Speakers

Our international guest speakers include:

Professor Richard Beacham

(Kings Visualisation Lab, Kings College, London)

Professor Richard Beacham is Professor of Digital Culture and head of the 3D Visualisation Group in the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London. He was the co-ordinator and director of the Theatron Project, an EU sponsored online module comprised of numerous VR models and associated research materials for theatres, ancient and modern. Together with Prof. James Packer he directs the Theatre of Pompey Project, the first comprehensive scientific survey and investigation of Rome's earliest permanent theatre, which is currently engaged in an excavation at the site. He is also currently leading a 3-D visualisation-based research project on "The Body and Masks in Ancient Performance Space", sponsored by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Formerly at the School of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick, Richard has worked on the application of advanced information technology, especially virtual reality, to the research and teaching of historic theatre sites and stage setting. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Yale and the University of California, and worked as a Resident Scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. While there he oversaw productions at the Getty Villa, Malibu, of ancient comedy presented upon a replica temporary stage based upon his research. He is an authority on ancient theatre, and has written The Roman Theatre and Its Audience (Harvard ), and Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome (Yale). He has also published translations of Roman Comedies (Methuen).

Professor Beacham is currently working with Dr Hugh Denard on the forthcoming publication, Performing Culture: Theatre and Theatricality in Roman Pictorial Arts (Yale Press, 2006). He is the English language authority on the work of the early twentieth century theatre designer and visionary theoretician, Adolphe Appia, on whom he has published three books, and numerous articles. His German language book on Appia, Adolphe Appia: Kunstler und Visionar des Modernen Theaters (Alexander Verlag) is appearing later this year.

Professor Lorna Hardwick

(Open University, U.K.)

Professor Lorna Hardwick teaches at the Open University, UK, where she is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Reception of Classical Texts Research Project (www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays). Her publications in this field include Translating Words, Translating Cultures (2000), New Surveys in the Classics: Reception Studies (2003) and articles on modern receptions of tragedy and epic, especially in post-colonial contexts. She is currently working on a study of the relationship between classical receptions and broader cultural shifts.

Dr. Dmitry Trubotchkin

(Head, Historical Sociology and Economics of the Arts, State Institute for Arts Studies; Head, Scholarship and Research, Russian Academy for Theatre Arts, Moscow)

Dmitry teaches History of Ancient Culture and Art, and History of the Greek and Roman Theatre. His research interests include the ancient theatre, classical arts and literature, theatre theory, and the reception and interpretation of the classics through the ages. He has presented at conferences around the world on the reception of Greek and Roman theatre in Russia.

Other Speakers

Jude Anderson, Director, Punctum Theatre (Australia), “Looking at the leash when the roof is on fire”

Dr Anastasia Bakogianni, University of London (UK). “Electra in the Open: Michael Cacyoyannis’ Electra (1961-2)”

Prof Richard Beacham, Kings College, London (UK), (keynote speaker), “Architectural, Pictorial and Virtual Spaces: Theatrical Phantasia in Antiquity and Today”

Associate Professor Robin Bond, University of Canterbury (NZ), “Dionysus down under”

Dr K. O. Chong-Gossard, University of Melbourne (Aus), “Gendered Space in Greek Tragedy as Communication”

Xan Colman, University of Melbourne (Aus), “Mythospolitik: Construction and Utilisation of the Theatrical Space of Myth in Christa Wolf’s and Heiner Muller’s Medea interpretations”

Murray Dahm, University of Sydney (Aus), “Performing Nero”

Associate Professor Michael Ewans, University of Newcastle (Aus), “Translating Aristophanes - for actors, in the round”

Jason Freddi, Deakin University (Aus), “The space for free will in Shakespearean and Greek tragedy”

Dr Jane Montgomery Griffiths (Monash University), “Performing Electra and the Space of Memory”

Dr Ron Goodrich, Deakin University (Aus), “Present Performance, Past Playscript: James McCaughey’s Practice, James Moffett’s Principle”

Dr Adrian Guthrie, “Agamemnon - Bloody Thought (version 3)”, a solo performance

Prof Lorna Hardwick, Open University (UK), (keynote speaker), “Cultural Spaces in the recent translation and performance of Greek Drama”

Yvette Hunt, University of Queensland (Aus), “From Treading the Floor to Treading the Boards – the influence of ‘in theatre’ requirements on Pantomime’s reception in antiquity”

Dr Ivar Kvistad, Deakin University (Aus), “The Atomic Bomb as Dea Ex Machinâ: Heiner Müller’s Medea”

Monika Läänesaar, University of Tartu (Estonia), “Repeated places”

Raichel LeGoff, University of Newcastle (Aus), “Shakespeare at Epidaurus: the Athens Festival”

Assist. Prof. Ellen Mackay, Indiana University (USA), “Fishes in the Archive: The Impossible History of the Naumachia”

Associate Professor Platon Mavromoustakos, University of Athens (Greece), “Skénè v/s scena: producing ancient drama and reshaping performance space”

James McCaughey, director (Aus), “The Oresteia at the Pram Factory, Melbourne, April 1974: a dialogue in the construction of theatrical space”

Assoc Prof Ann McCulloch, Deakin University (Aus), “Contemporary Tragedy: Is it a possible Art Form: Do we deserve it?”

Kate McCulloch, University of Melbourne (Aus), “Classical Spaces in Contemporary Frames: Maintaining the heroic in the Representation of War”

Paul Monaghan, University of Melbourne (Aus), (1) “When I look into space I see my imagination: the tragic body in theatrical space”; (2) “Hysterical Realism and beyond: Greek Tragedy on the Australian Stage”

Dr Patrick O’Sullivan, University of Canterbury (NZ), “Geographical and Political Space: the Idea of Sicily in Euripides' Cyclops”

Dr Kathleen Riley, The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Oxford (UK), “The Heroic Psyche as Tragic Space: Modern Manifestations of Euripides’ Herakles”

Meredith Rogers, La Trobe University (Aus), “Being Intimate in a Public Place”

Professor Suzanne Said, Columbia University (USA), “Athenian Space in Greek Tragedy”

Professor Frank Sear, University of Melbourne (Aus), “The shape of the ancient theatre”

Helen Slaney, University of Melbourne (Aus), “Murders and Monsters and Thunderbolts: Seneca in performance”

Dr Peter Snow, Monash University (Aus), “Antigone in Australia”

Giulia Torello, University of Nottingham (UK), “Titanic resilience: immobility and use of scenic space in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound.”

Dr Dmitry Trubotchkin, Russian Academy for Theatre Arts (Russia), (keynote speaker), “Close Relations’ Between Antiquity And The Avant-Garde: Transformations Of The Classical Theatre Space In The Twentieth Century”

Bronwyn Tweddle, Victoria University (NZ), “Peter Stein’s Oresteia”

Dr Ashley Wain, director (Aus), “A World Full of Gods: Experiencing Archetypes and the ‘Second Plan’ in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.

Prof David Wiles, Royal Holloway, University of London (UK), “Arguments about space – what are the underlying issues at stake?”