{"id":642,"date":"2022-12-12T20:10:47","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T20:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=642"},"modified":"2022-12-28T09:07:27","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T09:07:27","slug":"gary-owens-iphigenia-in-splott-the-anthropocene-as-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/gary-owens-iphigenia-in-splott-the-anthropocene-as-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Owen\u2019s Iphigenia in Splott<\/em>: The Anthropocene as Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stef Kerrigan<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The fate of the tragic Greek figure Iphigenia is intrinsically connected to her environment in classical canonical source texts. Her death, depicted in Euripides\u2019 Iphigenia at Aulis<\/font>, is the result of human failings, and yet the natural world and the climate play an integral part. In 2015, Gary Owen transposed the narrative of this classical heroine to Cardiff, Wales, to consider the ruins of contemporary Britain in an increasingly hostile environment of austerity. Owen\u2019s play is a scathing indictment of the overpopulated and under-resourced urban environment, but it is ultimately a catastrophic climate event that leads to the tragedy within this adaptation. Classical tragedy is a predominantly anthropocentric dramatic form. However, with reference to Owen\u2019s Iphigenia in Splott<\/font> and utilising emerging ecocriticism and discourse, I argue that there is potential for an ecologically sensitive, revisionist perspective in contemporary adaptations of classical tragedy. Building upon Carl Lavery\u2019s and Clare Finburgh\u2019s provocation that, \u201cthe Anthropocene is a term that invariably attests to humanity\u2019s inability to impact upon and intervene in natural processes [and] it simultaneously highlights humanity\u2019s failure to harness or control such interventions\u201d (34), I consider what the real tragedy is within Owen\u2019s play. Is the tragedy of his Iphigenia a tragedy of humanity\u2019s failure to cohabit with the natural environment without causing harm or, perhaps more broadly, a tragedy that reflects the failure of a historic and dogmatic anthropocentric view in theatre and beyond?

Keywords: <\/strong>anthropocene, tragedy, ecodramaturgy, weathering, ruins, adaptation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapting Iphigenia at Aulis<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In her History of European Drama and Theatre <\/em>(2002), Erika Fischer-Lichte suggests that one of the fundamental aspects of the theatre is that it \u201calways symbolises the conditio humana<\/em>, regardless of its different culturally historically determined forms\u201d (2). This is most overt within tragedy, classical and after, as the central focus of this theatrical form is often the actions of humans. As tragedy so frequently prioritises issues considered universally human, any consideration of the natural world or environment is secondary, if featured at all. Philosopher Michel Serres directly critiques this oversight suggesting that \u201centertainment mongers show us only corpses, the vile work of death that founds and traverses history, from the Iliad<\/em> to Goya and from academic art to prime-time television\u201d (2\u20133). The spectacle of \u201cconflicts or debates, thick with humanity and purified of things\u201d (2\u20133) that serve as the archetype of ancient theatre, thus, make it the ultimate anthropocentric cultural form concerned with individual heroes and heroines, not their milieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Euripides\u2019 final posthumously performed play Iphigenia at Aulis <\/em>(405 B.C.) is somewhat anomalous compared to many of the other extant Greek plays, as its title features the name of the tragic heroine and the location that is integral to the dramatic action. The plot centres upon a godly demand to sacrifice Iphigenia to enable her father Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek Army, to sail to Troy to wage war there. Euripides\u2019 title automatically ties the eponymous heroine to a particular location; from the outset, her fate and the town are inextricably linked. This link between the two is something that echoes in Gary Owen\u2019s 2015 reworking of the myth, Iphigenia in Splott. <\/em>Other links are less overt, as in Owen\u2019s version the heroine is derivatively renamed Effie, and the setting moves from the fifth century B.C. Greek port-town to twenty-first-century Wales. Owen\u2019s play foregrounds the individual tragedy of the protagonist, but the tragic experience is, in the most defining moment, inexorable from the natural world, Effie\u2019s location and the social context associated with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the link between individual and environment in this twenty-first-century adaptation and its source text, that prompts my ecodramaturgical reading within this article. A consideration of Owen\u2019s Iphigenia in Splott<\/em> through this lens reinforces the interconnectedness of the two tragic sites, person and place, and ultimately produces a damning indictment of the anthropocentrically impacted socio-political context that catalyses the human tragedy. Though I focus largely on the human-made environment, I propose here that this critical framing highlights the anthropocentric tendencies of the tragic theatrical form. Once acknowledged, there exists the possibility for bridging points or strategies for future adaptations of classical tragedies to easily pivot towards ecodramaturgical agendas or sensibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Screenshot from YouTube<\/em>: Iphigenia in Splott<\/em><\/a>, 2016 Tour Trailer. Presented by Sherman Cymru, written by Gary Owen, directed by Rachel O\u2019Riordan and featuring Sophie Melville as Effie (pictured). Accessed 12 Oct. 