Graham Ley

Modern theories of performance : from Stanislavski to Boal

Preface Stanislavskis Theoretical System Proposals for Reform: Appia and Craig The Popular Front: Meyerhold and Copeau Artaud and the Manifesto Grotowski and Theoretical Training Boals Theoretical History Conclusion: From Theoretical Practitioners to Theorized Performance Notes Index

Towards a Theoretical History for Greek Tragedy

Greek tragedy and its theatre have regularly been drawn into modern theoretical formulas about the nature of theatre making, in proposals which have often had their own cause to plead, but which have still been influential on broadly formed views of the theatre in its history. In this essay, Graham Ley argues that much incidental misrepresentation can be found in this kind of writing alongside the occasional remarkable insight, and that the attention given in modern theory to the Greek theatre is generally inadequate. The theorists discussed are Isadora Duncan, Brecht, Boal, and Hans-Thies Lehmann, with examples also taken from performance theory. Ley then goes on to examine what kind of theoretical view of the ancient Greek theatre would be most appropriate today, and offers a vision of it as a dynamic and innovative environment, looking in this second part of the essay at what can be said of early choric tragedy, of the emergence of the actor, and of the innovation of the dramatic scene building. Graham Ley has written essays on various topics over the years for New Theatre Quarterly , but this is his first piece for the journal on his specialist subject, the performance of ancient Greek tragedy.

Modern Visions of Greek Tragic Dancing

Dancing must be an integral part of our understanding of Greek tragedy as a form of dance drama, but its reconstruction is obscure. The methodology of significant proposals made in the modern period by researchers Lawler, Webster, and Prud-hommeau is placed under critical scrutiny in this essay, with important ancient terms examined, and a broad problematic exposed.

The Significance of Diderot

Best known in his own times as an encyclopedist, the eighteenth-century French writer, philosopher, dramatist, and critic Denis Diderot (1713–84) was to emerge a century later, though his Paradoxe sur le comedien, as a posthumous protagonist in the debate launched in Britain in William Archers Masks or Faces? (1888). That debate – on the role of feeling and instinct versus craft and technique in acting – has been taken up and sustained by many theorists and practitioners in the succeeding century. In the following article, however, Graham Ley is more concerned with Diderots wider role as theatrical theorist, suggesting that he offers – as also in his defence of pantomime, his proposal for the ‘serious genre’ which anticipated realism, and his advocacy of scenographic reform – not a unified vision of the nature of theatre but an enduring sense, precisely, of its paradoxical and ironic qualities. Graham Ley has just joined the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter, having previously taught in London and New Zealand. He is currently completing a book on theatrical theory, on which he has previously also published in NTQ, most recently on ‘The Role of Metaphor in Brooks The Empty Space’ (NTQ35, 1993). Among his numerous publications on ancient performance, A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theatre appeared from the University of Chicago Press in 1991.