Abstract
This chapter considers adaptations of Greek tragedies about refugees that reflect traditional ethical values from ancient Greece recently reemphasized by philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Modern versions of such plays as Aeschylus’ The Suppliants recall the ancient Greek duty to welcome a guest and provide hospitality. They confront the situation whereby the EU, rather than welcoming refugees, has generally tried to discourage or impede them, thereby gaining the reputation of ‘fortress Europe’. Modern versions of The Suppliants, such as Elfriede Jelinek’s Charges (Die Schutzbefohlenen), demonstrate the hardship encountered by refugees once they arrive in Europe to seek asylum from unsympathetic government officials. Her play has become one of the most celebrated pieces to deal with refugee issues in German-speaking theatres.
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Notes
- 1.
Parts of this section come from ‘Performing Antigone in the Twenty-first Century’ in Wilmer and Žukauskaitė (2010).
- 2.
Steiner (1984, pp. 40–2) demonstrates that Hegel’s position changed over time to become more sympathetic to Antigone, but that after Hegel’s death, the general understanding of his argument was that Creon and Antigone were equally justified in their stances.
- 3.
Fleming (2006, p. 165) points out some of the features of the adaptation that appealed to collaborators and Nazis, in particular the language and attitude of Antigone that make her ‘the epitome of the fascist heroine’. She also demonstrates that subsequent Anglophone criticism of this play has misread it as favouring the resistance (Fleming 2006, p. 167).
- 4.
It is interesting to speculate whether Anouilh’s version of Antigone, which Lacan (1992, p. 250) mentions in his discussion, might have influenced this interpretation since, in Anouilh’s version, Creon offers Antigone an easy option to hide her crime which she refuses without any clear reason, making her seem pathologically bent on a death wish. Right from the beginning of the play, Anouilh sets up her death drive as a role that she must play in the tragedy. In his first (metatheatrical) speech, the chorus figure announces, ‘she is going to die. Antigone is young. She would much rather live than die. But there is no help for it. When your name is Antigone, there is only one part you can play; and she will have to play hers through to the end’ (Anouilh 1946, p. 3). In Sophocles’ original version, a more plausible reading is that Antigone is driven into a ‘wild’ or abnormal state by her grief and her understandable sense of outrage at the treatment of her brother.
- 5.
See Audronė Žukauskaitė’s article for a discussion of Antigone as exhibiting a death drive and Tina Chanter’s article for a discussion of Antigone as a monster in Wilmer and Žukauskaitė (2010).
- 6.
- 7.
It was also staged at the Vineyard Theatre (Off-Broadway) in 1996 and in various parts of Europe and translated into more than twenty languages.
- 8.
For a discussion of this play, see Kott (1993).
- 9.
2004 was the centennial year of the opening of the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland. It was a major cultural event, and Ben Barnes, the Abbey’s artistic director, approached Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Prize-winning poet resident in Dublin, to provide a play to mark the occasion. Some parts of the ensuing discussion of The Burial at Thebes appeared in Wilmer (2007, pp. 228–42).
- 10.
Despite the costume, however, the rhetoric of the character, as we shall see, resembled George W. Bush. This was also intimated in the production through the representation of Eurydice, Creon’s wife, standing by his side without speaking, reminiscent of Laura Bush.
- 11.
Antigone is referred to by the chorus as autonomous in line 821 (Sophocles 1996, pp. 42–3). The importance of this description has been identified by Robin Lane Fox (2005, p. 7) recently: ‘“Autonomy” is a word invented by the ancient Greeks, but for them it had a clear political context: it began as the word for a community’s self-government, a protected degree of freedom in the face of an outside power which was strong enough to infringe it. Its first surviving application to an individual is to a woman, Antigone, in drama.’
- 12.
