Roman theatre of Spoleto
My core area of expertise and focus remains Roman drama, theatre and performance, following on from my 2012 PhD dissertation "Haec urbs Roma est, ubi haec fabula agitur: Place, Space and Spatial Dramaturgy in the Plautine Theatre" (University of Sydney). I am currently planning at least two short monographs drawing on my PhD research and subsequent work on Roman theatre. One, with the working title Cognition and Convention in Plautine Comedy, applies new research in Distributed Cognition to a cohesive account of spatial and dramaturgical convention in Roman comedic performance. The other will be a short introduction to Roman theatre for performance-makers.
Shorter current and recent research projects include:
“Nam hoc paene iniquomst, comico choragio /conari desubito agere nos tragoediam”: Comic and tragic staging conventions, as revealed by Plautus’ single-door plays
Two plays of Plautus, Amphitruo and Captivi, are unusual in the context of the corpus of fabula palliata because they apparently require the presence of just one door onstage, rather than the more typical two or three. Strikingly, the prologues of both plays also contain explicit references to tragedy, the only comic prologues to do so. This paper draws connections between this textual evidence, staging conventions in comedy and tragedy, the temporary stages used for ludi scaenici during Plautus’ lifetime, and the thematic qualities of both Plautine dramas in order to make some proposals about the logistics of producing theatrical performances in the Roman Republic.
A version of this paper was presented at the Plautus: From Page to Stage conference, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, May 2022.
Distributed Cognition on the Plautine Stage
This paper investigates the most mysterious aspects of the theatre of Plautus—actor training, rehearsal, unwritten performance conventions—in light of recent work in theatre history inflected by the developing field of distributed cognition. This interdisciplinary approach, borrowing from psychology, philosophy and sociology, posits that the cognitive demands of complex human activities are spread across resources such as attention, perception, and memory; the experience of bodily practices as they are sedimented in the body; social structures, and the material environment. The related idea of a “cognitive ecology” emphasizes the interplay of internal cognitive mechanisms and social and physical environment. Performance generally is a complex behaviour generating specific and challenging cognitive demands, and as such is an ideal phenomenon for consideration in these terms. This approach may help to close some of the gaps in our knowledge of historical performance practices. Following work by Tribble (2013) and Tribble and Dixon (2018) I will assess the evidence for features of Roman Republican theatrical practice that may have aided the distribution of cognitive pressures, including scaffolding of skill acquisition, use of spatial convention, and use of ‘parts’ in memorisation.
A version of this paper was presented at the Plautus: From Page to Stage conference, Masaryk University, Brno, November 2019.
“Ite foras!” Presentation of Interior Scenes on the Plautine Stage
As was typical of Roman comedy, the plays of Plautus are all set in an outdoors fictional place, usually an urban street in front of two houses. Although applying modern standards of realism to the staging of these comedies is highly problematic, the plays were clearly written according to a simple foundational principle: the overwhelming majority of scenes take place in public, containing dialogue and interactions that might believably occur in that fictional street. However, there are a handful of scenes across the corpus that seem to contain more private interactions, and apparently take place in interior domestic spaces—inside one of the character houses represented onstage by the stage doors. These include Asin. 830-850, 881ff; Most. 157- 308, 308ff; Pers. 758-776; Stich. 1-57, 89-149, 683ff; and Truc. 449-481. The staging of these scenes involved a straightforward presentational convention that communicated a sense of spatial interiority to the audience without the need for any of the techniques of “scene changing” familiar to post-Classical audiences. This paper offers an articulation of this staging convention with close reference to the aforementioned passages, qualified by a critique of previous hypotheses concerning the staging of these “interior” scenes. This discussion will also be placed in the context of Plautine staging conventions more generally.
A version of this paper was presented at the 32nd Pacific Rim Seminar on Roman Literature, University of Sydney, July 2018.
La maschera di Pantalone: mask as cognitive artefact in the commedia dell’arte
Commedia dell’arte dominated continental European stages for over two centuries, but several aspects of the form remain obscure to contemporary historians. Our understanding of how commedia worked in performance is improving all the time, a clear example of the benefits of blending historical inquiry, textual analysis and practice-led research methods. However, despite the incorporation of commedia-inspired skills into acting curricula at institutions across the world, the original rehearsal methods and training techniques utilised by performers have not received due scholarly attention.
Perhaps the most immediately recognisable feature of commedia dell’arte is the use of grotesque hand-made leather masks by the performers of specific stereotyped roles. These masks were a fundamental element of actor training and performances. Explanations of how they were used by performers have tended towards the prosaically functional or quasi-mystical. However, a thorough examination of these artefacts grounded in concepts of distributed cognition and automaticity might offer compelling alternative hypotheses for how the improvisatory or ‘flexible’ nature of the form might have functioned in performance.
This paper examines how these masks, as crucial elements in the cognitive ecology of commedia dell’arte, were implicated in conventional patterns of actor movement and gesture. I will consider the ways in which the design, construction and wearing of each mask might have encouraged or circumscribed specific types of movement, and the relationship between these types of movement and the almost unique cognitive demands of this form in performance: conventional characterisation, blending rehearsed and unrehearsed textual material, and the flexible processes of composition-in-performance.
A version of this paper was presented at the Body of Knowledge: Art and Embodied Cognition conference, Deakin University, June 2019.
The Interstitial Turn: adaptation of Classical tragedy on the Australian stage, 2008-2012
Australian mainstage performance across the first decade or so of this century was characterised by a number of trends, but one of the more surprising lay in playwrights and dramaturgs turning their attention to Greek and Roman tragedies. Several Classical tragedies were reworked by Australian practitioners between 2006 and 2012. Strategies pursued by these adaptors ranged from use of contemporary imagery for political comment (Barrie Kosky, Women of Troy, 2008) or insertion into much larger theatrical works (Barrie Kosky, The Lost Echo Act III, 2006) through to new plays that bore a more dialogic relationship with their source text.
This paper considers four plays from the latter category: Tom Holloway’s Don’t Say the Words (2008) and Love Me Tender (2010); Anne-Louise Sarks and Kate Mulvaney’s Medea (2012); and Simon Stone et al.’s Thyestes (2012). I will assess the dramaturgical features of these works, contextualise them within the “adaptation debate” that occupied Australian playwrights and directors in the same time period, and consider some future possibilities for this kind of theatrical adaptation.
A version of this paper was presented at the Future Directions in Australasian Classical Studies conference, University of Newcastle, October 2018. .