Classical Greek Theatre: New Views of an Old Subject

12. Validation (and Discovery) by Experiment: Producing a Three-Actor Ion

VALIDATION (AND DISCOVERY) BY EXPERIMENT Producing a Three-Actor Ion In January 1997, I staged a production of Ion for the Lubbock (Texas) Community Theatre, giving me the opportunity to test whether Euripides' "tragedy," as it was classified in the fifth century, would take the stage in modern times as a "romantic comedy." A secondary aim was to see whether a double-purchase pulley system would prevent a flying actor from revolving uncontrollably. However, as work progressed, a third question emerged: would the show play more effectively if the cast was limited to only three actors? Performances confirmed the validity of both initial hypotheses: audiences were charmed and amused by this adaptation of Euripides' ironic, tongue-in-cheek fairy tale; and Hermes was able to descend from the upper level secure in the knowledge that his front and not his backside would be presented to the audience. In the course of planning, casting, rehearsals, and performance, many small discoveries about the original intentions of the playwright came to light, but one major and one minor revelation emerged: Euripides included more minor roles than the plot required, apparently to fit the abilities of a talented Third Actor; and the playwright concocted a new legend involving Athena's slaying of a hitherto unknown Gorgon to add suspense and comic confusion to an otherwise straightforward poison plot. MISREADING ARISTOTLE Aristotle is inadvertently responsible for the Western world's assumption that tragedy concerns only plays involving the unhappy endings of kings and attendant royalty. This misinterpretation results from elevating what Aristotle clearly states is his personal preference for unhappy endings into an absolute requirement of tragedy. Although he writes that in his «Perfect Plot, ... the hero's fortunes must not be from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery," 1 this represents his ideal, not a statement of what he saw taking place on the Athenian stage. In a different passage, concerning time limits for tragedy, he acknowledges the existence of happy-ending plays, writing that tragedies must be of «a length which allows ofthe hero passing by a series ofprobable and necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune" (emphasis added).2 Just as Neoclassic commentators transformed Aristotle's preferences for a single plot line and near-continuous stage time into two of the sacrosanct «Three Unities," later ages have transmogrified his predilection for unhappy endings into a sine qua non. Since the Renaissance, tragedy has meant a play with an unhappy ending; in the present age, the term has been expanded to encompass any tearful occasion: «TRAGEDY IN NEW MEXICO!! SCHOOL BUS STRIKES BRIDGE ABUTMENT,"screamtoday's headlines.3 However, for the fifth-century Greeks who attended the theatre,«happy tragedy" was not oxymoronic, and «unhappy tragedy" would not have been redundant. TRAGEDY: THE CATCHALL CATEGORY Comedy, for the Greeks, was narrowly defined: the time (at least in our few examples) is the present, the situation is current, and the characters are either living persons or recognizable types taken from the streets ofAthens and its environs. The gods, when present, were not very godlike. The category was broad enough to include fantasies woven around current affairs, plays like The Frogs and The Birds. The satyr play, in similar fashion, had specific requirements: the plot was a broad travesty on the mythic affairs ofgods and folkloric figures, and the chorus was always composed of those libidinous half-man, half-animal creatures known as satyrs. Frequently, a drunken god or demigod, often Herakles, was woven into the low comedy plot. Neither comedy nor satyr play allowed room for happy-ending tales of the long-ago-and-far-away, stories that today would be classified as «roman166 VALIDATION (AND DISCOVERY) BY EXPERIMENT tic comedy"; for the Greeks, such plays were lumped in with the tragedies. As Bernard Knox points out, tragedy was a broad category encompassing everything that did not fall within the narrow definitions ofcomedy or satyr play.4 (Euripides was allowed, in one instance, to substitute Alkestis, a romantic comedy, for the usual satyr play.) The surviving plays confirm that Athenians did not expect all tragedies to end sadly. Although eighteen of the thirty-one recognized tragedies (Alkestis is not included here) have unhappy conclusions, there are at least nine that end with the protagonists better off at the end than they were at the beginning: Eumenides, Elektra (Sophocles), Philoktetes, Oedipus at Colonus, Herakleidae...