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Document Details : Title: Vier keer Medea Subtitle: Tekst en opvoering, twee gescheiden werelden? Author(s): COUSSENS, Evelyne Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 65 Issue: 2-3 Date: 2023 Pages: 257-273 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.65.2.3292816 Abstract : Since the post-dramatic shifts of the 1980s, literary analysis of the performing arts seems to have become unrelated to performance studies. At best, theatre academics may sometimes wonder: how did the director or theatre-maker deal with the (repertory) text? Thus, however, the possibilities of literary theatre analyses seem quite limited. This article shows that it is not only the text that directs and determines a performance. The (new) performance – to be read as the living tissue of current thoughts, living artists, prevailing views from the social sphere – just as much questions the text as it asks the text a question within a (new) current reality. Using the renowned western ‘repertory text’ Medea by Euripides, this article investigates how such questions can be answered in the interplay between text and performance. In doing so, it relies on three authors and/or theater makers who have engaged with the Medea material: German theatre innovator Heiner Müller, the Belgian director Piet Arfeuille, and the Belgian theater maker and performer Naomi Velissariou. All three have internalized the Greek source material and have, through their performances formulated a response tailored to the needs of their own time. By the analysis of their performances, this article shows that text and performance should not be two worlds, but that our former definitions of what ‘text’ is, hamper such a reaching out. |
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