Tragic Mask of a Young Man, Terracotta, c. 150 B.C., Greece, Musée du Louvre
By Guest Contributor Louis Butelli with Homa Nasab (ed.)
Louis Butelli is Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Los Angeles based multi-media theater company, Psittacus Productions. Psittacus’ staging of A Tale Told By An Idiot is nominated for an LA Weekly Theater Award. Butelli is currently in Washington DC where he, and multi-award winning Psittacus Co-Founder Robert Richmond, are working on the production of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII at the Folger Shakespeare Library which will be presented in conjunction with Vivat Rex! Commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Accession of Henry VIII.
*Also see my earlier piece on Psittacus Productions: “In PSITTACUS’ Theatrum Mundi, Macbeth gets a Web 3.0 treatment“
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When I was a boy, I was first exposed to the Greeks and their gods through the excellent Ingri & Edgar Parin d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths (1962). I read and re-read this book so obsessively that my mother finally hid it… I did move on – eventually, and only after pitching an Ares-grade fit – but it would be difficult to underestimate the degree to which this book stuck with me. I was mesmerized by the tales of gods and monsters, heroes and adventurers, and voyages to the unknown. In no small way, they nudged me down the path toward a career in the theater.
When I began to study the history of theater, it was with bewildered amazement that I learned just how integral the Greeks – and some of my favorite myths – were to the genesis of the art form. I experienced the same phenomenon that many people experience when confronting Antiquity: how very alike humans are and have always been… yet, how very strange and unfamiliar the Ancients actually seem. This rift has been at the core of every experience I’ve had professionally in working on Greek plays.
Theater in the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros, 330-300 BC, Greece, Photo courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust
It has always appeared to me that, by virtue of living in a highly secularized culture, today’s theater does not contain Mystery; that is, in the Eleusinian rather than the Hardy Boys sense. That is not in the same way that it did for ancient Athenians. In the wake of Hume, Nietzsche, Foucault, Feynman, Hawking, Hitchens, et al, when we use the word “God” on stage, in the 21st century AD, it carries with it the possibility of “Doubt.” I would guess – and one can only guess – that when, in the 4th century BC, the Chorus stepped forward to sing a song cautioning against the rage of Apollo, it was delivered and perceived with a very different set of connotations.
The art of contemporary Western theater has always seemed to me to have a societal role without any real equivalency to the position it had in the numerous ancient societies to which Greek theater ultimately spread. To wit; with the shift of our public “conscienceness” to mass media, easily consumed in our own homes or via digital pocket devices, the theater is appreciated as a sort of archaic luxury or, worse still, a status symbol. With few exceptions, the best-funded and most widely attended theater now seems to last about two hours; cost around $100 per ticket; and is subject to its increasingly brutal cannibalization by popular mass media.
In September 2010, at the very moment that this pessimism was reaching a fever pitch for me, I and my (other) Psittacus C0-Founder, Chas LiBretto, were invited to The Getty Villa to consider their vastly comprehensive exhibition, The Art of Ancient Greek Theater.
According to The Getty, the show is the first of its kind, in the United States, in more than half a century, “to focus on the artistic representation of theatrical performance in ancient Greece.” The beautifully illustrated accompanying catalogue, edited by the institution’s Assistant Curator of Antiquities, Mary Louise Hart, includes a dozen scholarly essays by seven different contributors, including: J. Michael Walton, François Lissarrague, Agnes Schwarzmaier, et al. In the Forward to the text, David Bomford, The Getty’s Acting Director, writes, “Ancient art and theater share a strong and enduring connection – one that is inspired by mythology and the social, cultural and political realities of life in ancient Greece.” While accurate – if dry – his statement humbly underestimates the exhibition’s full impact.
Sophocles, Elektra, Olympia Dukakis (Choruus) with Annie Purcell (Elektra), 2010, J. Paul Getty Trust
In celebration of the show’s opening, the American Conservatory Theater presented a production of Sophocles’ Elektra, under the direction of Carey Perloff. It was in this theatrical context that Psittacsus Productions first experienced The Getty’s exhibition: upon early arrival at The Villa for a preview performance of A.C.T.’s Elektra. We wandered into the galleries expecting to see a mere pile of brown and orange vases covered with dancing Satyrs with pointy penises. Though we certainly did see plenty of those, we were amazed by the care and insight with which the objects were wholly contextualized: starting with the cartographic representation of the spread of Greek theater throughout the ancient world and scale model of the Theater of Dionysus at the exhibit’s entrance, to the separation of vases into genre and period… The Art of Ancient Greek Theater invited us to enter its world and gave us the necessary tools to peer into the vibrant and mysterious world of Antiquity.
