To the Members of (And Readers For) the Collin Study Grant Task Force

Rich DeRouen

972-548-6793

To the Members of (and Readers for) the Collin Study Grant Task Force:

I am applying for a study grant for a project to be pursued during the Fall 2017 academic semester.

The intent of my study project is to explore the relationship between Greek theater and democratic civic culture. The question of a relationship between these two cultural phenomena of the classical Greek world is raised by the fact that they share a roughly contemporaneous history of development as well as some basic structural parallels (for instance, each can be viewed as the outcome of adding additional individual voices to a stage – one being the stage of political discourse and the other being the stage of narrative performance).

For any relationship between theater and democratic culture to be meaningful, however, it would have to go beyond the superficial similarities described above. In my research, I will be seeking out arguments and evidence for deeper connections, specifically in the following areas: 1) possible shared influences in their origins and development; 2) overt treatment of political issues or events in the available classical plays, and the extent to which that treatment does or does not reflect democratic sentiments; and 3) non-overt elements of the theatrical tradition that might reflect democratic practices or values or that might have served to influence or contribute to such practices or values.

The Relationship Between Greek Theater and Democratic Civic Culture

Rich DeRouen, Humanities

Rationale

I first became conscious several years ago of the parallels between the development of the Greek theatrical tradition in Athens and its transition from an oligarchic political culture to a more democratically ordered political culture. In both cases, the process appears to begin in the 6th century BCE and unfolds with a series of accumulated developments before reaching its full expression in the 5th century. There is also a structural parallel in the sense that the development of democratic processes and mechanisms is one of expanding the base of citizenry and expanding access to the venues of political discourse, thus adding additional individual voices to the political stage, while the development of theater is one of transforming the Greek story-telling tradition to one in which individual characters take on their own voices and speak for themselves (rather than being told about) while the single story-teller is replaced with multiple individual actors giving voice to those individual characters on a performance stage.

My curiosity about this shared similarity has stayed with me, accompanied by occasional attempts to pursue the question of a deeper relationship between these two cultural practices. Although I’m not a classicist, my graduate studies required considerable reading in rhetoric (both classical and modern), which has obvious political implications, and my undergraduate transcript includes 21 hours of coursework in political science studies. At the same time, my teaching obligations over the past 20 years have required me to deepen my interest and knowledge in the classical period, particularly the aesthetic legacy of the Greeks. In the process, my appreciation for the depth of the Greek theatrical tradition has grown, as I’ve come to realize how often the questions and conflicts that appear in Greek drama continue to resonate.

Beyond my personal academic interest, the questions I wish to pursue in this study seem worthy for their own sake. I’ve discovered that there’s been a steady surge of scholarly interest in the past couple of decades in the unique political developments of classical Greece, and Athens in particular, and how those developments might inform our contemporary struggles to maintain a vibrant democratic civic culture. In addition, there’s a growing body of work investigating the possible relationship between the classical Greek political innovations and their contemporaneous literary and performance innovations. Recent developments in our own political culture would seem to only sharpen the value of such studies.

Approach

There are three primary questions that I intend to pursue in this project. First, what shared influences might have existed in the origins and development of both Greek theater and the democratic civic culture of classical Greece? Second, in what ways do political questions or conflicts pertinent to the oligarchy-to-democracy transition appear overtly in the Greek plays that come down to us, and how are those questions or conflicts portrayed? And, third, are there elements of the theatrical culture and tradition – such as conventions of performance or stage production, or developments in the way characters are used or portrayed by the playwrights, or the integration or portrayal of certain political practices on the stage – that might either reflect the developments in the political culture or, indeed, have influenced (whether directly or indirectly) the political culture itself?

As the body of book-length monographs that directly address the interactions between Greek democratic civic culture and Greek theater is not deep, I will resort to extracting much of my information from sources that are often directed at other (or at least larger) subjects. My bibliography consists of a mixture of works on the history and development of Greek democracy, works on the history and development of Greek theater, and works that address more or less directly the political contexts of Greek theater and the possible relationships between that context and the theatrical work itself. I’ve also included a few entries that present current-day viewpoints on the relationship between theater and democratic culture, often in the context of the Greek tradition.

Outcomes

In addition to presenting the results of this study in whatever setting the Study Grant Task Force finds most appropriate, I can see other avenues for using and sharing the findings of my work. I intend to use a portion of this work as the basis for a presentation at a conference in Baltimore in November. It might also be appropriate for the Brown Bag presentation series at Central Park Campus. More generally, I’m hoping the insights to be gained from this study can lend additional depth and institution-wide support to the work of the theater program here at Collin College, one of the exemplary achievements of the fine arts program at our institution, and one the effects of which could be more profound than we often realize.

Work Plan

Week 1: A General Overview of the Period

Osborne,Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy and Politics 430-380 BC.An overview of the general cultural changes that took place in Athens in the transition from 5th c. to 4th c.

Weeks 2 thru 5: History and Origins of Greek Democracy

Cartledge, Democracy: A Life. A detailed history of the emergence and development of Greek democracy.

Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace,Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. A critical examination of the question of "origins" with respect to Greek democracy.

Mitchell, Democracy's Beginning: The Athenian Story. Examines the inspirations for Greek democracy, its successes and failures, and its impact on the arts and philosophy.

