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Medea in Australia: responses to Greek tragedy in contemporary Australian theatre

MONAGHAN, PAUL ( 2006)

In this article I briefly examine three productions of Medea that reflect some of the dominant responses to Greek tragedy in Australia during the past twenty years. I experienced these productions at first hand in Melbourne between 1984 to 1993 – some were also performed elsewhere. To avoid preconceptions of theatrical forms I call these styles ‘hysterical/realistic’, ‘body theatre’, and ‘opera-theatre’. I have expanded my analysis of these performances more recently through archival research in preparation for a much larger project on the reception of Greek tragedy in Australia from the beginning of European settlement late in the eighteenth century to the present. Of all the extant Greek tragedies, Medea appears to have received the most attention here. As I argue in another paper that focuses on the 2005 Indigenous Australian production (Black Medea, in preparation) a number of Australian productions and adaptations of Greek tragedy invite a scathing postcolonial critique. Here I simply analyse some of the trends that the three productions of Medea illustrate. Each of them deserves a fuller analysis than is possible here.