1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

He reduces choruses, or rewrites them, and includes scenes from mythology, such as moments
from the Iliad with graphic battle descriptions or an erotic tableau of Helen and Paris with
explicit commentary from the chorus, as he conflates lovemaking with war:
The Trojan boy who
Kidnapped her will be paid with thrust for thrust
Exchange cold steel for rape hard flesh/steel
Does not wilt/insatiate weapon......
The language is modern. Clytemnestra describes Agamemnon's final moment:
Then for luck I shoved the third and final thrust
Deep in his guts /then he retched forth his life /in
One swift jet/ its fountain soaked me in its
Drizzle like spring rain from heaven /I do not blush
To tell /he then went down stiff and down he
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FELL!
If this version is well acted, with the miming, musical, and alienating techniques that
characterize Berkoff's work, this can be an exciting anti-war meditation. That is probably the
opposite of what Aeschylus intended, but modern playwrights often use ancient Greek tragedy as
an alphabet, or grammar, for their new sentences. That is the case here and it is benefits from
being performed along with the Poe to express hatred within a family. Both plays have a
dreamlike quality. Personal and public hatred are shown to be living nightmares which haunt
generation after generation. And no hatred is stronger than that between people who have once
loved each other.
In 1977 Andrei Serban staged the Agamemnon, with music by Elizabeth Swados. It was
in oratorio form, and featured a masked chorus, and three main characters. The Vivian Beaumont
theatre in New York was made into a theatre-in-the round. Agamemnon came out from a wire
cage which used to be the pit. Papp performed this version in the park during the summer.