Evans, Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens. On the inextricable interdependence of religion and democracy in Athens.

Arnason, Raaflaub and Wagner (eds.),The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations. Details the path to democracy and the interaction with other forms of cultural expression, including artistic expression.

Weeks6 thru 9: History and Origins of Greek Theater

Green,Theatre in Ancient Greek Society. On the function and impact of theater in Greek society.

Ley, A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater.Particular attention to the social and material conditions and elements of Greek stage productions.

Csapoand Miller (eds.),The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Beyond: From Ritual to Drama. An essay collection examining the origins of Greek drama.

Winkler andZeitlin (eds.),Nothing to Do with Dionysos?: Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Essays examining Athenian drama as civic ceremony.

Roselli, Theater of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens.Provides a closer examination of the audience for Greek theater than previously available.

Weeks10 thru 15: Greek Theater and Democratic Culture in Interaction

Beer, Sophocles and the Tragedy of Athenian Democracy. The political nature of Greek tragedy, Sophocles in particular.

Lape, Reproducing Athens: Menander's Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City. Political role of comedy in the Hellenistic period.

Markantonatosand Zimmerman (eds.),Crisis on Stage: Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens. How the work of the late 5th c. mirrors the political and social crises of that period.

Slater,Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes.Examines the connection between theater and political culture through the concept of performance.

Goldhill and Osborne (eds.),Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy.Essay collection on the role of performance in the practice and ideology of democracy.

Chou, Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Democracy.How the multi-vocal form of Greek drama allowed for the integration of dissident voices.

Rosenbloom, “From Poneros to Pharmakos: Theater, Social Drama, and Revolution in Athens, 428-404 BCE.” On the use of comedy as commentary on the conflict between two contending elites – the old aristocratic and the new commercial – in 5th c. Athens.

Zumbrunnen, “Elite Domination and the Clever Citizen: Aristophanes’ Archarnians and Knights.” Reads two plays by the classical comedian as more complex in their political interpretation than has been typically described.

Carter, “Reported Assembly Scenes in Greek Tragedy.” A reading of three scenes from Greek tragedies in which a public assembly is depicted, with debate and decision-making.

Weeks 16: Views from the Present

McGrath, "Theatre and Democracy." A vision of theater for the 21st century.

Halpern, “Theater and Democratic Thought: Arendt to Ranciere.” On Greek political theory as a conceptual bridge between democracy and theater.

Bibliography

Arnason, Johann P., Kurt A. Raaflaub and Peter Wagner (eds.). The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations. Wiley-Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons): Malden, MA;Chichester and Oxford, UK. 2013.

Beer, Josh. Sophocles and the Tragedy of Athenian Democracy. Praeger Publishers (Greenwood Publishing Group): Westport, CT and London. 2004.

Carter, D. M. “Reported Assembly Scenes in Greek Tragedy,” pp. 23-63, Illinois Classical Studies, No. 38 (2013). University of Illinois Press: Champaign-Urbana, IL.

Cartledge, Paul. Democracy: A Life. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK. 2016.

Chou, Mark. Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Democracy. Bloomsbury Academic (Bloomsbury Publishing): New York and London. 2012.

Csapo, Eric, and Margaret C. Miller (eds.). The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Beyond: From Ritual to Drama. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. 2007.

Evans, Nancy. Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA; London. 2010.

Goldhill, Simon, and Robin Osborne (eds.). Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. 1999.

Green, J. R. Theatre in Ancient Greek Society. Routledge: London and New York. 1994.

Halpern, Richard. “Theater and Democratic Thought: Arendt to Ranciere,” pp. 545-572, Critical Inquiry, No. 37 (Spring 2011). University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Lape, Susan. Reproducing Athens: Menander's Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ; Oxford, UK. 2009.

Ley, Graham. A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. 1991, 2006.

Markantonatos, Andreas and Bernhard Zimmerman (eds.). Crisis on Stage: Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin and Boston. 2012.

McGrath, John. "Theatre and Democracy," pp. 133-139, New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, Part 2 (NTQ 70), May 2002. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.

Mitchell, Thomas N. Democracy's Beginning: The Athenian Story. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2015.

Osborne, Robin. Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy and Politics 430-380 BC. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. 2007.

Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober and Robert Wallace. Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA; London. 2007.

Roselli, David Kawalko. Theater of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens. University of Texas Press: Austin, TX. 2011.

Rosenbloom, David. “From Poneros to Pharmakos: Theater, Social Drama, and Revolution in Athens, 428-404 BCE,” pp. 283-346, Classical Antiquity, Vol. 21, No. 2 (October 2002). University of California Press: Berkeley, CA.

Slater, Niall W. Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia. 2002.

Winkler, John J., and Froma I. Zeitlin (eds.). Nothing to Do with Dionysos?: Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ. 1990.

Zumbrunnen, John. “Elite Domination and the Clever Citizen: Aristophanes’ Archarnians and Knights,” pp. 656-677, Political Theory, Vol. 32, No. 5 (Oct 2004). Sage Publications: Los Angeles.

Note: In addition to the works listed, I will probably refer to the Poetics and the Politics of Aristotle from time to time, as a contrasting critical view from the Greek period.