The Tragic Transformed

Book excerpt: This book provides a novel way of looking at translational phenomena in contemporary performances of Attic tragedies via the formidable work of three directors, each of whom bears the aesthetic imprint of Samuel Beckett: Theodoros Terzopoulos, Şahika Tekand and Tadashi Suzuki. Through a discerningly transdisciplinary approach, translation becomes re(trans)formed into a mode of physical action, its mimetic nature reworked according to the individual directors’ responses to Attic tragedies. As such, the highly complex notion of mimesis comes into prominence as a thematic thread, divulging the specific ways in which the pathos epitomised in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides is reawakened on the contemporary stage. By employing mimesis as a conceptual motor under the overarching rubric of the art of tragic theatre, the monograph appeals to a wide range of scholarly readers and practitioners across the terrains of Translation Studies, Theatre Studies, Classical Reception, Comparative Literature and Beckett Studies.