Poggi, Valentina and Margaret Rose, eds.
A Theatre That Matters: Twentieth-Century Scottish Drama and
Theatre. A Collection of Critical Essays and Interviews.
Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2000 (pp 260), pb,  15.49, ISBN 88-400-0701-6
Since the Second World War Scotland has been engaged in a serious sociocultural uplifting which aimed at forging a modernized Scottish identity for its
people and giving a distinct face to its arts within the emerging contemporary
European culture. The foundation of the International Edinburgh Festival in 1947,
followed by the more adventurous Fringe, and Glasgow’s position as Europe’s city
of culture in 1990 were two very important landmarks in the country’s post-war
artistic movement, often referred as the “Scottish Renaissance.” The emergence of
important new Scottish playwrights and dynamic theatre companies spell out the
aims and diversity of this new flourishing of the Scottish arts both in novel
thematic pursuits (of a national and international caliber) and in an innovative
aesthetic orientation.
The present volume captures the cultural pulse of the country as reflected in
its theatre of the late twentieth century, while also making recourse to earlier
times, especially to the old tradition of variety theatre. It is a collection of
articles and interviews of various length and content, edited by Valentina Poggi
(also a contributor to the volume) and Margaret Rose (who has also written the
introduction). This introduction maps out the aims of the volume, first by
delineating the precise socio-political and cultural image of contemporary
Scotland and second by presenting a brief description of each individual essay.
The thirteen articles included in the collection have been grouped around four
loose thematic cycles: the rewriting of history and myth, material culture
(fashion and food), the problems of linguistic and cultural translation and the
activities of Scottish theatre in production. A fifth section is devoted to a
series of interviews with nine Scottish dramatists, conducted by Margaret Rose
and Emanuela Rossini, and preceded by a brief but comprehensive and useful
introduction also by Rossini.
Solicited writing can be brilliant but it can also, sometimes, weaken the role
of the editor(s) in controlling the range of the material – even occasionally its
quality. The essays collected in this volume are unequal in aim, perspective and
epistemological approach. Some are strongly documented and densely structured;
others are more conversational and impressionistic. Additionally, there seems to
be an over-emphasis on women dramatists and an over-representation of Liz
Lochhead (with three articles devoted to her work exclusively) at the expense of
other deserving writers – irrespective of gender – who only find a place in
survey or collective presentation. As already foreshadowed in Ian Brown and
Barbara Bell’s comprehensive survey “A Duty to History: History and Cultural
Identities in Scottish Theatre,” which strives to pack the three women writers
mentioned into a homogeneous group, the whole volume is marked by a rather
outmoded feminist bent, celebratory in tone, which remains largely unjustified.
This imbalance is to be seen both in the selection of the essays and in the
content of individual contributions.
However, the collection includes some remarkably good scholarship in the area
of contemporary Scottish studies and its strong points should be duly
highlighted. I would particularly commend the contributions of Ian McDonald, Sara
Soncini and Randall Stevenson for their clear and well-structured viewpoint both
in the analysis of individual texts and their cultural commentary. Special
mention should also be made of the meticulous research and the organized, useful
critical presentation of the Scottish theatre tradition, companies and policies
by Mariacristina Cavecchi, Laura Cicognani, Marina Garattoni and partly by Vivien
Devlin. In its entirety the volume is a comprehensive survey of the aims and
activities of contemporary Scottish theatre in the domain of writing (thematic
and stylistic) and that of performance. There emerges a rich image of distinct
ideology and cultural identity in the country, especially in the years following
devolution, and the formation of a new aesthetic in direct interaction with
current European trends rather than in the limited context of the old binary
antagonism with English forms of dramatic literature and performance styles. As
Emanuela Rossini rightly puts it, the book strives to vindicate its title, “A
Theatre That Matters,” and it largely succeeds in its goals through the serious
argumentative tone of its strongest contributions. The effects would have been
even greater if some of the articles abandoned their wishful tone for the sake of
strict and firm debate.
The section on translation policies and methodologies is useful in that (at
its best) it opens up to a more general issue of intercultural politics in
dramatic and theatrical practice. All three articles touch upon this discipline
of linguistic and cultural transposition. However, two of them (Farrell and
Rossini) choose to stay on the surface and only Horvat shows a deeper and more
systematic epistemological interest into the matter. The only grievance in this
last piece is the mysteriously altered gender of the widely known theatre
theorist Patrice Pavis – hopefully not to put it in line with the volume’s
undeclared feminist biases.
