Aristophanes at Chickenshed

Aristophanes’ Peace: A Topical Story by Giovanna Di Martino

After thirteen long years of war, Athens and Sparta have turned a proxy dispute into an all-out extravaganza of chaos. The goddess Peace has been locked away in a cavern, far, far away, tired, sad, and downright cross with everyone for ignoring her.

Meanwhile, the gods have taken a permanent vacation from their heavenly palace, seeking refuge in the most remote corner of the earth, leaving the god of War to run the show. The result? A nation exhausted, angry, and simply desperate for any sort of deal to end the madness.

Enter Trygaeus: a once-successful winemaker who decides to take on the epic task of saving Greece. With a giant beetle as his trusty steed, he’s determined to fly to heaven, convince the gods to convince humans to cut the nonsense, and rescue Peace.

Originally produced in the spring of 421 BCE in Athens at probably the largest theatre festival in the ancient world, the City Dionysia – just days before a much-anticipated peace treaty was finally signed between Athens and Sparta – Peace is the work of the visionary playwright Aristophanes: it stands as a powerful symbol of hope and the promise of an end to stubbornly useless suffering.

This was the imaginative story that we decided to work on for our project Aristophanes at Chickenshed, an international collaboration between the University of Bristol, University College London (UCL), the University of Parma, Chickenshed Theatre and Teatro delle Albe.

Aristophanes at Chickenshed: Aims, Motives and Methods

The project comprised a five-day workshop on Aristophanes’ Peace held from the 28^th of October to the 1^st of November 2024 at Chickenshed Theatre in London. This was directed by Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari of Teatro delle Albe, with the assistance of dramaturg Giovanna Di Martino (UCL), who also produced a new translation of the play. This project brought together students from the universities involved with students from the Chickenshed’s education programmes, culminating in two (sold-out) performances of a new version of Peace.

This workshop is rooted in the pedagogical imperative of integrating performance practice into the study and teaching of ancient Greek drama. As well as providing a more accessible approach to ancient Greek dramatic scripts, this approach also serves as an appropriate method for exploring these texts that, before enjoying a long and successful literary life off the stage, were originally intended for performance.

Ancient Greek Drama, in and outside the Classroom

Since the 1960s, ancient Greek drama has remained one of the most widely used sources for writing new plays and for directors to experiment on a global scale (Hall 2004: 12). This year, the London stage alone has seen Robert Icke’s widely acclaimed Oedipus at the Wyndham Theatre and Alexander Zeldin’s equally successful The Other Place (a rewrite of Antigone) at the National Theatre; in January, the Old Vic will present Matthew Warchus and Hofesh Shechter’s Oedipus, while Daniel Fish’s Elektra will run at the Duke of York’s Theatre.

But ancient Greek drama is also one of the most appealing and widely studied aspects of ancient Greek literature and culture more generally, both at school level (through the syllabuses for Classical Civilisation, Drama and English, at both GCSE and A-Level) and in Higher Education (Andújar 2023: 373).

Though the performance history of these ancient scripts has been incredibly rich since their return to the stage in the early modern period, only recently has the discipline of Classics begun considering the reception of these texts on the stage as an integral component of the texts themselves. Recent developments in this area are part of the new subfield of classical reception studies. In addition to recognising the dramatic nature of these texts in analysing and teaching them, this field also incorporates the performance history of these texts through time as part of the multiple layers of meaning they present to us today.[1]

Yet, while taking stock of their dramatic nature and how they have worked historically on the stage is indeed a step forward for the discipline as well as for the theatre practitioners wanting to engage with these ancient scripts on the contemporary stage, only very recently has there been a change in the way these texts are taught in the classroom.[2]

Practice Research, Performance Pedagogy and the Chorus

The aims and outcomes of this workshop should be inserted into this new thrust towards practice-based teaching and research practices that align with theatre and performance studies’ long-term commitment to performance as a method of inquiry and a pedagogical tool.

Our workshop combined practice research with performance pedagogy: while it aimed at producing new knowledge in the ‘ecosystem’ of scholarship, performance, and translation of Aristophanes’ Peace,[3] it also invited university and drama students to be active participants in this process of knowledge-production.

