What Athena, the goddess of wisdom, realizes in Eumenides, the final play of the trilogy, is something supposedly uttered by Mahatma Gandhi two and a half millennia later: “an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” Namely, even if justified, in the long run, the old law of retaliation is just too costly for the community, since any murder would naturally result in many more. Consequently, the never-ending cycle of revenge is appropriately replaced by civic justice, a newly instituted court of law whose word should be final on all matters, bringing them to an indisputable end – one that will have to be accepted not only by mortals but by gods as well. The Gender War P oetic​ translation is a critical, interpretative practice, similar in certain ways to the writing of introductions. But it is also a creative, imaginative activity, requiring a different voice from that of a teacher or critic. And once he moves from prose to verse, Taplin provides an insightful, elegant rendition of the play; his critical prose limps, but the Muse sings through his translation. The same can’t be said for Mulroy or Bernstein. The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays ( Agamemnon, Choephori, Eumenides) written some 2500 years ago by Aeschylus, is a founding text of world dramatic literature, still widely read and performed. Set in the time of the Homeric epics, its three plays tell the story of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces at the Trojan War, moving from conflict and revenge through expiation to resolution and peace. It’s extraordinary to recall that these plays were performed in daylight hours to an audience of many thousands, a truly communal experience for the Athenian populace. Tom Phillips’ haunting, asymmetric masks on the cover and throughout the text, remind us that this was the manner in which these pays were originally performed, and recent directors and actors of Greek tragedies have had the opportunity to rediscover the freedom which the wearing of a mask can afford the performer. Beneath the war for justice, there’s another war going on throughout Oresteia: the gender conflict between males and females of power. Orestes (Philebus) – the play's major protagonist, he is the brother of Electra and the son of Agamemnon.

productions West Glamorgan Youth Theatre Company | productions

The only trilogy in Greek drama that survives from antiquity, Aeschylus' The Oresteiais translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction, notes and glossary written in collaboration with W.B. Stanford in Penguin Classics. The second great female character in the Agamemnon is Cassandra, who seems, on her first entrance, to have a non-speaking role. In 458 BC, tragedians had only recently begun to use three actors rather than two, and Aeschylus brilliantly exploits the audience’s expectations to create surprise and confusion when the third actor, playing the foreign woman enslaved by Agamemnon, speaks. Still more surprising, the outsider turns out to know far more than any native-born Greek about the house of Argos – where, as she well knows, she will die alongside her captor. Queen Clytemnestra’s aggression, deceit and violence are counterbalanced by the insight and courage of Cassandra, who is blessed and cursed by Apollo with the gift of prophecy; she sets aside grieving for herself and her ruined city to step towards a death that will, as she also knows, bring down her killers. Cassandra’s fate is met with an accordingly visceral relish in Clytemnestra’s later reaction to her murderous spree, and Bernstein delivers her interchange with the Chorus with a sanguine swagger which is somehow neatly consonant with the blindness of Tragic necessity: Orestes and Pylades kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus on a cinerary (funerary) urn in the Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas in Palermo, Italy La Tragedie d'Oreste et Electre: Album by British band Cranes which is a musical adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies.Our daughter was tentative and unsure when we dropped her off at her first rehearsal and now it is one of her favorite activities. Melissa creates an inclusive, supportive environment where every child leaves feeling more confident.” His own linguistic style errs towards the unambiguous and the clear; finding an ironic eloquence in the plain-speaking that some of the characters themselves demand, Bernstein is nowhere more affecting than when declaring moral disquiet. Orestes’ moment of doubt after he has put his mother and Aegisthus to the sword in Choephori, is honestly and very movingly wrought:

The Oresteia of Aeschylus by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein

a b Mace, Sarah (2004). "Why the Oresteia's Sleeping Dead Won't Lie, Part II: "Choephoroi" and "Eumenides" ". The Classical Journal. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS). 100 (1): 39–60. JSTOR 4133005. a b H., R. (1928). "Orestes Sarcophagus and Greek Accessions". The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Museum of Art. 15 (4): 90–87. JSTOR 25137120. Smyth, H. W. (1930). Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments. Harvard University Press. p.455. ISBN 0-674-99161-3. Thank you for creating a space where my son feels safe to take risks. He looks forward to being a part of the Newton Theatre Kids community and cast each week.”

a b Hester, D. A. (1981). "The Casting Vote". The American Journal of Philology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 102 (3): 265–274. doi: 10.2307/294130. JSTOR 294130.