USD $172.00
Browse results
The Hero on Stage from the Enlightenment to the Early Twenty-First Century
Series:
Metaforms, Volume: 25
Volume Editor:
Hercules Performed explores the reception of the ancient Greek hero Herakles – the Roman Hercules – on the western stage from the sixteenth century to the present day, focusing on live theatre, including tragedy, comedy and musical drama. Each chapter considers a particular work or theme in detail, exploring the interplay between classical models and a wide variety of modern performance contexts. The volume is one of four to be published in the Metaforms series examining the extraordinarily persistent figuring of Herakles-Hercules in western culture, drawing together scholars from a range of disciplines to offer a unique insight into the hero’s perennial appeal.
The Hero on Stage from the Enlightenment to the Early Twenty-First Century
Series:
Metaforms, Volume: 25
Volume Editor:
Hercules Performed explores the reception of the ancient Greek hero Herakles – the Roman Hercules – on the western stage from the sixteenth century to the present day, focusing on live theatre, including tragedy, comedy and musical drama. Each chapter considers a particular work or theme in detail, exploring the interplay between classical models and a wide variety of modern performance contexts. The volume is one of four to be published in the Metaforms series examining the extraordinarily persistent figuring of Herakles-Hercules in western culture, drawing together scholars from a range of disciplines to offer a unique insight into the hero’s perennial appeal.
Author:
Abstract
In Euripides’ Heracles the chorus has a fundamental role in defending Hercules’ status as a demi-god, yet the old men of Thebes are strangely a lot closer to Amphitryon than to the hero and cannot bear the violence of the madness and retreat in the second half of the play. In this modern version, the violence of the madness is moderated, but the problems related to the status of the hero are no less important. And once again the chorus has a fundamental role, not only by describing the new scenarios of each labour, much like the original chorus, but by poking around and questioning the identity of the hero time and again. As true celebrity journalists the chorus are not by anyone’s side, Hercules ignores them, yet they will have their role until the very end. And, as easily as they were ready to destroy the hero, they will be the ones to announce his true nature. This chapter examines how the chorus is fundamental to the dramatic structure and how it helps the audience to focus on the essential question (both of this play and the Euripides’ original): what is the true nature of the hero?
Author:
Abstract
This chapter focuses on Luigi Riccoboni’s Ercole/Hercule, first staged in Paris in 1717. A peculiar tragicomical rewriting of the events surrounding the death and apotheosis of Hercules, the play stands at the crossroads between different theatrical genres and traditions. The article examines the redevelopment and combining of Classical models (the Senecan tragedies Hercules Furens and Hercules Oetaeus, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Heroides) and the blending of themes, characters and dramaturgical solutions inspired by the tradition of commedia dell’arte.
Author:
Abstract
This chapter will explore Rodosthenous’ 2010 adaptation of Women of Trachis called The Wife of Heracles which was performed at stage@leeds, University of Leeds. Heracles was reimagined as an international footballer superstar while Dianeira was re-envisioned as a hairdressing salon owner. The production took direct inspiration from the 2010 footballer sex scandals which were then contextualised and presented on stage as part of the updated action. Crimp’s Cruel and Tender also shaped some of the language and style of the adaptation. The author will discuss his directorial and adaptation techniques to explore how he used musicalisation, symmetries and improvisation to create a modern world for a contemporary audience.
Author:
Author:
Abstract
Euripides’ use of space has, in many different ways, long been a focus of scholarship on his surviving plays. In recent years, the spatial elements of his Herakles have received some excellent treatments that have been keen to emphasise the variety of spatial forms expressed in and around the city and the eponymous hero. The plural spaces of the play are expressed through the travels of Herakles and his dramatic and gruesome return to his family and to his city, with the communal and domestic spaces of Thebes playing a central role. Two of the most recent anglophone adaptations of the play, Archibald MacLeish’s Herakles (1965) and Simon Armitage’s Mr Heracles (2002), both enjoy playing with the spaces which Herakles inhabits and represents, but they have in common a deliberate programme of replacing or disguising the city, and a distinctive Theban space in some way.
This chapter examines the interplay of space across these three versions and ask what the focus on space in Euripides’ Herakles in recent scholarship can add to the way in which we understand the modern adaptations. And when we have asked these questions, how can the use of space in these two modern adaptations allow us to more keenly appreciate the ways in which Euripides uses a variety of space within this, one of the most troubling and difficult presentations of Herakles in any genre.
Author:
Abstract
This chapter deals with the context of the use of the name Herakles/Hercules in the music scene in the twenty-first century. The chapter will examine lyrics and video clips (where available) by musicians from different languages (English and Portuguese) to understand how Hercules has been used by these artists: what they picked from the hero and what they left behind. Examples focused on are Hercules & Love Affair, the rap group Traffik & DJ Pro Style and the Brazilian rapper C4bal. The discussion will attempt to determine whether Hercules is only the myth or whether there is a more specific classical reference and reflect on why Hercules and not other heroes is referred to by considering the different meanings and referents of Hercules.
Author:
Abstract
With many and varied stories attaching to the legendary hero, Herakles has from earliest times been an ambiguous figure, undertaking great feats as a benefactor of civilization but capable also of great atrocities, his morals and motivation frequently questionable, and the most shocking story of all concerning him must surely be the one in which he kills his own children. The scope of this paper encompasses both original texts and modern stage adaptations, examining Herakles’ filicide story alongside that of Medea against the background of prevailing perceptions of the act and taking into account contemporary research into real-life experience. The majority of modern interpretations choose to ignore Herakles’ act of filicide altogether. Those treatments which do include it are chiefly productions or reworkings of the Euripidean play that bears his name. However, the occlusion of this aspect from mainstream offerings contrasts markedly with the treatment of Medea, another mythological figure who likewise had endless stories attaching to her, but is now – thanks to an eponymic play by Euripides again – remembered almost solely for this one act that she and Herakles have in common: the murder of their own offspring. In order to contextualize modern productions, real-life beliefs about – and attitudes towards – those guilty of filicide are considered in light of the evidence that current research has provided, drawing attention to the gendered nature of perceptions and exposing the problematic nature of the favoured image of Herakles in regard to the filicide narrative.
Author:
Abstract
Heracles, widely recognised by scholars today as a hero situated on the boundary between gods/men and men/beasts, has also served during his long history to explore other boundaries, such as that between virtue and vice. This chapter focuses upon Heracles’ relationships with Omphale and Iole and their impact on his identity as a hero, which contributes to debates about the role of private acts in forming public perceptions of worth.
The chapter examines Broughton’s changes to the cast and plot of Sophocles’ Trachiniae (Handel’s Hercules, 1744) in the context of the eighteenth century’s development of the concept of a permissible separation between public and private personas. The continued effects of this attempted separation in the twenty-first century will be examined through the changes made by Crimp (Cruel and Tender, 2004) and Rodosthenous et al. (The Wife of Herakles, 2010). Dispensing with literal deification, both feature journalists and spin doctors (government ministers and PR agents) who create and destroy a military and sporting hero respectively, leaving the audience to adjudicate his worth.