Heaney’s use of various rhythms to differentiate character reflects the variety of rhythmic patterns in the original Greek that, according to Mark Griffith (1999, p. 13, n. 47), tends to be ignored in most translations, reducing the script ‘to a formless monotone’. Griffith (1999, p. 20) notes the different use of language by the various characters in the original Greek, with Antigone using simpler language than Ismene and a staccato delivery which is ‘more particular, personal, and direct’, while ‘Kreon’s rigid and controlling temperament is represented throughout by the harsh imagery of his language […] and by his disrespectful habit of referring to people in the third person even when they are present […] or, when he does address them directly, of doing so in a crudely imperious manner’. (See also pp. 36–7.) For a discussion of the particular rhythms that Heaney uses in the play, see Heaney (2005b, pp. 169–73).
- 13.
Heaney discussed this memory in his question and answer session with the Abbey Theatre audience on 27 April 2004. The death of a hunger striker was also evoked in Heaney’s The Cure at Troy in the line: ‘A hunger-striker’s father / Stands in the graveyard dumb’ (Heaney 1990, p. 77).
- 14.
The play for Heaney is primarily about the need to pay respect to the dead, and burial is the traditional Irish (as well as Greek) way of doing so (see, for example, Macintosh 1994, pp. 30–7). The importance that the ancient Greeks gave to observing proper respect for the dead is particularly illustrated in Achilles’ observation of traditional funeral rites for Patroklos in the Iliad, Book 23 (by contrast with his shameful treatment of Hector). For a discussion of the desecration of the deceased, see Griffith (1999, p. 30).
- 15.
One can see Heaney’s evocation of Bush’s rhetoric more clearly by comparing this passage with the Jebb translation, which Heaney (who does not read Greek) used as a basis for his own work:‘For if anyone who directs the entire city does not cling to the best and wisest plans, but because of some fear keeps his lips locked, then, in my judgment, he is and has long been the most cowardly traitor. And if any man thinks a friend more important than his fatherland, that man, I say, is of no account. Zeus, god who sees all things always, be my witness—I would not be silent if I saw ruin, instead of safety, marching upon the citizens. Nor would I ever make a man who is hostile to my country a friend to myself, because I know this, that our country is the ship that bears us safe, and that only when we sail her on a straight course can we make true friends. Such are the rules by which I strengthen this city.’ (Jebb 1900, 1, pp. 177–92)
- 16.
In the same speech, Bush (CNN 2001b) threatened other countries with unspecified consequences for failing to comply with America’s wishes for them to join in the military coalition forces to invade Afghanistan: ‘Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity’.
- 17.
After quoting this passage, Slavoj Žižek (2002, p. 102) asked provocatively, ‘[W]hat is new about this idea? Did the CIA not teach the Latin American and Third World American military allies the practice of torture for decades?’ For an account of the US training of torture techniques for use in Latin America in the 1960s, see Agee (1975).
- 18.
In his article, Žižek (2004) quotes Rumsfeld as saying that the Geneva Convention is ‘out of date’.
- 19.
- 20.
Creon towards the end of the play regrets his error and renounces the state of exception:
The judgement is reversed.[...]
In my heart of hearts I know what must be done.
Until we breathe our last breath we should keep
The established law. (Heaney 2004, p. 48)
- 21.
Binyam Mohammed (in Woods 2009, p. 8) described his experience of being incarcerated and tortured by the Americans in Kabul, Guantánamo Bay, and other prisons for seven years, and then suddenly released with all the charges against him dropped: ‘The longest was when they chained me for eight days on end [in a secret CIA prison in Kabul], in a position that meant I couldn’t stand straight nor sit. I couldn’t sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night [...] In Kabul I lost my head. It felt like it was never going to end and that I had ceased to exist.’
- 22.
With regard to the detention of the Taliban, Agamben (2005, p. 4) writes, ‘The only thing to which it could possibly be compared is the legal situation of the Jews in the Nazi Lager [camps], who, along with their citizenship, had lost every legal identity, but at least retained their identity as Jews. As Judith Butler has effectively shown, in the detainee at Guantánamo, bare life reaches its maximum indeterminacy.’
- 23.
