Title:
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The Body in Translation: The Relationship Between Text and Movement in Modern Poetic Versions of Greek Tragedy
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This research project explores the range of possible relationships
between poetic language and potential physical performances, with
specific focus upon the translation of Greek tragedy. Dramatic dance
was a crucial component of the ancient Greek theatre event. However,
this Athenian tradition of simultaneously verbal and physical theatrical
expression has been lost to the modern theatre. So, each poet who
approaches the task of translating Greek tragedy has the opportunity
to cast their own imaginative re-creation of the ancient text/body
relationship in a wide variety of modes~ .
The thesis is built around five case studies, considering the different
dramatic poetries which characterise the translations from the Greek of
Robert Browning, Gilbert Murray, Ezra Pound, Ted Hughes and Tony
Harrison, and the different ways in which these might impact upon the
appearance and motion of the performing body onstage. It is my
contention that the work of the poet translating for the theatre impacts
upon the body of the performer just as surely as it does upon their
speech.
These issues are examined through a combination of literary analysis,
theatre-history, and personal physical practice. The physical practice
takes the. form of a series of performances of choral extracts from
different translations, in which I (as practitioner) attempt to
demonstrate and test some of the findings and speculations contained
within my text-based research.
My exploration, both intellectual and corporeal, of this subject, is a
personal engagement with some of the ways in which various
strategies of poetic translation are capable of imposing parameters
upon, or suggesting areas of development for, the performer's
theatrical physicality
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