For this month’s takeover Maria de Fátima Silva tells us about one special area of classical reception research that she oversees at the University of Coimbra, Portugal.

As Full Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Coimbra, Dr. Maria de Fátima Silva‘s has focused her attention predominantly on Greek theatre. Her courses are mainly aimed at students of Classical Studies, but she also teaches students from other disciplines within the Humanities, including Artistic Studies. She has, for example, offered modules on ‘Greek Theatre’, ‘History of Theatre and Performance’ and ‘Modern and Contemporary Classical Tradition’.

She has also worked with theatre groups, who are interested in staging productions connected to ancient Greek and Roman theatre. In the last few years, however, she has shifted focus onto the reception of Classics in Portuguese Literature: first in dramatic texts, and then more recently in poetry, and especially the poetry of the Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

“Rewriting the myths”

This has been something of a rallying cry for colleagues at the Centre for Classical and Humanistic Studies in the University of Coimbra. And right at the heart of the centre’s activities is theatre. And when it came to exploring Portuguese theatre inspired by ancient myths, we knew we had a mountain to climb.

First, we needed to stake out our field. We had to identify those authors and texts that over the centuries  have drawn on the Classics. For Portuguese dramatic literature, there is a strong tradition of classical reception reaching back to the 16th century. Eventually we decided to limit our investigation, for the time being at least, to the 20th and 21st centuries. Now we had a path of literary analysis.

Next we decided to establish close connections between academia, authors and theatre groups. Portuguese translations of the classical dramatic texts were among the first and most important results of these close collaborations between researchers and creative practitioners. Such an environment of mutual learning gave the translated texts an extra level of impact.

Last — but by no means least — we wanted to share the eternal fascination of the Classics with larger audiences.

Classics in Portuguese theatre — New Collections!

Initial results of the research made by the Coimbra group appeared in a scattered form. They have emerged in the shape of articles and even some monographs. In recent years, however, we have stressed the need to deepen and systematise our research activities. Collections of essays, or edited volumes, have since appeared.

Antigone: the eternal seduction of the daughter of Oedipus

The University of Coimbra Press has been an invaluable partner in this venture. With it was created the series ‘Myth and Rewriting’, which provided the perfect space for reception studies. As far as theatre is concerned, Antigone has been at the forefront of our research, and deservedly so.

The contributors to this book obeyed one rule:

… Reception studies require a dialogue with sister cultures within the same traditional vein…

The Table of Contents can be found on the University Press website in Portuguese, but here is the list in English:

  1. de Martino, Antigone on the walls
  2. D. Loureiro, Four funerals and one marriage. Dead and alive in Sophocles’ Antigone
  3. G. Moraes Augusto, From oldness to justice: Antigone and Platonic criticism of tyranny
  4. C. Fialho, Jean Cocteau and Oedipus’ daughter
  5. Morenilla Talens, Espriu’s Antigone
  6. Llaguerri Pubill, Among Sophocles and Anouilh. Antigone and her nurse in Tabares’ refiguration
  7. F. Brasete, Antigone: code name – a play in one act, by Mário Sacramento
  8. G. Costa, Antigone and Medea in the short story ‘A Benfazeja’, by João Guimarães Rosa
  9. F. Silva, Creon, the tyrant of Antigone. His reception in Portugal
  10. Pociña, A different Antigone in Elsa Morante’s La Serata a Colono
  11. López, Some Antigone’s versions in Spain, 20th century
  12. Morais, Antigone inside the walls, against the walls of silence. Myth and history in the metatheatrical recreation of José Martín Elizondo
  13. H. Marques, Antigone: Norm and transgression in Sophocles and Hélia Correia R. González Delgado, The Antigone in Asturian language
  14. Urdician, Antigone again … approach of the French contemporary stage
  15. Várzeas, Antigone on stage in Teatro Nacional de São João. Translation and dramaturgy

 

Portraits of Medea in Portugal during the 20th and 21st Centuries

… in its Portuguese reception, as in the rest of the world, the story of Medea is far more than a tale about the mere misfortunes of a woman who is abandoned by her husband, condemned to exile, deprived of her children, and who exacts her terrible revenge by murdering her sons. From its first versions, it has always been much more than a mere interesting plot, much more than a story of love and disenchantment, of betrayal, anger, and revenge. This is precisely what makes it a classic, that is, topical, contemporary, and as much alive today as it has been in the past and will no doubt continue to be in the future. After all, despite the passing of time, perhaps human beings do not change that much!

These were the merits that made Medea a major theme in Portuguese dramatic literature. Euripides – and later Apollonius and Seneca – are certainly at the origin of all these rewritings, but the journey was not always direct. ‘New originals’, French and Spanish above all, have been incorporated into the surface of this long road. Here’s a link to the Table of Contents.

In dialogue with authors and theatrical companies

The meeting of academics, authors and stage people is always productive. We organised a few workshops to bring people from these ostensibly disparate areas together. Academics and creatives were united under a common flag, the reception of the classics.

This was the message of our initiative ‘Between Past and Present: a long way to go…’, which was organised by the Centre for Classical and Humanistic Studies through the aforementioned research initiative ‘Rewriting the myths’. Members of the academy (Fiona Macintosh), and people from the arts (Hélia Correia from literature, Fernanda Lapa from the theatrical performance, João Canijo from cinema, Amélia Muge from music) met and debated different points of view. In a single day, a window was opened up onto Portugal via its arts and different approaches of the classics.

