Europe at War in Post-war Europe. Performing Greek Tragedies, Comedies and European Identity.

ended

This project will examine the multiple ways in which contemporary western European theatre directors (in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland) have staged and continue to stage war with the help of ancient Greek dramatic scripts from the WW2 onwards. I will argue that such performances question and try to understand European identity. The three strands of this interdisciplinary project (in between Classical Reception Studies and Theatre Studies and mixing practice and theory) will cover past, present and prospective dramatic approaches of this question: 1/ academic research (archives, libraries, interviews) to analyse past performances; 2/ observation of contemporary productions in rehearsals; 3/ creative labs with students from Oxford, Paris and Liège to highlight how young Europeans are dealing with those materials. This will allow to propose a history of war on stage in post-war Europe, told through productions of ancient plays that seek, sometimes consciously indeed, to build a distinctly European identity. The fellowship will take place at the APGRD (Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Faculty of Classics, UOXF) that is the best environment to manage such a project given its world-class database and archive of performances of Greek and Roman Drama that I will use and contribute to. This indisciplinary project will grant me the opportunity to work with some of the best researchers in Classical Reception Studies in the world (particularly with my supervisor Fiona Macintosh), strenghtening my academic network. I will improve my skills in this field and also in general European research management to become a mature researcher in Classical Reception Studies (since I have a PhD in Theatre Studies). Moreover, since I already have an extended experienc as a stage-director, this research-as-creation project will bridge my academic and artistic carreers and put me at the forefront of Theatre Studies.