A week later, we returned to The Getty Villa to continue our conversation with the exhibition’s curator, Mary Louise Hart. To state that Ms. Hart really knows her stuff is an understatement. For the next 90 minutes, Mary Louise treated us to a most thorough and fascinating tour of The Art of Ancient Greek Theater. Grouped into three themes – Dionysian Worship, Tragedy and Satyr Plays, and Comedy – the show takes the viewer on an instantly engaging journey which illuminates the myriad peculiarities of the ancient world.
Sophocles, Elektra, Manoel Felciano (Orestes), Olympia Dukakis (Chorus) and Annie Purcell (Elektra), 2010, J. Paul Getty Trust
The god of wine, transformation, “unreason,” and the theater: Dionysus looms large throughout The Theater. He and his acolytes – the satyrs and the maenads – appear in some form or another on nearly every vessel, often caught in the midst of a theatrical performance. These images reflected ancient Greek theater’s own tradition of holding a five day, city-wide festival in Dionysus’ honor. Plays were staged as tetralogies – a series of three related productions followed by a satyr play. It is this latter form of theatrical invention that most intrigued us.
“The satyr play is a very specific kind of performance, rather unfamiliar to us and not as well preserved by the classical tradition as comedy and tragedy,” François Lissarrague writes in the exhibition’s catalogue. “The presence of satyrs as a chorus [in the play] turns the tragic background into a kind of comic performance. But satyr play is distinct from comedy; the main characters are serious, taken from the heroic past,” he continues. The idea of taking very serious mythological stories and subverting them with the presence of the hedonistic, half-animal satyrs is at once a fascinating meta-theatrical device and, we believe, a recipe for incredibly funny and moving performance pieces.
Unknown (scribe), Manuscript Fragment from Sophocles’ Ichneutai, Papyrus, Late 2nd BC, Roman
I asked the Academy Award winning actress, Olympia Dukakis, who plays a one-woman Chorus in Elektra, what it meant to her to have this incredible collection on hand throughout the rehearsals and performances. Dukakis, one of Psittacus Productions’ Advisory Board Members, responded, “Ancient art objects connect the play, its characters, and its issues to an actual people and time, giving us great insight into our own times.” I couldn’t agree more!
Attributed to the Pronomos Painter (active 410-390 BC), Dionysos with the Cast of a Satyr Play, Terracotta, Greece (Attic)
How did, then, The Art of Ancient Greek Theater cure me of my theatrical pessimism? Let me count the ways … it allowed me to:
- Spend time with the iconic Pronomos Vase and its depiction of actors celebrating with Dionysus backstage at a decadent “cast party”
- Witness (as if) the metamorphosis of mythological figures from reverential to satiric, in less than half a century
- Appreciate the discrepancies in representations of Tragedy where actors and characters are depicted in an iconic manner while those of Comedy are shown in the context of the “stage machinery” with a nod to the illusory nature of theater
- And, finally, contemplate the loss of the ‘Mysterious’ genre of the satyr play.
So, here is how Psittacus Productions will take this serendipitous inspiration and transform it into a 21st century AD aesthetic experience. In January 2011, Psittacus will present Euripides’ The Cyclops, the only complete satyr play in existence, on stage in Los Angeles. The play will be performed at a small theater called Son of Semele, located in LA’s Silverlake neighborhood. Not to put too fine a point on it, however, according to my cherished old copy of D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, the Son of Semele is none other than Dionysus himself.
Congratulations to The Getty Villa on a fascinating production, and big thanks for the inspiration.
In PSITTACUS’ Theatrum Mundi, Macbeth gets a Web 3.0 treatment
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Tags: Ancient Theater, Chas LiBretto, Elektra, Greek Drama, Louis Butelli, Mary Louise Hart, Olympia Dukakis, Psittacus Productions, Satyr Plays, Shakespeare, Sophocles, The Art of Ancient Greek Theater, The Getty
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