[Download] "Between Participation and Transgression: New Zealand Drama, 1991-1992 (Surveys) (Company Overview)" by JNZL: Journal of New Zealand Literature # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Between Participation and Transgression: New Zealand Drama, 1991-1992 (Surveys) (Company Overview)
- Author : JNZL: Journal of New Zealand Literature
- Release Date : January 01, 1996
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 257 KB
Description
In Aristophanes' Frogs, Dionysus disguises himself as Heraldes and descends to Hades, where he oversees a competition between Aeschylus and Euripides to establish who is the greater playwright. Taking this as my script, at the end of the period under review I disguised myself as Dionysus and descended into Sydney to observe the successes of two New Zealand playwrights, Alma De Groen and John Clarke, whose plays were running against each other in the city's leading theatres, the Wharf and Belvoir Street. Economics determined that the contest should be uneven: De Groen's Girl who Saw Everything, relocated in the Blue Mountains, was sold out for the season. But, if Sydney only loosely approximates to Hades, John Clarke does not get even that close to Aristophanes: his 'translation' of The Frogs, overlaid with the tonings of an okkerised Fred Dagg, left even more empty seats in the second half than in the first. Meanwhile, Greek translation was flourishing back in New Zealand in 1992: Michael Hurst adapted and directed Lysistrata for Downstage, dropping the chorus and successfully interpolating filaments of contemporary sexual politics, while in Christchurch Robin Bond translated, directed, and acted in a four-hour Oresteia which rethought both its theatricality and literary texture. Nor was Fred Dagg entirely absent from the New Zealand stage: at Writers' Week in Dunedin, Roger Hall played some archive tape which--startlingly--demonstrated that he had invented the character (even if Clarke had filled the gummies). More importantly, the nostalgic recognition of how much Clarke meant to us twenty years ago raised the question of what is filling that gap today.