Dr Lucy Jackson, Associate Professor in Classics (ancient Greek literature)
This month saw the launch of a new exhibition featuring some of the productions of ancient Greek drama that have been staged at the National Theatre in London. It was curated by and made in collaboration with the Head of Archive, Dr Erin Lee, and is free to visit from now until the beginning of February 2026.
The exhibition explores quite discursively how these old plays have been reinvented for modern audiences. Focusing on four key elements in ancient Greek drama – sound, space, dance, and community – and using the materials preserved in the Archive, we sought to show and appreciate the creativity used by artists at the National Theatre in reimagining what Greek tragedy is and can be.
The exhibition has been timed to coincide with the latest of these reimaginings – a new version of Euripides’ Bacchae written by Nima Taleghani, and directed by Indhu Rubasingham; it is her first show as the new director of the theatre.
It is interesting to see how at other key points of beginning and renewal in the National Theatre’s history, others have also reached back to ancient Greece. The first play staged in the Olivier auditorium once the South Bank site was completed in 1978 was Edward Bond’s The Woman: Scenes of War and Freedom. And when the building reopened after the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021, it was Kae Tempest’s new version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes – renamed Paradise – that brought audiences back into that shared space once more.
The exhibition draws on research I’ve been doing in the Archive, going through the records of all the Greek tragedies, comedies, and one satyr play, that have ever been staged at the National Theatre. I’m always surprised and delighted to see the creative experiments and different possible versions of a play that emerge from the Archive’s records; a production is always more than the single performance we might see in real life or captured in a digital format.
Some productions seem to have stayed close to the original text while making innovations in other areas such as the chorus or design (The Oresteia, 1981-2; Iphigenia at Aulis, 2004; Medea, 2014). Other productions have a looser connection to the ancient Greek playtext but nonetheless explore the same myths and the same issues (Rites by Maureen Duffy, directed by Joan Plowright in 1969; The Darker Face of the Earth by Rita Dove, directed by James Kerr in 1999; The Other Place written and directed by Alexander Zeldin in 2024). In moving away from an obviously ‘antique’ frame, we often gain a keener sense of perspective on how ancient and modern worlds still resonate. My hope is that, through the research showcased in this exhibition, we can begin to look with a keener eye at our ancient sources. Perhaps there is more to be done with the exiguous evidence for how ancient plays found their way to the stage, and use these modern archival resources as inspiration to interpret ancient theatre culture anew.
You can access the content of the exhibition from anywhere in the world via the Bloomberg Connects Arts and Culture App, searching for ‘National Theatre’, and finding ‘Current Exhibitions’.
The exhibition will run in the Wolfson Gallery on the main site of the National Theatre from September 9th 2025 until early February 2026.
Please do get in touch with any comments or queries you have! lucy.c.jackson@durham.ac.uk
