Discussion Group: Dramaturgy, Translation, and Reception around/in Aeschylus' Agamemnon
Giovanna Di Martino and Estelle Baudou discussed their on-going workshopping of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. In October 2019, a workshop group composed of postgraduate students and researchers began working on translations of the parodos of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Their translations were then challenged theatrically with the help of stage exercises, and collectively amended, where needed. The workshop's main objective was to use practice in order to build a translation/script for the stage, and explore how the translation could highlight the dramaturgy of the source text. However, when the lockdown began in the UK, the workshop moved to a Zoom format!
Di Martino and Baudo discussed this fascinating transition, archival memory, and the discovery of a new intermediary space connecting translation, philology, and dramaturgy.
Estelle Baudou is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the APGRD, University of Oxford. After a Master's degree in Classical Studies and a Master's degree in Theatre Studies in France, she gained her PhD at the University of Paris-Nanterre with a thesis on the chorus in contemporary performances of Greek tragedies (Une Archéologie du Commun, supervisor: Christian Biet). She has taught theatre theory and practice at the University of Paris-Nanterre and is currently teaching dramaturgy in a French Drama School (CRR de Paris). She has also been working on theatre productions as dramaturg (2019: Les beaux jours d'Aranjuez, director: Y. Henneguelle; Beginning, director: G. Legendre; La nuit des rois, director: S. Levitte) and as stage-director (Seules les Érinyes).
Giovanna Di Martino is Lecturer in Classics at St Anne's. She has worked on the reception of Aeschylus in Italy 1500-1960 for her PhD under the supervision of Fiona Macintosh. Originally from Italy, she gained both her BA and MA in Classics at the State University of Milan. She wrote her MA thesis on the reception of the Seven Against Thebes in the United States, for which she spent a semester at the University of Notre Dame under the supervision of Isabelle Torrance. She is publishing the monograph Translating and Adapting Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes in America (Skenè, Verona). Her ongoing research investigates the translation of Greek drama in the early modern period and classical performance during Fascism.
