trapped between Fidelity and Adaptation?
- Chapter 13 Adaptation and the Transtextual Palimpsest
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - Compromise, Contingency, and Gendered Reception
The Case of the Malthouse’s Antigone
from Part II - Adaptation on the Page and on the Stage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2021
- Adapting Greek Tragedy
- Adapting Greek Tragedy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Prelude
- Part I Adapting Greek Tragedy
- Part II Adaptation on the Page and on the Stage
- Chapter 5 Interlude
- Chapter 6 The View from the Archive
- Chapter 7 Compromise, Contingency, and Gendered Reception
- Chapter 8 Technology, Media, and Intermediality in Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy
- Chapter 9 Violence in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy
- Chapter 10 Adaptations of Greek Tragedies in Non-Western Performance Cultures
- Chapter 11 Cultural Identities
- Chapter 12 Trapped between Fidelity and Adaptation?
- Chapter 13 Adaptation and the Transtextual Palimpsest
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 2015, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre staged a highly controversial adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. The critical reception could not have been more polarised and was seemingly entirely split down gendered lines. This chapter, written by the author of (and an actor in) that adaptation, provides both a personal account and academic theorisation of the production. Analysing the context of the Malthouse Antigone, the chapter explores issues of cultural appropriation, national identity, gender performativity, and creative pragmatism that underpinned the creation of the show and contributed to the controversy surrounding it. The chapter also proposes a pragmatic twist to the tendency of classical reception studies to attribute intentionality to production decisions. Whereas analysis of the finished production can give a false sense of a secure directorial intention, analysis of the process demonstrates that the journey from page to stage is constantly at the mercy of contingencies, collaborations, and compromises.
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- Adapting Greek TragedyContemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts, pp. 206 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021