Other collaborations and contacts

To translate for the stage is to walk a path between the book — which contains the past — and the stage, which is open to contemporaneity. This is certainly the case for the work of Teatro da Cornucópia, led by a complete theatre man such as Luís Miguel Cintra.

Photo by Pedro Soares.

The decision was made to (re)translate the whole of Aristophanes to allow the composition of a new play, which brought together scenes from 9 of the 11 comedies preserved. The result was The City, a new and at the same time wholly classical text. As a structuring line it has: the vices of the city – an utopian attempt at redemption — and, in the end, the victory of inevitable human defects…

It was necessary to analyse the treatments of famous myths in Portuguese dramatic literature, and to bring them back to the stage under another guise. Hélia Correia, an award-winning Portuguese writer, has dedicated part of her writing to the reception of classics. The line adopted is feminine/feminist; her favourite heroines, Antigone, Helen and Medea. Hélia has become a rewarding object of study for the researchers of ‘Rewriting the myths’.

In 2013 Hélia wrote about her reception of classical motifs, her preference for tragic models, the charm of “contradictions”, the fascination with “terror”, with the darkness underlying the light:

My love for Greece, which I think is not mythical, is not that dazzle at the notions we inherited about classical Greece. The idea of clarity, of beauty, of justice, of limpidity. Greece was not that, it was much more than that. And it had fabulous contradictions. Contradictions for us, because for them they were not contradictions. For them, it was a perfectly integrated universe.

[…]

Even terror is extraordinary. This is very difficult to talk about. It’s something very dense and very intense, because I’ve spent my life studying this.

— H. Correia (2013) “Writers (also) have things to say”, in Marques, C. V. (ed.), The writers (also) have things to say. Lisbon, Tinta da China: 377-406.

Desmesura. Exercício com Medeia (Excess. Exercise with Medea) was recently taken to the stage by Escola da Noite, in a captivating performance which had the distinct presence of the author. Euripides is the inescapable model. Medea, the foreigner and filicide. To innovate was to underline these traditional traits:

The barbarian – Medea is now, in Corinth, the lady of the house surrounded by servants, Greek – with the suggestive names of Melana, “the Dark One”, a mature and disillusioned woman, a kind of projection of Medea; and Eritra, “the Redhead”, a name suitable for the seductive youth of another competitor in the love of Jason… But there is also Abar, a Nubian slave, who amplifies the barbarian presence in the action and also the xenophobia of the Corinthians… More than any other trait it is the language that distinguishes and separates them. ‘To know and to share’ is, above all, ‘to understand’ the words that mirror the soul.

Filicide – what motivates it: Love? Hate? Jealousy? Define the word, so that the history gains its correct meaning… What feelings define her maternity: A unnatural violence? The extreme devotion of a protective mother?

Hélia underlines the eternal charm of this challenge (11):

The spite of a sorceress has such a dimension that you never understand it and the chill lasts for an eternity.

Bring the stones to life

On one of the hills of the city of Lisbon are scattered some irregular stones, irregular but suggestive of what must have once been a Roman theatre. To make the Roman Theatre of Lisbon speak was the experience lived for several years by the company Teatro Maizum, directed by Silvina Pereira. The idea was to traverse the ‘life’ of comedy on its way from old Aristophanes, through Menander, Terence and Plautus, to the Portuguese texts of António José da Silva or Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos. Each session, open ‘to the city’, was accompanied by an informative workshop.

It was evocative to hear, from the stones of the old theatre of Lisbon, the bitterness of Knemon, the old father of Menander’s Misanthrope.

Júlio Martín, Cristina Boucho and Bibi Piragibe. Directed by Silvina Pereira. Photograph by Pedro Soares.

… or the romantic confessions of a young man in love, so distracted from his role as carer of the sour old man, when the woman of his dreams was beside him…

Cristina Boucho and Guilherme Barroso. Directed by Silvina Pereira. Photograph by Pedro Soares.

(The Misanthrope by Menander, translation Maria de Fátima Sousa e Silva, Direction Silvina Pereira, Costumes António de Oliveira Pinto. Production Teatro Maizum. Performed in Teatro Romano de Lisboa from 6 to 23 July 2017).

Involve students in the magic of classical theatre

Coimbra Classical Studies has a university theatre group – Thiasos – which over the years has fostered collaboration between academics and students and staged ancient Greek and Roman or classicising plays for school audiences.  Adapting a demanding text like Aristophanes’ Frogs and making it accessible to a heterogeneous contemporary audience was a stimulating experience.

Reading theatre club – reaching out to big audiences

The Reading Theatre Club is for Escola da Noite — a company based in Coimbra — and Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente (Gil Vicente Academic Theatre) a regular occurrence. When they invited us to be involved with their reading of Aeschylus’ Persians we all embarked upon an extraordinary adventure. Any citizen may register as a ‘reader’. A scholar is called to ‘motivate’ voluntary readers to the meaning and objectives of the text. And even if he/she does not belong to the theatrical ‘practice’, ‘the director of the session’ is invited to ‘direct’ the group in a dramatisation sketch. An ‘open’ experience to anyone who wants to live the theatre from within. Then comes the public presentation, where, at the end of the reading, space is given to debate with a wider audience. An excellent way to bring theatre to life for motivated spectators.