The integration of both methodologies was greatly supported by the directors of the workshop, Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari. Martinelli’s unique approach, termed the ‘non-school’, emphasises a non-prescriptive engagement with ‘canonical’ texts that often serve as the subject of classroom study. He advocates for deconstructing and bringing these texts to life on stage through a process he calls ‘messa in vita’ (‘putting into life’). As a theatre practitioner, he draws upon the ancient Greek chorus, as well as the Medieval Passions (sacra rappresentazione), up to Majakovskij’s revolutionary theatre. His theatre practice revolves around the concept of the Chorus, which transforms individual identity into collective identity.[4]

The workshop also hugely benefited from Ermanna Montanari’s long-term vocal exploration (on which she has published widely).[5] She was responsible for the warm-up exercises, through which students worked extensively on breathing, movement and voice.

Their approach was complemented by Chickenshed Theatre’s fifty years of experience bringing together young people from a variety of difficult circumstances and backgrounds and using theatre to help them develop skills, confidence and community. This combination of approaches was supported by academics from the participating universities in several ways. Lines from Giovanna Di Martino’s translation of Peace were interwoven with the students’ improvisations during the devising process and Di Martino also acted as a simultaneous Italian-English interpreter during the workshop. Lucy Ruddiman, and Zoë Carvalho Morris provided dramaturgical support during the workshop process – while also participating in the performance.

The Process: New Knowledge and Community Building

The process of bringing together this Chorus of different voices to explore Aristophanes through a collaborative combination of methods and languages was as important as the performance we created. The goal was not to re-create or re-discover meanings that Peace may have had in the ancient world, but to participate in creating new knowledge around the play, its myth-story, and contemporary theatre practices that were generated from the participants’ interactions with them. One student reflected, ‘I loved creating for an Ancient Greek show – as I had very little knowledge of shows from that period beforehand. This experience has inspired me to be more confident in trying a new approach in theatre.’ The value of this project was in the different ways in which the ‘non-school’ method combined with Chickenshed’s inclusive theatre practices to allow the student-performers to construct their own Aristophanes; one who enabled them to express some of their own concerns through performance.

Another valuable aspect of this process was the community (the Chorus) that emerged throughout the workshop. There were challenges to this: we had different groups of people (some of whom were already used to working together in a particular way, and some of whom had never worked together before); we were combining different methods of making theatre; we were exploring a play that almost all participants were unfamiliar with; and we were doing it all across a language barrier. Nevertheless, the students reported that they felt a strong sense of community in this process. One student commented, ‘I didn’t expect to build such a strong connection within such a short period of time.’ That we were able to bring this group together into a community to create our own Aristophanes was a testament to the success of the process, which we felt spoke strongly in favour of performance pedagogy as a way of exploring ancient drama.

Language and Performance

Another key aspect of this project was its multilingual nature, where language should not be merely understood as a means of communication, but as a means of being, a way of thinking and, in this case, a way of ‘feeling’ theatre. One of Chickenshed’s main organizers described this project as a valuable opportunity for students to experience something new, primarily by being exposed to people speaking different languages. From the beginning of the collaboration between Albe, UCL and the University of Parma, this has been a central aspect of the project.[6]

It was noted by one participant that one of the most exciting things was indeed to be able to ‘work in a foreign language’. Another participant spoke of the opportunity to ‘connect strangers without words’ even though they did not share a language. And again, another was surprised that though ‘we spoke different languages’, there somehow emerged a common language, that of ‘performance’.

Giovanna Di Martino is Leventis Research Fellow in Ancient Greek Literature at University College London. Her main research areas are the translation and performance of ancient Greek drama in the early modern period, in Europe and beyond. She has recently co-edited a volume for De Gruyter: Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (15th-16th Centuries) and two special issues for Skenè: Memory and Performance: Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals. She has also contributed several journal articles on translation theory and practice of Greek and Latin texts across time. Her research interests include the reception of ancient Greek drama during Fascism (on which she has published two special issues for CRJ and Brill’s Fascism). She is the author of the monograph Translating and Adapting Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes in the United States (Skenè, 2020) and is currently working on her second monograph for OUP on Aeschylus’ Reception. Translation, Adaptation and Performance. She has several ongoing practice-research projects on the translation of ancient Greek drama and its adaptations.

