Digging Deeper: An Ancient Greek Play Illustrates Our Need for

Digging Deeper:

An Ancient Greek Play Illustrates Why We Need Dramaturgy

by Curt Columbus

One evening, late last fall, I sat in a virtual classroom full of military veterans. I had been asked to talk about Greek theater, as a part of our ongoing collaboration with the Providence Clemente Veterans’ Initiative. We were discussing scenes from Sophocles’ Ajax; a difficult play, even for seasoned theater makers, let alone for a group of folks who didn’t frequent Trinity Rep more than once a year. What could this 2,000-year-old play possibly have to say to people who had served in American wars for the last 50 years, from Vietnam to Afghanistan? What could I add that would deepen their experience of this play? In order to begin work on any play, we first need to understand its cultural context. Simply reading a play will give some important information, but to really understand what is actually happening, one needs to do extensive research into the world that gave birth to that play in the first place. Contemporary plays are informed by our lived context, and while we may need to do research into specific aspects of a particular play, we know the broader context intuitively. For example, we might need to research aspects of the movie industry for a production, but we still know what contemporary Los Angeles is like, or how people

PICTURED ABOVE: An Attic red-figure column krater, ca. 480 BCE, depicting a Greek chorus, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig, Basel, Switzerland

PICTURED ON PREVIOUS PAGE:

The theater at Epidauros, Greece, photo courtesy Fingalo/Creative Commons; a detail from the handle of the Francois Vase (570-565 BCE), an Attic black-figure vase depicting Ajax carrying the body of Achilles during the Trojan War, photo courtesy Archaeological Museum, Florence, Italy/Creative Commons behave there, or what the broader social behaviors dictate for the actors creating characters. With a play that is centuries old, none of those easy assumptions are available to us. This research, called dramaturgy in the theater, is a fundamental part of the larger process that brings a play to the stage. Good dramaturgy informs choices for costume, scenery, and all of the many aspects of the physical production. It informs the process that actors undertake to uncover the actions and the motivations of the characters, as well as what is important for the audience to understand as they experience the play. It also tells us what is not useful in making the play come to life. So here are some of the things that the dramaturgy of Ajax, and Greek theater in general, illuminates for us: First of all, ancient Greek plays come from a cultural context that is utterly remote from our contemporary world. In addition, we often arrive at our reading of these plays with false preconceptions. For the last several centuries, the popular imagination has painted a picture of ancient Greece as an idyllic, civilized place, with people wandering through white columns in long, white togas. The period in which these plays were written was a far cry from that. Athens at the time was just emerging from a long, violent, tribal period, one that was marked by endless wars with other cities in Greece, as well as throughout the region. These plays were originally staged as a part of the festival of Dionysus, which lasted for days and was marked by intense debauchery and drunkenness. Dionysus is the god of wine, after all.

We see plays today in quiet darkness, in small rooms of no more than a couple thousand people (and that is a big theater these days). Greek plays were staged in huge, outdoor auditoria that seated thousands of people, all of the male citizens of a particular city. And the Dionysian celebrations did not stop when the plays began; feasting, drinking, and other forms of, ahem, revelry took place while the plays were happening onstage. (The only women who were allowed to enter the theaters were prostitutes, who were there to work…) The plays were staged with few scenic elements, but with elaborate costumes. Actors wore huge cloth masks and thick soled sandals, called kothornoi, in order to be seen in such a large space. They were truly larger than life, a detail we forget when we only read the text of the plays. In addition to the actors on the main part of the stage, there was also a chorus of young men (as I mentioned before, women were not allowed in the theaters) who performed in front of the stage. They danced and sang their roles, with choreographed movements and ritualistic gestures, often in bright, colorful costumes. In many ways, Greek plays in performance were much more like a halftime show at the Super Bowl than the theater we practice in our small, interior spaces today. This chorus acted as an intermediary for the large crowd, often helping focus their attention and deepening their experience of the story. What is fascinating about the chorus, is that they were drawn from young, local soldiers in the city’s standing army. Unlike the actors or the playwrights, they literally represented the citizens who were watching them. They were the “home team,” so to speak, whose presence increased the audience’s willingness to pay attention (like parents at a fourth grade play do these days). They also had served their city in its struggles, which added to their appeal. Indeed, the theater was filled with veterans in Athens of the fifth century. Aeschylus, the first, great Athenian playwright, had been a foot soldier in the Persian Wars. His play, The Persians, is remarkable in that it is written from the perspective of the vanquished Persians, not that of his victorious Greeks. Sophocles, the second great Athenian playwright, was a general in the city’s army. His depictions of military men and their conflicts are informed by real life experience, which is visible in the plays, even today. And that leads us back to the veterans in that virtual classroom…. While this historical backdrop may have confirmed what they had felt, the folks involved in this class felt the reality of Ajax and his struggles. For those who don’t know the play (and very few people do, it is almost never performed in our time), Ajax is one of the main heroes of the Trojan War. He is a towering linebacker of a figure who saves the Greeks time and again from defeat. He lays claim to Achilles’ armor, only to be tricked out of it by sly, silver-tongued Odysseus. As a result, Ajax “goes mad” and, in spite of the pleading of his concubine, Tecmessa, he commits suicide. As you might have guessed, the title character and his mental health struggles needed no explanation to these lifelong students. They talked about “moral injury” as a component of all armed conflict, and how Ajax had suffered these invisible wounds, not only as a soldier but through the questionable actions of his command. They brought forward the terrible impact on Tecmessa, the spouse who is damaged by the actions of the wounded soldier. They talked about so many nuances and complexities that anyone listening would have thought that we were reading a play written in the last six months, not 2,500 years ago. The cultural context of the play and its many differences from today presented no obstacle to this eager, experienced audience in the class. This, of course, is the potential of delving into a good play. Dramaturgical research may allow us to enter the reading at a deeper level, but it is ultimately the audience and their willingness to take the journey of the play that brings it to life. It is also the power of great drama that it can live for centuries and still feel present tense when it is unpacked and performed by diligent readers. It is why we go to the theater, why we crave it now when we can’t have it, and why it will survive as long as there are humans gathered around a good story.

Dramaturgical research may allow us to enter the reading at a deeper level, but it is ultimately the audience and their willingness to take the journey of the play that brings it to life.

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