Looking in the Mirror of the Past – Shaping Ancient Greek Drama Today

 Lecture by Anthony Stevens

Ancient Greek theatre is alive and well in Modern Theatre - what explains this phenomenon? Dr. Stevens will explore how different approaches to the modern staging of ancient plays, both in Greece and in the wider world, is inevitably bound up with questions of cultural ‘ownership,' of what are continuities and what are discontinuities between the past and the present and raise the question of the essence of what has somehow survived for two and a half thousand years in an ancient Greek play.

Educated at Cambridge, MacMaster and Leicester universities, Dr. Stevens first became involved in practical theater work in the early 1980s. Ever since then, he has worked in a wide variety of genres, styles and contexts, writing, devising, and directing, covering plays from Aeschylus to the post-modern. His own plays have been performed in England, Wales, Scotland, Australia, Greece, and Lebanon. He has been teaching numerous theater and drama courses, both critical and practical, as well as conducting workshops and teaching playwriting. His often highly experimental work, mixing elements from different genres and epochs with a critical approach to theatrical performance, is described in his website www.lostgreekplays.com.  He moved to Greece in 1995, where he also teaches theater to International Baccalaureate students. Presently, he teaches Attic Tragedy on the College Year in Athens program. He is the author of How Plays Tell Stories (2006).

The lecture will be followed by a wine reception.

 Don't miss the lecture "Looking in the Mirror of the Past - Shaping Ancient Greek Drama Today" by Anthony Stevens in Athens, Greece.