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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00916
- Thesis Title
- Staging Greek Tragedy in the Digital Era
- Author
- Angeliki POULOU
- E-mail
- poulou.angeliki AT hotmail.fr
- 2nd Author
- -
- 3rd Author
- -
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2017
- Number of Pages
- 949
- University
- University of Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III & National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Joint PhD)
- Thesis Supervisor
- Catherine Treilhou - Balaudé & Platon Mavromoustakos
- Supervisor e-mail
- Catherine.Treilhou@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr & platon@theatre-uoa.gr
- Other Supervisor(s)
- -
- Language(s) of Thesis
- French & Greek
- Department / Discipline
- Doctoral School "Arts and Media" (Sorbonne Nouvelle- Paris III) & Department of Theatre Studies (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
- Copyright Ownership
- Angeliki Poulou
- Languages Familiar to Author
- French, English, Greek
- URL where full thesis can be found
- https://phdtheses.ekt.gr/e & http://www.theses.fr/2017USPCA157a dd/handle/10442/47000?locale=en &
- Keywords
- Greek Tragedy, Digital Media, New media dramaturgy, digital rhapsodies
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- The thesis explores the transformations that digital technology brings to the staging of ancient Greek tragedy, through the explorations of European theatre productions. New media act as text-makers, developing a script, a dramaturgy, creating and re-creating current mythologies and ancient myths. In a way that digital theatre functions as the myth, and artists as contemporary versions of the ancient tragic poet, transforming and visualizing fantasy worlds. Theatre directors, experimenting within their productions with the digital, they modify the "mythological megatext" in their artworks. In other words: digital technology, with its ability to construct worlds, atmospheres, fairy-tales, functions as the myth. On some level, it may also satisfy the need for narration, acting as a rhapsode, resolving and rewriting the dissimilar dramatic elements. In addition to mimesis and illusion, digital media act as performers on stage, as rhapsodes. Technology acts as a performer.
How do new media affect the Discourse produced within performative hybrid events; What kinds of narratives are being created? How to re-appropriate traditional concepts of drama? Could immersion be envisioned as mimesis, digital transformation as katharsis, rhapsodization as intertextuality? And vice versa: Can we poetize the technology?
Greek tragedy, when digitally staged, seems to function as a kaleidoscope of our times; sometimes a lens and at others a shattered mirror, where a game, a "toing and froing" between identities and qualities exists: spectator/citizen, political/religious, time-space of myth/actual current time, presence/absence. With the use of technology and of digital “equivalents”, artists re-conceptualize a series of key notions such as the community, the city, the hubris, the mask, the conflict, the tragic and create equivalent effects for the contemporary spectator: Digital media becomes the discourse/logos. The “oikos”, the royal palace, in front of and within which most events and conflicts occur, is replaced by the screen-palimpsest: it is within the image that we live, we clash, we make history. The mask convention leads to experimentation with sound technologies. The much-discussed political function of tragedy in the context of democratic Athens and the building of a sense of community is now realized through digital technology. Spectators form ephemeral communities in their meeting within the technological environment, the rhizomatic fragmentation of the theatre stage, "hides" the community to transform it into a virtual community. In the end, it is the tragic that is being developed as an idea and a performative phenomenon.