Much of the interrogation and torture of the detainees has been conducted by private firms subcontracted by the US government. This arms-length approach has perhaps allowed the US administration with greater opportunity for abnormal interrogation procedures (see Didion 2006). According to a report in the Irish Times on 16 February 2008, the activity at Guantánamo ‘appears to have narrowed from intelligence-gathering in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan to one of retribution and punishment in support of the Bush administration’s “Global War on Terror.”’ (Clonan 2008)
- 24.
Cheney continued to hold millions of dollars worth of stock options in Halliburton after becoming Vice President. Jane Meyer (2004) reported in the New Yorker magazine in 2004 that Halliburton ‘which is based in Houston, is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts worth some eleven billion dollars for its work there. Cheney earned forty-four million dollars during his tenure at Halliburton. Although he has said that he “severed all my ties with the company,” he continues to collect deferred compensation worth approximately a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and he retains stock options worth more than eighteen million dollars.’
- 25.
With regard to the ‘terror’ surrounding this epithet, see Steiner (1984, p. 175). While President Barack Obama announced his intention to reverse some of President Bush’s policies and close the prison in Guantánamo Bay by 2010 (that did not happen), it seems that this prison was only the tip of the iceberg. Asim Qureshi (2009), a senior researcher at Cageprisoners, wrote: ‘With reports of 24,000 detainees in Iraq and 14,000 in secret detention, such numbers seem astronomical compared with the 250 or so detainees remaining in Guantánamo.’
- 26.
See also Žižek (2002, p. 100).
- 27.
Einar Schleef also included immigrant women in the chorus for his production of Mütter (The Mothers), based on Euripides’ The Suppliants and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes. (See Fischer-Lichte 2005, p. 251).
- 28.
The title, Die Schutzbefohlenen, is a play on words of Die Schutzflehenden (literally, those who beg for protection) which is the usual German title for Aeschylus’ drama. This altered title is somewhat subversive in that it means ‘those who are under protection or control’, rather than ‘those who are seeking asylum’. Thus its meaning is ambivalent as to whether it implies that the government is protecting the refugees or simply controlling them (like children).
- 29.
Included among these, Mirko Borscht’s production premiered at the Theater Bremen, Michael Simon’s at the Theater Freiburg, in November 2014, Peter Carp’s at the Theater Oberhausen, Michael Thalheimer’s at the Burgtheater, Vienna in March 2015, Erick Sidler’s at the Deutsches Theater Göttingen in September 2015, Sebastian Nübling’s (In unserem Namen) at the Maxim Gorki Theater in November 2015, Bettina Bruinier’s at the Staatstheater Nürnberg in February 2016, and Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer’s at the Schauspielhaus Bochum in April 2016. In Zürich in May 2016, several theatres such as the Gessnerallee Zürich and the Schauspielhaus collaborated on a variety of approaches, adding material from Jelinek’s later additions to the text.
- 30.
The Thalia Theater also employed two black professional German actors for the production on guest (short-term) contracts.
- 31.
Comments added in rehearsal and performed on 14 September 2014.
- 32.
This scene was later cut from the production, as I noticed on the final performance on 21 October 2016.
- 33.
Wagner later explained: ‘Blackface ist Rassismus pur’ (Blackface is pure racism) (see El-Bira 2015).
- 34.
This law was later relaxed with asylum-seekers allowed to work after three months, with the proviso that any job had to be offered to a German citizen first.
- 35.
The Intendant of the Thalia Theater had made a prior arrangement with the Mayor of Hamburg that the theatre would not be prosecuted for engaging refugees in the production.
- 36.
Part of these lines come from the last lines of the text (Jelinek 2014, p. 58), but others were added in rehearsal. Stemann later added a scene with an actress, wearing a mask, impersonating Elfriede Jelinek speaking a text that Jelinek had later added to the play, regretting the ongoing refugee situation in 2015 with, for example, Hungary closing its borders to refugees.
- 37.
Surtitles used in the production of In unserem Namen at the Maxim Gorki Theater that paraphrase Aeschylus, The Suppliants, lines 154–61 (Aeschylus 1992, p. 183).
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Wilmer, S.E. (2018). Recontextualization and Adaptation of Ancient Greek Dramas. In: Performing Statelessness in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69173-2_2
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