Classical Drama at a Distance: Teaching Performance Reception in an Online Environment

How do you encourage students to engage effectively with classical Greek and Roman drama and its reception in the modern world in an online distance learning setting? That was the challenge facing the authors of this article while they collaborated on a section of a new Open University Masters’ course devoted to classical reception. The guiding pedagogical principle that underpins our study material is a multi-vocal approach that foregrounds the wealth of different perspectives, theories and methodologies inherent in the study of classical reception. Choosing performance reception as a paradigm for the whole field, we sought to bridge the gap between unseen lecturers and distance learners, creating a dynamic virtual classroom and equipping students with the skills to carry out further research in this thriving field of classical studies.

  All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances . . .  Shakespeare, As You Like It(Act II, Scene VII)