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Outputs

Inclusive Theatre and Community-Building | Giovanna Di Martino, Marco Martinelli, and Dave Carey

Since the end of the project, we have been sharing the premises and outcomes of this workshop with a few audiences. First, we held an event with Marco Martinelli and Dave Carey in conversation with Giovanna Di Martino at the University of Oxford, hosted by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, on 4^th November 2024. Here we talked about Chickenshed and Teatro delle Albe, their history and ethos, and then presented a few clips from the workshop as a result of the successful collaboration.

Roundtable on Ancient Greek Comedy as Community Engagement

We also held a roundtable discussion at the University of Bristol on 11^th November 2024 as part of the Theatre Department’s events, though the panel included both classics and theatre scholars. It was a fruitful and productive discussion led by Giovanna Di Martino and Lucy Ruddiman that (unusually) brought together different disciplines and students from a diverse range of BAs. The panellists have since been in contact and expressed a desire to continue the conversation. We hope that this indicates the possibility of a future life for this project and the value of these sorts of collaborations.

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This video is a selection of moments from the performance. Each moment is intended to illustrate a different aspect of the process that went into creating it.

• Prologue: This was to convey the war happening in the background of the play, while building a sense of chorus. The performers entered the space, fell to the floor and rose again. This was repeated a few times but is only shown once here.
• The Feeding of the Beetle: The protagonist of Peace, an Athenian named Trygaeus, has acquired a dung beetle which he intends to fly to Mount Olympus to rescue the goddess of Peace. Here the beetle is represented by half the chorus and the other half are workers feeding it dung. This scene mixes the improvisations of the participants with lines from Giovanna Di Martino’s translation.
• The Flight of the Beetle: Trygaeus flies the beetle to Mount Olympus. This scene demonstrates more of the choral techniques explored, which are drawn from Ermanna Montanari’s (the other co-founder Teatro delle Albe who was also present for the workshop) work with breath and voice.
• The Gods of War: On arriving at Mount Olympus Trygeaus finds Hermes, who explains that the other Olympian gods have left the gods of war in charge. The gods of war enter singing war songs, which were chosen and created by the students.

Credits

Directors: Marco Martinelli, Ermanna Montanari

Dramaturg and Translator: Giovanna Di Martino

Assistant Directors: Zoë Carvalho Morris, Lucy Ruddiman

Workshop Organisers: Francesca Bortoletti, Giovanna Di Martino, Lucy Ruddiman, Francesca Venturi

Cast Members: David Akubardiya, Desirè Andreotti, Yasmine Anouar, Reece Bailey-Smith, Sean Baradhi, Chiara Barresi Vannini, Luca Bartolomucci, Jacopo Rossano Botto, Sofia Buttini, Alan Campani, Zoë Carvalho Morris, Camilla Castellano, Bianca Dondi, Samuel Gould, Harry Johnson, Katie King, Bunny Kwabene, Theo Leslie, Agnes Lindstoel Wilhelmsen, Naledi-Zoe Mangrozah, Joguina Mokekola, Leonardo Morgan-Russel, Annalisa Pagani, Benedetto Loris Pizzo, Lucina Rigoberto, Lucy Ruddiman, Hamza Sogut, Giada Vendemmiati, Lily Walker, Yasmin Wilson, Kye Wolbrom.

Video Footage: Simon Gutimo.

Sponsors: Istituto Italiano di Cultura (London), UCL’s Centre for Humanities Education, Ravenna Teatro (Ravenna), the Leventis Foundation, the Gilbert Murray Trust, the Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome, the Classical Tradition, the Institute of Classical Studies, the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (Oxford), the University of Parma-DUSIC, and the WIDE European Program.

Approved by UCL’s Ethics Committee under the title ‘Theatre Practice and Ancient Greek Drama in Translation’, Ethics Number 22797/001. PI: Giovanna Di Martino.

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[1] The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, founded in 1996 by Edith Hall and Oliver Taplin, is a pioneering research centre in this field. Today, the Archive continues to serve as an interface between ancient drama and its reception, both on and off the stage, while also developing new reception through collaborations with creative artists. On the return of Greek drama to the early modern stage, see Bortoletti, Di Martino, Refini 2024; on Greek drama on the British stage, see Hall and Macintosh 2005; on Greek drama in the Americas, see Bosher, Macintosh, McConnell, Rankine 2015; on the Latin American stage, see Andújar and K.P. Nikoloutsos 2020; on the Georgian stage, see Gurchiani 2017; for a general overview, see van Zyl Smit 2016.

[2] See Mitchell-Boyask 2023; Meineck 2023; Plastow and Bullen 2024, amongst others.

[3] For the use of the term ‘ecology’ and ‘ecosystem’ in relation to any new knowledge produced around ancient Greek drama, see Plastow and Bullen 2024.

[4] Martinelli’s non-school developed in Italy, but also in France, Belgium, Brazil, Senegal, the United States and recently in the United Kingdom. See Marco Martinelli, Aristofane a Scampia, Milan, Ponte delle Grazie, 2016; Id., The Sky Over Kibera, 2019: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18358142/; Id., Aristophanes dans les banlieues. Pratique de la non-école, trans. Laurence Van Goethem, Arles, Actes Sud-Papier, 2020. For more information on Martinelli’s non-school practice, see https://www.teatrodellealbe.com/ita/contenuto.php?id=4. For more on his ‘choral’ practices, see Marco Martinelli, Coro, Genoa, AkropolisLibri, 2023, and Di Martino 2024.

[5] Ermanna Montanari, Enrico Pitozzi, Cellula: anatomia dello spazio scenico = an anatomy of stage space, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2021; Ermanna Montanari, Enrico Pitozzi, Prima voce, Bologna, Sigaretten Edizioni Grafiche, 2022.

[6] On the history of this collaboration, see Bortoletti, Di Martino, Refini 2024a, 6-7.

Bibliography

Andújar, R. (2023). Profile: Greek tragedy and performance. The Classical Review, 73 (2), 373-377. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-review/article/profile-greek-tragedy-and-performance/F526AC205991FC008F369060D629212D

Andújar, R., & Nikoloutsos, K. P. (2020). Greeks and Romans on the Latin American stage (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Bortoletti, F., Di Martino, G., & Refini, E. (Eds.). (2024). Memory and performance: Classical reception in early modern festivals. Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, 10 (1). https://skenejournal.skeneproject.it/index.php/JTDS/issue/view/32

Bortoletti, F., Di Martino, G., & Refini, E. (2024). Preface. Skenè, 10 (1), 5-7. https://skenejournal.skeneproject.it/index.php/JTDS/article/view/465/426

Bosher, K., Macintosh, F., McConnell, J., & Rankine, P. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

Di Martino, G. (2024). Practice research, performance pedagogy, and early modern Aristophanes: Building (on) the script(s). Skenè, 10 (2), 247-292.

Gurchiani, K., Torlone, Z. M., Munteanu, D. L., & Dutsch, D. (2017). Greek tragedy on the Georgian stage in the twentieth century. In A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe (pp. 548–559). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hall, E. (2004). Introduction. In E. Hall, F. Macintosh, & A. Wrigley (Eds.), Dionysus since 69: Greek tragedy at the dawn of the third millennium (pp. 1-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hall, E., & Macintosh, F. (2005). Greek tragedy and the British theatre, 1660-1914 . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mitchell-Boyask, R. (2023). Teaching the Oresteia as a work for the theatre. In P. Burian & J. Bromberg (Eds.), A Companion to Aeschylus (pp. 533-543). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.

Meineck, P. (2023). Applied Aeschylus. In P. Burian & J. Bromberg (Eds.), A Companion to Aeschylus (pp. 518-532). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.

Plastow, C., & Bullen, D. (Eds.). (2024). Introducing the classics ecology. In Greek tragedy, education, and theatre practices in the UK classics ecology (pp. 1-16). New York: Routledge.

Smit, B. van Z. (Ed.). (2016). A handbook to the reception of Greek drama . Wiley Blackwell.