Leanore Lieblein

Embodied Intersubjectivity and the Creation of Early Modern Character

According to Thomas Heywood in his Apology for Actors (1612), theater takes place in a place between—between the performance and the spectator as the above suggests, but also, as he elsewhere makes clear, between the performer and the performed; or, to use his words, between the “personater”[sic] and the “person personated” (B4r; C4r). The challenge, however, is to establish how persons were conceptualized, and by what process the person personated became, in a sense that both early moderns and we today might understand, a character. In addition, if it is, as Heywood suggests, spectators’ eyes that make a play bad or good, how are we to describe the contribution of the spectator to a discussion of character on the early modern stage?

‘Les Grecs’ à la Française

In July 1989 the ‘trilogy’ of Œdipe et les oiseaux , directed by Jean-Pierre Vincent with decor and costumes by Jean-Paul Chambas and dramaturgy by Bernard Chartreux, was presented in its ‘premier etat’ at the Festival of Avignon. This preliminary version consisted of full scale productions of Œdipe tyran and Œdipe a Colone by Sophocles in new translations by Chartreux, and a reading of Cite des oiseaux , Chartreuxs adaptation of The Birds by Aristophanes. The definitive version was presented at the Theâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. Tyran and Colone opened in October and played in alternation until joined by Oiseaux in November. The complete trilogy—the three plays in succession on a single day—was performed to sold out houses on five successive Saturdays in November and December.