| dc.description.abstract | The present study seeks to answer a fundamental series of questions related to the act of translation immanent to theatrical productions in general: which factors bring the real action into being during a performance? How feasible is it to regard (translated) textual materials as yardsticks while trying to make sense of the modern-day performances of Ancient Greek tragedies? What can be the “source” in a given translational act that is concerned with the translation of the concept of the “tragic” into the dynamics of the target culture? Is it still possible to talk of the so-called source text/s, when what is at stake is the actual translation of an ontological human condition? What kind of communication takes place between spectators and actors in contemporary performances of Attic tragedies?Behind the articulation of these questions lies a hypothesis that deems translation as a form of actual production that comes into existence by way of actors’ (physical and verbal) mimetic interaction with the source dramaturgy, thereby echoing the director’s individual staging approach to the plays at hand. In other words, insofar as the survival of Ancient Greek tragedies on the contemporary stage is on the table, regarding translation as a mode of textual production falls short of doing justice to the actual mimetic transformation of the human suffering that is crucial to the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Within this context, such notions as mimesis, tragedy, the idea of the “tragic,” (source/target) dramaturgy, directing, and acting, not to mention physicality, come to the fore as decisive concepts while approaching the present-day performances of Attic tragedies in a translational framework. For mimesis can plausibly be taken up here as the key to considering the physicality of the performative space of theatre in terms of translation—a corporeal realm which the majority of translation scholars refrain from probing into, even when they advocate the idea of embracing performance as translation and translation as performance. The current investigation delves into this terrain by taking the works of Theodoros Terzopoulos, Şahika Tekand and Tadashi Suzuki on Attic tragedy as case studies.Comprised of three interrelated parts, the dissertation itself endeavours to construct a methodology in the first two chapters before incorporating it into the last ones that are dedicated to the theatrical praxes of Terzopoulos, Tekand and Suzuki. The adopted method of inquiry is simple: each chapter commences from the point where its individual subject(s) and problematics arise from. For that reason, after diagnosing the issues of the literature produced within the spheres of Translation Studies,Classics, and Theatre and Performance Studies vis-à-vis the reception of Attic tragedies on the contemporary stage in the introduction, the first chapter gets down to the nuts and bolts of mimesis by honing in on its archaic overtones and proceeds with the writings of Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle, where the mimetic terminology evolved into (re)presentation, (re)creation, world-making, imitation, and so on. Consecutively concentrating on mimesis qua imitation, mimesis qua mimesis, mimesis qua translation /translation qua mimesis, the chapter constitutes the basis for a discussion of the modi operandiof Denis Diderot and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing with an eye to their echoes in the oeuvre of Samuel Beckett in the twentieth century.The second chapter dwells upon the idea of the “tragic” by zeroing in on the fragments of Heraclitus alongside Plato and Aristotle. Throughout, special emphasis is placed on the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry together with the sociological dynamics surrounding Ancient Greek tragedies and Roman tragedy. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for a confrontation with the German Post-Idealist transformation of the idea into a philosophical category. The fact that mimesis is a recurring thematic variant running almost parallel to the reception of (Attic) tragedy and thetragic allows for an expansion of the previous chapter’s meditations on the notion into this part, where translational journey of the “tragic” is monitored from antiquity to Beckett.The remainder of the foray is allocated to the staging practices of Terzopoulos, Tekand and Suzuki. The remaining chapters begin by offering an account of the socio-cultural climes in which the Attis Theatre, Studio Players and Suzuki Company of Toga respectively emerged, and progress with thorough explorations of the particular acting methods of the directors. Thus, the Biodynamic Method of Terzopoulos, the Performative Staging and Acting Method of Tekand, and the Suzuki Methodare canvassed in detail to divulge the manners in which the archaic and ancient conceptions of mimesis can shed notional light on the underlying aesthetics of the directors’ translation of Ancient Greek tragedies into the dynamics of the contemporary stage. To be able to lend an ear to the practical resonances of the theoretical points raised over the course of the inquiry, every chapter in this final section sequentially terminates with the analyses of Terzopoulos’ reworking(s) of Aeschylus’ Persians (2006) and Prometheus Bound (2010), Tekand’s reworking of Sophocles’ Theban plays as Oedipus Trilogy (2002/2004/2006), as well as with Suzuki’s reworking(s) of Euripides’ Bacchaeas Dionysus (1998) and his Elektra (2010). These examinations, in return, pave the way for a conclusion whereby to recapitulate the findings of the dissertation. | en |