What stays with the reader in the end is a very dynamic image of a postmodern
artistic and theatrical Scotland, which is out to play an important formative
role in the cultural life of millennial Europe. As a millennial publication
(2000) the book has certainly achieved its celebratory goals towards a surfacing
new Scottish theatre. As a research project primarily initiated by English
scholars of an Italian Higher Institution it must be warmly greeted and
congratulated for the crosscultural politics it promotes in the agenda of the
international academia.
Elizabeth Sakellaridou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Savas Patsalidis and Anastasia Nikolopoulou, eds.
Melodrama: Generic and Ideological Transformations.
Thessaloniki: U Studio P, 2001. 744 pp. ISBN 960-12-1029-6
“Melodrama is our daily bread,” claims Alejo Carpentier in the epigraph to the
Foreword to this impressively weighty and stimulating volume on transformations
in melodrama. The outcome of a conference entitled “The Ideology and Aesthetic of
Melodramatic Discourse” held at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1999, the
volume attempts to map the field by dividing it into four areas, with examples
from the historicity of melodrama and the decoding of the melodramatic. These
areas are: “The European and American Paradigm of the 19th Century” (Karin
Boklund-Lagopoulou, Michael Hays, Anastasia Nikolopoulou, Zoe Detsi-Diamandi [pp.
31-162]), “The Greek Paradigm in Theatre and Cinema” (Dimitris Spathis, Ioulia
Pipinia, Thodoros Grammatas, Nikos Kolovos, Michalis Kokonis [pp. 163-402]), “The
Feminist
Paradigm”
(E.
Douka-Kabitoglou,
Elizabeth
Sakellaridou,
Domna
Pastourmatzi [pp. 403-516]), and “The Everyday Paradigm” (Savas Patsalidis, Eliza
Koutoupi-Kitis, Marianthi Makri-Tsilipakou, Dimitra Mitta [pp. 517-659]). The
focus of the different contributors to this wide-ranging volume, however, remains
common: the analysis of the transformational relations between “bread and
spectacle,” and of the historicity and decoding both of ideology and of the
generic constraints posed by (dramatic) melodrama to the extent that it generated
a wider melodramatic impulse.
The emancipation of melodrama from a “contemptible symptom of cultural decline
and aesthetic inferiority” into a “cultural space hospitable to a finely-tuned
convergence of ideology and utopia” (Grigoris Paschalidis) presupposes a broader
critical shift, both in terms of an aesthetic rehabilitation of popular and mass
culture and in terms of an ideological suspicion of the aesthetics of “high art.”
Whatever their position in relation to this founding moment in Cultural Studies
(as well as to its occasional melodramatic excesses), however, the essays
collected in this volume share an historical focus which replaces Manichean
bipolarities by a reading of melodrama through its generic and cultural
specificities – a reading, in other words, which takes on board the significance
of certain radical historical shifts. These shifts accompanied the emergence of a
popular, urban element from the time of the French Revolution up until that of
the globalized, televisual society of the spectacle.
This historical approach takes issue, point by point, with the approach of
Peter Brooks in his monumental work dedicated to melodramatic fantasy, to which
frequent reference is made by the authors in this volume. Brooks’s reading of
melodramatic fantasy, “in spite of its claim to examine melodrama historically,
in fact proposes an essentialist discourse which effaces the historical
structures of the genre in the name of a ‘modernist core’” (Nikolopoulou). This
volume employs a critical strategy similar to that employed in an earlier
collection entitled Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre (eds. M. Hays
and A. Nikolopoulou. [New York: St. Martin’s P, 1996]). In this earlier volume,
the support for an historical methodology is expressed as follows:
The capacity of melodrama to simultaneously incorporate the discourses of
imperialism, nationalism, and class and gender conflict points not only to the
genre’s structural malleability but to the role it played in approaching and
“resolving” the historical complexities that lie behind its intersecting
horizons. Melodrama seems to correspond to what Hans Robert Jaus has called a
process-like genre, that is, a genre that does not come to rest in fulfillment
but rather, presents a continually renewed realization. (x-xi)
Most of the contributors to this volume emphasize the ability of a strong
genre to embody as well as juxtapose a range of suppositions and interpretations.
