About the project

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It brings together artists and academics across the disciplines of performance studies, visual arts, law, classics, divinity, anthropology and politics, and engages students from a number of taught and research postgraduate programmes. It is based on the premise that theatre, democracy and citizenship are mutually constituted and historically linked. The play has been used as a springboard not only to examine its central themes (the position of the outsider, the position of women, the relationships between the individual and the group, between political and theatrical violence, between revolution and anarchy, between democracy and authoritarianism, between religion and cult) but also to test those themes in their contemporary context.

The series of workshops and seminars do not aim at a final production but focus on the application of theatrical techniques (such as embodiment, impersonation, recitation, choral work, movement etc) as a way of approaching this text pedagogically and artistically. Through a variety of scholarly, artistic and personal perspectives, the participants rehearse the main concerns and acts of this play and its contemporary relevance. It is part of a broader endeavour to open up speculatively the categories of theatricality and performativity and to examine the ways that they may inform dialogues between scholarly disciplines but also between scholarly research and creative practices.

About us

Olga Taxidou is Professor of Drama in English Literature, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures.