Medea at the New Theatre
November 14, 2017
Lynn Fotheringham previews an on-campus Greek tragedy production The New Theatre production of Medea that I mentioned in my last blog-post opens tomorrow. I’ve been lucky enough to get to attend some of the rehearsals over the last fortnight, and to see the performance start coming together. Jazmine Greenaway probably has the most challenging job …
Oedipus showing at the Lakeside
April 20, 2016
Lynn Fotheringham attends a rehearsal of the Lakeside production of Oedipus and considers the process of fragmentation in modern approaches to tragedy. After the Greek tragedy film season, Lakeside Arts is putting on another Greek tragedy this week: this year’s annual collaboration with the Nottingham New Theatre is Sophocles’ Oedipus (Steven Berkoff’s version) http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/theatre/event/3172/oedipus.html. The project, which gives New Theatre students the opportunity to …
Chorus girls – and boys
November 18, 2015
Lynn Fotheringham tells us about the creative challenges and opportunities of the Chorus. In the Horrible Histories Groovy Greeks[1] theatre-show, a family of supposedly late-arriving theatre-goers are sucked into the action to learn about ancient Greek culture. They are informed that the Greeks had democracy, the Olympics and theatre: that the actors (all male) wore masks, …
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk — or should that be Medea?
October 19, 2015
Helen Lovatt reflects on intertextuality and a trip to the opera (and continues to see Argonauts everywhere). Last week I experienced the theatrical pounding of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in a sensational and vivid production by the ENO. Get a flavour of it on youtube here. I do like a text that puts its …
Women of Troy part 3
May 13, 2015
Lynn Fotheringham analyses some audience responses from last week’s production of Women of Troy. In my last post about the New Theatre’s Women of Troy, I mentioned that I was conducting some audience-research via an on-line questionnaire. I am interested in the different ideas of ‘authenticity’ that affect our response to representations of the ancient world, …
Coming Soon: Theatre with a Classical Connection…
January 7, 2015
Lynn Fotheringham has been searching out theatrical productions with a classical connection over the next few months, in Nottingham, nearby cities and London. Sheffield, 13th February only, 13.00: Phaedra’s Love, semi-staged reading as part of a season of the complete works of Sarah Kane, whose reputation for writing plays with lots of on-stage violence suggests …
Drama or History?
December 15, 2014
Victoria Moore, a part-time student on the MA in The Visual Culture of Classical Antiquity, reflects on her experience of The Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi, performed by Opera North at the Royal Theatre, Nottingham. I have to say that I am not familiar with any of Monteverdi’s operas, so my main expectation was of …
On (Not) Spoiling the Medea
November 29, 2014
Lynn Fotheringham reflects on the National Theatre’s recent production of Medea. In 2007 there was a new film-adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel, I am Legend. Two previousversions had failed to justice to the original twist-ending, which chillingly inverts the roles of the vampires/zombies and their hunter. I knew in my heart of hearts that …
Enjoying Receptions of Athenian Tragedy
November 2, 2014
Larissa Ransom, who is studying for an MA in Classical Literature, has recently seen Pilot Theatre’s Antigone, National Theatre Live’s Medea and Broadway Theatre Archive’s Antigone. Here she muses on how this has changed her thinking about Greek tragedy… It is commonly believed that much of a book is lost when turned into a …
Tig, You’re It
October 17, 2014
Lynn Fotheringham, Director of the Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception (based in the Classics Dept at Nottingham University), reviews Pilot Theatre’s current production of Antigone. Pilot Theatre’s production of Sophocles’ Antigone (in a new version by Roy Williams) came to the Lakeside in the same week that we were covering screen-versions of Greek …
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