The list of examples could begin with the appearance of Gothic melodramas in the
style of Robin Hood in 1790, which linked melodrama to a pre-Modern oral
tradition, or with the rural and Luddite melodramas of the early 1830s, which
were at times militant in their attack on industrialized capitalism – as in The
Factory Lad by John Walker, a translation of which is appended to this volume.
The convergence of theatre with popular culture provides another point of
reference – for example, that during the second half of the 19th century in
Greece, which accompanied the advent of professionalism in theatre. Finally, we
could mention the analysis of the melodramas of Greek cinema within the context
of the formalization of its production during 1960s urbanization, or even the
widespread and glaring excesses of television soap opera, which occasionally
lends itself to fresh readings.
This volume represents a significant contribution to Greek studies in this
field, both as a comprehensive study in the area of historical poetics and as a
detailed documentation of individual works; the works referring to the Greek
paradigm provide valuable background analysis as well as an historical map of the
field. The volume demonstrates in exemplary manner a fascinating and fertile
field of study ripe for extension into generic and ideological approaches in
other fields, especially within Greek studies, from theatrical and cinematic
melodrama or “novelistic drama” to the novel itself, as well as to the romance
novel, which on some occasions converged with melodrama and on others competed
with it. Perhaps the judgment of Paschalidis, who claims that the novel,
“especially in the 19th century, but also in other more recent forms as well …
[should] be regarded as generically distinct from the tradition of melodrama,” is
in its turn an example of melodramatic excess. I would, however, endorse the
implications of this point―that, in other words, the novel and melodrama together
make up those forms which, “with the various and constantly renewed and
transformed generic modes they have taken and continue to take … thematize
through their character, their ethical problematization and their humanization,
the fundamental re-forms that European society has undergone and continues to
undergo … in the polycentric and homogenized world of contemporary urban, mass
and liberal societies.”
Miltos Pehlivanos
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Translated by Ruth Parkin-Gounelas
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Grammatas, Thodoros.
To Elliniko Theatro ston 20o Aiona. Politismika Protypa kai
Prototypia. [The Greek Theatre in the 20th Century. Cultural Models
and Originality].
2 volumes, Athens: Exantas, 2002 (pp 412+445), pb, 70, ISBN 960-256-5004.
Thodoros Grammatas’ most recent two-volume book is an in-depth portrayal into
the History of 20th century Greek theatre. The primary targets are, among other
things, a) the examination of the relationship between contemporary authentic
dramatic production and local tradition b) the charting and highlighting of the
intervening factors – i.e. theatrical stages and companies, direction – that
affect the rapport between the spectator and the performance; as well as tracing
the overt and covert mechanisms involved in publicizing and promoting the
spectacle (sociology of the theatre). c) Lastly, Grammatas focuses on the
depiction of forms of theatrical expression and modes of theatre that have
largely remained dormant or, despite being widely spread, have not been
extensively studied.
The first volume concentrates more on plays and playwrights. It examines local
and foreign influences, questions of interculturalism, space, aesthetics,
mediation, economics, politics, reception and how they all formulate the local
theatre canon. A key-issue in this volume is ethographia, the Greek version of
the theatre of realism (ethographia = theatre of manners), the origins of which
are traced back to the tradition of the rural and romantic idyll which later
evolves into bourgeois drama, labour and history drama to survive eventually as
neo-ethographia after the Second World War. Kampanellis’ Backyard of Miracles [E
Avli Ton Thavmaton] in 1957, constituted a turning point which the majority of
Greek dramatists followed throughout the 1960s, a trend called ‘neo-ethographia’
or ‘bourgeois drama’ comprising plays that reflect the social reality, the daily
life and a common behaviour easily recognizable by the public.
The influence of American theatre as a vital part of local theatre evolution
is another focal point of the first volume. Karolos Koun’s repertorial choices
(plays by E. O’ Neill, T. Williams, W. Inge, A. Miller) helped familiarize the
Greek public with the potential of American drama and opened up new horizons in
the thematics of the local dramatists. I. Kampanellis’ statement that his first
encounter with American drama was through Koun’s stage is characteristic.
