Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


Mina's dissertation.pdf (1.28 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Revision of Euripides' Tragedies by Contemporary Women Playwrights

Choi, Mina
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1386041799

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Theatre.
The issues addressed by the writers of fifth-century B.C. Athens continue to have great relevance for the contemporary world. This research focuses on the gender dynamics of the plays and how contemporary revisions by women offer new ways of considering these classic texts. Greek drama is known for its strong and vibrant female characters. I use Euripides’ three Greek tragedies--Medea, The Trojan Women, and The Bacchae--as the source texts for new versions of the plays by women writers. I draw on Lynda Hart’s triad of dramaturgical sites that define a feminist dramaturgy: women’s bodies, language, and theatrical space. Chapter two focuses on four revisions of Medea: Franca Rame’s Medea (1981), Jackie Crossland’s Collateral Damage (1991), Deborah Porter’s No More Medea (1990), and Marina Carr’s By the Bog of the Cats (1998). Unlike the character of Medea in Euripides’ play, who discusses Greek honor with heroic language, Rame’s Medea uses a dialect of central Italy, and Carr’s Hester, a stand-in for Medea, uses an Irish dialect illustrating that Medea is not an icon of monstrous motherhood but a particular woman suffering in the patriarchal world. These versions of Medea enter the stage to tell their side of the mythic story of maternal infanticide. Instead of a conventional deus ex machina saving Medea from her miserable circumstance through divine intervention, these contemporary Medeas show the potency of female action and declare their own destiny. In chapter three I consider three works all written and produced in this century based on The Trojan Women: Christine Evans’ Trojan Barbie (2010), Caroline Bird’s Trojan Women: After Euripides (2012) and Kaite O’Reilly’s Peeling (2002). These works symbolically stage women’s bodies as imprisoned and wounded by war, using various props and settings: broken dolls’ bodies and a confined wild tiger in Trojan Barbie, a single pregnant woman tied to her hospital bed as the Chorus in Trojan Women: After Euripides, and disabled actresses trapped in their multi-layered costumes and confined to an unlit backstage in Peeling. All three playwrights suggest a similar message: if babies cannot be protected and if powerless mothers are expected to take responsibility for these vulnerable children against the violence of male-initiated and maintained conflict, tragedy is the only possibility. I examine three works by British writers in chapter four who use The Bacchae as their source material: Maureen Duffy’s Rites (1969), Caryl Churchill and David Lan’s Mouthful of Bird (1986), and Bryony Lavery’s Kitchen Matters (1991). These playwrights are interested in issues related to possession and madness as a means for empowerment under social oppression. In these plays the writers utilize the theatrical space in diverse ways: the female characters in Rites experience divine possession as a group in an isolated place, the women’s lavatory; in A Mouthful of Birds each character goes through transformative madness within a two-level set composed of small box-like rooms; Kitchen Matters is at once a domestic kitchen and at the same time the literal stage of Gay Sweatshop during a funding crisis, ending this work with an analysis of the role of mothers in many of the plays.
Lesley Ferris (Advisor)
185 p.
Classical Studies; Literature; Theater; Theater Studies
Revision; Euripides; Tragedies; Women Playwrights

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Choi, M. (2013). Revision of Euripides' Tragedies by Contemporary Women Playwrights [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1386041799

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Choi, Mina. Revision of Euripides' Tragedies by Contemporary Women Playwrights. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1386041799.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Choi, Mina. "Revision of Euripides' Tragedies by Contemporary Women Playwrights." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1386041799

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1386041799
9,738
© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.