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#greektragedy
review
Super_Jane
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Pickpick

3.75/5 🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑 #greekmythology #plays #theban

review
Andrea313
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Pickpick

The author's personal narrative here is not always overly compelling, but the account of the work undertaken is phenomenal. Theatre of War makes an ancient tradition alive and present on military bases, in hospice centers, carceral institutions, homeless shelters, mental health facilities and more, doing exactly what theatre, at it's best, is meant to do- challenge, inspire, heal, create community, and bring us into dialogue and reflection.

17 likes1 comment
blurb
Andrea313
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I'm a big believer in the power of applied theatre, and was very excited to discover each of these titles in small bookstores as I traveled earlier this year. It feels like they'd be good companion reads so I'm starting now with the tagged book. We'll see where it takes me! #SeeMoreTheatre #DoMoreTheatre #ActOut

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Andrea313
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This week I pulled out the original recording of The Gospel at Colonus, one of my favorite pieces of theatre- a setting of "Oedipus at Colonus" as a modern parable within the frame of a Black Pentecostal church service. The music is incredible, and a gospel choir serves as our Greek chorus. It inspired me to re-visit the original, as well as Antigone- both still absolute bangers. And yes, that is a CD because the dream of the 90s is ALIVE, y'all!

25 likes1 comment
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Bookwomble
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Mini #BookHaul 📚
Sophocles' Theban Plays is in a matching Penguin edition to the Satyr Plays I bought earlier in the year. It's long annoyed me that Penguin nearly always print the original published date, not the publication date of the volume in hand. This one says 1947, but I think it may be a little later than that.
I wasn't aware that Graves had written a time travel fantasy. It has mixed reviews!
A text book for work to add to the other ⬇️

Bookwomble ... 50-odd text books I haven't read yet!
Donny! is a jokey present for a friend who adores Mr O. Written in 1973, it reads a bit creepily from the bits I've scanned. I'm sure she'll love it, though!
Ringworld Engineers is also a gift, this one for my daughter. Being stranded without a book, she picked up Ringworld from a 2nd hand shop as she recognised it as one I'd gone on about since she was a child, and she enjoyed it! Score one for dads! 😁
1y
LeahBergen Oh my God, that Donny Osmond book! 🤣 1y
Aimeesue Graves? Time travel? The mind boggles 1y
See All 6 Comments
batsy So jealous about that edition of the Theban Plays! 😍 1y
Bookwomble @Aimeesue I was intrigued to see Graves in the sci fi section and had to check it wasn't some other Robert Graves! It seems to sharply divide reviewers! The time travel element seems to be a mechanism for establishing a utopian/dystopian society that Graves can then wax philosophical about. 1y
Bookwomble @batsy It's nice, isn't it? 😃 When I checked the Satyr Plays, the cover design is slightly different, and the price is 2/6, rather than the one shilling of the Theban Plays, so it may actually be closer to the original publication date than I initially thought. I do wish 🐧 had properly dated their books, though! 1y
30 likes6 comments
quote
vivastory
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Intro. to Euripides' Orestes. This is the reading of the play that I took from the deus ex machina ending.

review
TheEllieMo
The Amber Fury | Natalie Haynes
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Mehso-so

I‘m not totally sure what I feel about this one. It made me want to keep reading, but there were elements missing for me; main character Alex didn‘t gel with me.

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ravenlee
The Eumenides | Aeschylus
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Rats.

An ancient Greek playwright goes to a tailor to get some trousers fixed.

The tailor looks at the trousers and says, “Euripides?”

The playwright nods. “Yeah. Eumenides?”

Ruthiella 🤣🤣🤣 2y
GingerAntics 🤣😂🤣 2y
LauraJ 😹😹😹 Oh, that‘s wonderfully terrible! 2y
BookNAround Love it. 2y
37 likes4 comments
review
batsy
Helen | Euripides
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Pickpick

Euripides is the king of screwball tragicomedy, & that's a compliment. He is the one tragedian that reads like proto-Shakespeare. I like the screwball element. The twist here is that the Helen that drove foolish men to wars is a mirage, while the real Helen bides her time & reveals a sharp mind by degrees. Helen & Menelaus get to work like a sweeter, nonviolent Bonnie & Clyde, & then Euripides sends in the demi-gods to give us a "happy" ending.

batsy I read the translation by Richmond Lattimore. Image is from Greek pottery c. 450-440 BC showing Helen, centre, with Menelaus on the left. 2y
69 likes2 stack adds1 comment
review
batsy
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Pickpick

Iphigeneia is a strange, wayward character because of her circumstances: offered as a sacrifice to Artemis by her father Agamemnon, saved by Artemis herself and taken to Taurica to serve as a high priestess of Artemis, overseeing the ritual sacrifice of foreigners. Iphigenia‘s back & forth with Orestes (before she learns who he is) reminded me of an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel. The dialogue's pacing, the swift sharp truth of the aphoristic lines.

batsy Indeed, an ICB novel does seem to traverse through similar themes as a Greek tragedy. This one is resolved with what seems like a bit of a random deus ex machina by Euripides‘s standards, but it doesn‘t matter when in Philip Vellacott‘s translation we get lines that give Orestes the veneer of a superhero who has earned his right to be badass: “My name‘s Orestes, let me tell you; I‘m her brother, and now I‘m going to take my long-lost sister home.” 2y
batsy Painting: "Iphigenia in Tauris" (1893) by Valentin Serov 2y
nathandrake1997 Exquisite review ❤️ Always wanted to read Greek plays and I might start with Euripedes soon 😄❤️ 2y
batsy @nathandrake1997 Thank you! I feel like you can't really go wrong with Euripides 💕 2y
tokorowilliamwallace I own the Goethe retelling of this, though I haven't gotten to it yet, as I don't often read drama/plays. 2y
86 likes4 stack adds5 comments