Grammatas’ main thesis in this first half is that Greek theatre has the
capacity to integrate elements of different origin into a uniformed body
expressing simultaneously tradition and modernity, the local and the foreign.
The second volume is more diverse and thus less focused. It begins with a long
chapter on one of the ‘hottest’ issues of Greek theatre studies, the revival of
ancient drama, which he examines from within the frame of a wider global
perspective; it moves on to the examination of light theatre (revues and
comedies), and closes with the discussion of another hot issue, the question of
national theatre in relation to the question of identity and otherness.
A lengthy unit of the second volume is dedicated to melodrama and the
melodramatic element frequently interwoven with ethographia. The author’s
penetrating look defines as melodramatic those elements that apply mainly to the
outer rather than the inner world of the dramatis personae and have an appeal
more on the spectators’ emotions and less on their intellect. Regardless of its
content (rural idyll or patriotic drama, history or labour drama, occupation and
partisan drama or social ethographia),the melodramatic element, the author
argues, follows the trajectory of local theatre’s development to the present.
Yet, what radically changes the route of Greek theatre, according to Grammatas,
is the invasion of the theatre of the absurd that first made its presence felt in
the late 60s when the country was still under a military regime. The poetics of
absurdity with its elliptical discourse, hidden meanings and indirect allusions
was a most suitable vehicle of writers like P. Matesis, L. Anagnostaki, V. Ziogas
to go public with plays that touched upon social and controversial political
issues not easily detectable. The list of writers will grow longer in the ’70s
with Y. Skourtis, K. Mourselas, Y. Maniotis, Y. Dialegmenos and dozens of others
who create their own local version of “absurdity”,” less abstract than one
encounters in Northern Europe and the U.S. and more society oriented. Although
not over yet, the tradition carved by these writers is now challenged by a new
generation of artists, writers, directors and actors, who are more inclined to
seek for models in foreign traditions without of course abandoning their own. As
Grammatas argues, foreign models function as raw material, a source of
inspiration and artistic creation adjusted to the Greek reality which they
express in a unique and identifiable way.
In Grammatas’ detailed account we have a close analysis of plays by
playwrights like Gr. Xenopoulos, P. Horn, N. Kazantzakis, Sp. Melas, D. Bogris,
Ang. Terzakis, I. Kambanellis, P. Matesis, L. Anagnostaki, B. Ziogas, analysis of
the work of directors such as K. Christomanos, Th. Economou, Ph. Politis, D.
Rondiris,K. Koun, as well as many more recent ones and presentation of such
leading theatrical figures as M. Kotopouli, Kyveli, E. Veakis, B. Argyropoulos,
K. Paxinou, A. Minotis, A. Klonis, Y. Tsarouhis, Ph. Kontoglou, Sp. Vassiliou,
and D. Fotopoulos.
The book’s major drawback however, is its lack of a well-focused organizing
principle to guide the reader through the intricate paths of Greek theatre’s
development. Although the writer’s anxiety to ensure the reader’s comprehension
is obvious in the way he analyzes plays and presents complex ideas, he tends to
become repetitive and in places even redundant.
Moreover, the fact that the greatest part of the book consists of previously
published articles creates extra problems of organization, in the sense that the
constituent parts of this two-volume work do not always nicely fit with one
another. Ocassionaly, they overlap or “zig-zag.” There is not always consistent
follow-up to gradually build on a particular thesis or a cluster of problems. As
individual units some of the essays look at their subjects from angles not
previously conceived, some include ideas and objects we long to learn more about,
some are new and exciting, yet there are those (not many) that are a bit blurry
or travel a path that has already been well blazed. That collage of essays takes
away from the book’s much desired compression and makes its reading occasionally
tiresome and unnecessarily winding. Maybe Professor Grammatas should have found
more solid frames for his assembly of facts and ideas.
However this is a book that invites a rethinking of relations. It is no doubt
a rich resource and a stimulus for further investigations. A dynamic study of the
history of modern Greek theatre that provides a broad overview of its development
from the modernist late-nineteenth-century to the postmodern present and also
offers a new understanding of the relationship between theory, theatre history
and politics. It is a comprehensive reference book equally appropriate to a drama
student and an aficionado of the theatre.
Doxa Daphni
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki