Guest speaker Mary-Kay Gamel explains authenticity and what it means for modern performers of ancient theatre.
PROVO, Utah (Nov 7, 2014)—“When a play staged in Athens or Rome many centuries ago is given a subsequent performance, by what criteria can we evaluate its authenticity?” asked Mary-Kay Gamel, professor of Classics, Comparative Literature and Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz.
Gamel, who gave a guest lecture at BYU titled “Versions of Authenticity in Staging Classical Drama,” has extensive experience producing modern adaptations of ancient Roman and Greek plays. For her, authenticity is a daily concern.
“Authenticity only becomes a value, and a problem, when alternatives become available,” Gamel explained. For example, the ancient Greeks had no concept of live theatre, because it was not possible to record a performance. “There is no trace of concern in the ancient evidence for authenticity in performance – no doubt because there was no concept of a fixed original.”
When performing ancient theatre, most people would think to strive for nominal (or historical) authenticity. This typically means performing outdoors without artificial lighting, wearing period-appropriate costumes and using uncut translations to replicate conditions of the original performance. To illustrate, Gamel shared a clip of a production of Medea. “We can admire the performers’ abilities and preparation; appreciate the sound of the spoken Greek, the singing, dancing, and music; get a sense of the basic conflicts and issues.”
Though trying for historic authenticity can be powerful, the clip demonstrated the weakness of nominal authenticity alone. “Its focus on formal elements often undercuts its ability to communicate,” Gamel said. “This production’s fundamental strangeness means that the audience cannot bring an engaged, critical perspective to bear on the issues involved.”
Inductive (or affective) authenticity depends on engaging the audience and focuses on leaving an intellectual or emotional impact on audience members. Gamel said, “Even modern productions which seem unfaithful to the ancient script, radically innovative, subversive, even parodic or satiric, but which raise issues important to the community and provoke critical and emotional responses in their audiences, more closely resemble ancient performances in their effect.”
Gamel went on to show clips from other productions, including Euripides’ Bacchae, Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria Festival, and Helen of Egypt, a play Gamel adapted from Euripides’ Helen. The clips served as examples of attempts at inductive and other forms of authenticity.
Expressive authenticity is concerned with the meaning that performers are able to extract from a play and then relate to the audience. Productions are treated as experiments. “Instead of the truth of the script conceived as singular, fixed, and in the past, expressive authenticity posits that there may be meanings in the script which can be found by performing it,” Gamel said.
Processual authenticity recognizes that all dramatic productions involve participants with a wide range of backgrounds, skills and views. Gamel said, “Processes which invite involvement from and reflect the personal commitment of all the artists involved are more authentic.”
Structural authenticity sees ancient theatre as a communal experience, with a comradery between the performers and their audience. The audience attends in support of the performers, who are actually getting more out of the experience – naturally, since the performers are the ones making the art.
Gamel identified community theatre as an exemplar of structural authenticity: “A very important form of community theatre is productions at colleges and universities, which can raise issues important to the community and feature members of the community watching other members.”
Gamel was invited to BYU as part of a collaboration by scholars of ancient theater at Brigham Young University, Utah State and the University of Utah. Seth Jeppesen, who acted as Gamel’s guide at BYU, said, “What I like most about her work is how it gets students to think about the current relevance of classical literature and how these texts can still speak to us today. Her adaptations of Greek and Roman drama illustrate the rich potential for vibrant performance across various cultures and contexts that is inherent in these plays.”
—Samuel Wright (B.A. American Studies ’16)