Maria Mikedaki

After their victory over the Persians in the first half of the fifth century BC, the Greeks adopted a hellenocentric world view and invented the notion of the barbarian, the non-Hellene, as the “Other”. The Greek-barbarian antithesis became a popular rhetorical topos in tragedy. The three tragedians used various effects in representing foreign characters on stage. This article gives emphasis on the barbarian costume used in Greek tragedy. It particularly analyzes two exotic garments which were used as visual markers to fix a theatrical costume as oriental: the first one was the anaxyrides (‘trousers’) and the second one was the richly decorated cheiridotos (‘sleeved’) chiton. In the beginning, the fitted wrist-length sleeves, which were utterly foreign to the Greek dress system, had the semiotic power to suggest a barbarian. But for the sake of practicality —they kept the forearms of actors warm and disguised when they played female roles— they became a feature of every costume, losing their foreign associations. For this reason, other pieces of costume were used to suggest foreign people on stage, like the floppy hat (kidaris), the Thracian zeira etc., while non-Greek motifs, like dots, circles, zig-zag, adorned the fabric of the costume to make it ethnically distinctive.

Κατά τους προϊστορικούς χρόνους η Ελευσίνα αποτελούσε ένα ξεχωριστό βασίλειο, που δέσποζε στη μεγάλη εύφορη πεδιάδα που την περιέβαλε. Την πεδιάδα αυτή έκλειναν από τις τρεις πλευρές της ψηλά βουνά-το Αιγάλεω στα Α., η Πάρνηθα στα Β. και ο Κιθαιρώνας στα Δ.-και μόνο στα Ν. ήταν ανοικτή προς τη θάλασσα. Όμως, και της πλευράς αυτής το Α. άκρο, το απέκλειε από τη θάλασσα μία βραχώδης στενή λοφοσειρά, μήκους 1,5 χλμ., που εκτεινόταν σε μικρή απόσταση από την παραλία με κατεύθυνση από Α.-Δ.. Στο Α. άκρο αυτής της λοφοσειράς προεξείχε ένας λόφος, ύψους 63 μ., πάνω στον οποίο ιδρύθηκε η αρχαία πόλη της Ελευσίνας.

The ancient theatre of Dionysos in Athens is discussed here in regard to a) its placement beside the City Asklepieion and b) its function within the framework of the cult of Asklepios. Archaeological and epigraphic data suggest that musical and drama contests, philosophical poetry competitions, paeans, “mystic dramas” and performative rituals were held in the theatre in honor of Asklepios. This paper intends to show that the Athenians were the first to realize that music and drama played an important role in the process of healing. Therefore, the healing sanctuary of Asklepios was founded near the theatre of Dionysos on the south slope of the Acropolis at Athens. From then on, many cities followed the example of Athens and included a theatre in or next to an Asklepieion.   

The present paper is dedicated to the ancient theatre of Megalopolis, mentioned by Pausanias (8.32.1) as the largest in Greece. The aim of the paper is to highlight the conditions that led to the foundation of the city that hosted it, so that important aspects of the history of the monument can be understood. In this context, the Battle of Leuctra (371 BC) will be mentioned which triggered off a series of developments in the history of Arcadia, not least the foundation of the Arcadian Confederacy (370 BC) and the creation of Megalopolis (after 368 BC). The new city was founded on both banks of the Elisson River, which divided it into two residential areas: the ‘Great City’ (north / right bank) and the ‘Orestia’ (south / left bank). The most important public buildings of Orestia included the Thersiliο and the theatre, which were architecturally and functionally connected. In both, assemblies and contests (dramatic in the theatre and probably musical in the Thersilio) took place, while the monumental portico of the Thersilio also served as the backdrop of dramas performed in the orchestra. At a certain moment, which cannot be determined precisely, a proskenion with two building phases was erected in front of the portico of the Thersilio: all researchers agree that the second phase, which has as terminus post quem the destruction of Megalopolis by the Spartan king Cleonenes III in 222 BC, is connected with the construction of a marble proskenion. As for the first phase, opinions differ both in terms of dating and form: while all researchers accept a perishable construction, some of them identify it as a wheeled wooden stage and some others as wooden background scenery panels; in either case, both theatrical devices were kept in the scenery storage room (called skanotheke), which was built in the west parodos of the theatre. This article favours the second view, taking into account the archaeological data and the comparative study of the ancient theatres of Messina, Thouria and Sparta.

The ancient Greek theatre consists of three major parts: the cavea (theatron), the orchestra, which is the part used for performances, and the stage building. The latter is less well known because it is usually in a poor state of conservation. The same applies with the Hellenistic theater of the Asklepieion of Epidaurus. Thousands of people visit this theater each year, but how many (non-experts) know the architectural form of its stage building? The first part of this article sheds light on this question: it describes the Hellenistic two-storey scene building with the proskenion which is often seen as an invention that took place at Epidaurus and it briefly presents how it was used in the staging of ancient Greek drama. The second part deals with the " trial " restoration of the proskenion by Anastasios Orlandos in 1960 and cites the acute confrontation he had caused between the members of the scientific world, as he had exceeded the rules of restorative ethics.

According to the communis opinio the term thyromata that occurs in the inscription IG VII 423, found in the theatre of Oropos, means either the wide openings which pierced the façade of the second story of the Hellenistic scene or the decorative panels or doors that filled those openings. However, there are good reasons to believe that the thyromata were the parodos gates. It seems that there was no common terminus technicus for this part of the ancient theatre, because in Boiotia the parodos gates were called prothyra, in Pergamon pylon, while in Delos they were included under the general term paraskenion.

The essays collected in "Performing Space" are intent on moving forward the discussion about the relevance and significance of the interrelation between performance and space. Besides, in virtue of the fact that the contributors to the volume have different disciplinary or artistic backgrounds, this collection is aimed to initiate an interdisciplinary examination of performance and space, and to foster a mutually enlightening dialogue among areas as diverse as philosophy, architecture, performance theory and practice, theatre studies, anthropology, literary theory and pedagogy. "Performing Space" establishes an international forum, where the provenance, the conceptuality and the contemporary potentialities of performance are discussed and brought to bear on the built environment, both past and present. The essays in the first section of Performing Space, “Performance, Theory, Space”, endeavour to reflect on theoretical and epistemological issues that concern the status and conditions of artistic performance, space or both, by having recourse to writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière, among others. The second section, “Performing Space: Applied”, comprises essays focusing on case studies of actual performances and evaluating the outcome of specific performative events. The essays in question acknowledge and analyse the significance of particular spaces and their evident impact on the corresponding performances.

Performing Space is an international annual event that includes a conference and a workshop, whose purpose is to present and promote, in a coherent way, a number of studies and works on performance and space, and to offer a framework in which to experiment with performance in significant spaces in the history of the development of the built environment.

The University of the Peloponnese, through the Department of Theatre of the University of the Peloponnese, hosted Performing Space 2022 - Epidaurus, in Nafplio, Greece. The first edition of the event featured contributions from 27 academics, practitioners and students from Greece, Spain, Italy, UK and Germany.

Performing Space 2023 will take place in Nafplio, in July 2023, hosted once again by the University of Peloponnese, with the collaboration of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Università degli Studi di RomaTre and Nottingham Trent University.  In this edition, during the workshop, the case study extends to the Argolida, working in ancient sites such as Tíryns, Mycenae, Argos, Epidaurus or Nafplio. The participants of the Conference and the Workshop will have, among other activities, the opportunity to attend the Epidaurus Festival to witness a performance of ancient drama in the famous theatre of Epidaurus.