Skip to Content

Byzantine Theatron

On July 29, 2010, dramatized readings of satirical theatron pieces of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were performed in Lovers’ Lane Pool (and afterwards the Orangerie) together with some parodic musical pieces. Three summer fellows and a reader were instrumental. Meg Alexiou, who was working on her translation and commentary on the four Poor Prodromos poems, provided scenes from three, dealing with husband-wife relations, monastic abuses, and the fate of the underpaid intellectual. Przemyslaw Marciniak, who was working on a translation and commentary of three twelfth-century dramatia offered translations of episodes from two: the sale of Homer in a celebrity auction, and the death of Kreillos in Theodore Prodromos’s War of Cat and Mice. Alexander Lingas, who has been working on his book on Byzantine music, offered a nonsense introit, a Psellos piece on monastic abuses, and a phlebotomological ode. Andrew Walker White acted as dramaturg as well as making available his translation of a whole dramation by Michael Haplucheir, which picks up on the theme of the impoverished scholar. Summer fellows and staff provided a chorus of slaves, mice and muses.

The programtexts with introductions, photographs both in rehearsal and in performance record the event.