Punchdrunk, Tragedy and Translation: transforming the experience of ancient tragedy through effective knowledge exchange
Dr Emma Cole at the University of Bristol has collaborated with some of the world’s most influential theatre practitioners to bring to life fragments of ancient tragedy and to realise their potential for experimental performance.
Redefining ancient theatre translation
Dr Cole's research explores the translation of theatrical texts from one language to another, with a particular focus on the translation of ancient Greek and Latin tragedies into contemporary English. Her co-edited collection Adapting Translation for the Stage (with Dr Geraldine Brodie) explores the writing, staging, and researching of theatre translation in theory and practice. It argues that all theatre translation is a form of adaptation and should be thought of as a spectrum, or continuum, which is forever in flux and embodies the potential to loop back on itself.
Through this research, she has developed a new concept for studying ancient tragedy in contemporary theatre, called 'paralinguistic translation'. Her theory promotes analysis of all productions of ancient plays as a form of translated drama, even when the modern dramatist does not have ancient language proficiency.
Dr Cole has, quite literally, written the dictionary definition on ‘the reception of ancient drama’ for the Oxford Classical Dictionary, and her work in this area is now funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship.
Her publications have examined the role of Greek tragedy during the War on Terror, the role of Greek tragedy in postdramatic theatre, and the use of Greek tragedy in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, her 2016 collaborative seminar series co-convened with Dr Geraldine Brodie, Conversations with Iphigenia between the University of Bristol, UCL, and Notting Hill’s Gate Theatre, explored the potential that the corrupt text of Iphigenia at Aulis holds for theatrical reinvention, and led to the publication of two edited transcripts.
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Punchdrunk: blurring boundaries in experimental theatre
Dr Cole has collaborated extensively beyond academia. Perhaps most noteworthy is her knowledge exchange with the UK’s leading immersive theatre company, Punchdrunk.
In 2017, she collaborated with Punchdrunk on a six-hour adaptation of Aeschylus’ Kabeiroi, working as academic advisor on the production and providing details of the narrative context of the tragic fragments, as well as information about initiation rituals in Greek religion, and the potential of this source material for adaptation as experimental performance.
“[Cole’s research] was key to creating the narrative arc for our resulting production; her expertise surrounding Greek tragedy and its reception was crucial to our understanding of the surviving fragments and their performative potential.”
– Felix Barrett, Artistic Director at Punchdrunk
Kabeiroi pioneered an entirely new mode of theatre for Punchdrunk; despite being an experiment with new ways of working the ballot for available tickets was hugely oversubscribed and a sell-out success.
“Part tourist trip, part cult initiation ceremony, the experimental theatre outfit’s new show blurs the boundary between the real world and the imagined.”
– Anne Corlett, The Guardian
Following the success of Kabeiroi, Punchdrunk have continued incorporating Dr Cole’s expertise in their creative process. Together, they are developing a range of futuristic artistic outputs including The Burnt City show, which opened in March 2022, and is described as “Ancient Greece meets 1920s Berlin meets the future in a story […] played out in two grade II listed buildings in Woolwich in South East London”. The Burnt City brings together narratives from Aeschylus' Agamemnon to Euripides' Hecuba and will be Punchdrunk's most expensive and ambitious piece to date.
“It would be very hard to undertake another project without this level of dramaturgical scrutiny now; vast swathes of knowledge and learning will now make its way into our work, making it richer, more focused and dense with detail in ways that we couldn’t have thought possible without her.”
– Felix Barrett, Artistic Director at Punchdrunk
Medea in Exile: embedding the Classics in contemporary theatre worldwide
In 2016, Dr Cole co-created a trilogy of Medea adaptions with award-winning Australian playwright, Tom Holloway. Not only was Medea in Exile Holloway’s first trilogy, but it was also the first adaptation he had written where every plot point was based upon a piece of evidence from antiquity.
“With [Cole’s] help and expertise I got to put myself in the shoes of Euripides and other Greek playwrights and do just what they did; take existing myths and use them to create something new.”
– Tom Holloway
Dr Cole organised a staged reading of the play at the Being Human Festival of the Humanities in 2018 to engage the public in Holloway’s work. 91% of surveyed attendees stated that the reading increased their awareness of research on lost and fragmentary Greek tragedies and that it encouraged them to find out more about the subject.
Medea in Exile: Origins of a Myth; Source: University of Bristol
Medea in Exile: Origins of a Myth; Source: University of Bristol
Medea in Exile. Image credit: University of Bristol
Medea in Exile. Image credit: University of Bristol
Classics in the classroom: reinvigorating engagement in tragic texts among students
Besides playwrights and theatre companies, Cole has given public talks to four separate branches of the Classical Association, as well as to schools, summer schools and Greek drama programmes.
The lectures have deepened understanding of, and widened access to, tragic texts and led to creative and interactive engagements with tragedy from students. Student attendees have specifically highlighted Cole’s lectures on Medea and Greek tragedy as what they liked out of all the offerings on their study day. The organiser of Repton Summer School commented that Cole’s lecture was ‘one of the best we’ve ever had, given how interactive and up to date it was’.
Dr Emma Cole is a Senior Lecturer within the University of Bristol’s Department of Classics & Ancient History, Faculty of Arts. She has been employed by the University since 2015. Her research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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