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Anthropocentrism Then and Now<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Classical Greek tragedy and its adaptations exist as part of a long-established tradition of retelling and reworking mythology. In acts of adaptation, classical Greek plays are frequently recontextualised in order to speak to a contemporary moment. Plays have been modified to question acts of international violence and terrorism; other adaptations have been reworked to reflect postmodern aesthetic demands or deconstructed to offer revisionist perspectives on universalising themes. In this present moment, there is no greater universalising tragedy than failure to acknowledge encroaching climate disaster. Potential climate catastrophe could unite the human species in a singular fate, and therefore, it is my hope that adaptations of tragedy can acknowledge the implications of planetary intersection and connection, to embed ecodramaturgical practices within continued explorations of what it means to be human. In other words, to reinforce the connection between the human and the non-human via strategic dramaturgical interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Playwright Owen and director Rachel O\u2019Riordan have never suggested that Iphigenia in Splott<\/em> was created with overt ecodramaturgical intentions. Rather, it is described in the Sherman Theatre\u2019s promotional material as a production that seeks to expose the injustices of austerity policies in the United Kingdom, to \u201c[drive] home the high price people pay for society\u2019s shortcomings.\u201d Crucially, however, in this production the shortcomings of society and the violence of austerity measures are revealed within the landscape. In doing this, Iphigenia in Splott<\/em> does, in fact, critique the pervasive nature of the Anthropocene as defined by Tobias Menly and Margaret Ronda. Their definition of the Anthropocene,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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names the moment at which expanding global capitalism, with its increasingly destructive side effects of pollution, deforestation, and immiseration, reaches a threshold of self-destruction, as the accelerating conversion of all natural entities into forms of human capital becomes more and more patently in denial of ecological realities and limits.<\/p>\nClark 2<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In transposing the adapted Iphigenia narrative to Splott, a district in the southeast of Cardiff, with its history of late-nineteenth-century urbanisation, and industrial heritage as the site of the former East Moors Steelworks, Owen\u2019s play focuses on immiseration in the inorganic, man-made environment. The urban landscape of this play is perhaps more easily associated with human culture, rather than the natural world, and this is partly because, throughout Western history, the interdependence of nature and humanity has been undermined by a longstanding dichotomisation of the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since at least the fifth century B.C. there has been a divide between nomos <\/em>(culture\/custom\/law) and physis <\/em>(nature) (Cless).[[1]<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup> The divide first emerged with the development of agricultural methods and the organised exploitation of natural resources for human gain. The success of such developments helped to perpetuate the misconceptions that natural resources are infinite and that nature or the natural world can be mastered; an anthropocentric view may suggest that nomos<\/em> and physis<\/em> are interconnected but only as part of an economically defined hierarchy, not as an ecologically sound partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An ecodramaturgical approach seeks to confront the former perspective. Ecodramaturgy, as defined by Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May in their 2012 Readings in Performance Ecology,<\/em> considers how to reiterate the interconnectedness of humans and the entirety of the natural world within the theatrical form. This is an onerous task given the scale and complexity of Earth\u2019s organisms and species interdependency, and Arons and May claim a number of challenges to this endeavour. One of these is \u201creconsidering historical texts and performances with attention to the anthropocentric\/ecologically hostile attitudes and behaviors they normalize\u201d (6). Another challenge relates to the material conditions of theatre and performance, the \u201cuse of both inanimate and animate resources in the process of telling stories\u201d (6); namely, the labour, materials and other energy that is required. I consider these two challenges in my discussion of Iphigenia in Splott<\/em>, linking this with a brief discussion of Astrida Nermanis and Rachel Loewen Walker\u2019s helpful theorisation of \u201cweathering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Splott as Character: Austerity and Ruins<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

As already observed, classical tragedy often reinforces an anthropocentric perspective. Owen\u2019s adaptation is formally no different, as the entire drama is communicated via an extended monologue performed by a single speaker, the protagonist Effie. However, throughout the duration of the play, Owen scatters such frequent references to the environment that Splott emerges as a character that, corresponding to Effie\u2019s corporeal frame, becomes a site of tragedy. The identity of Splott is partly defined by its state of living ruin, and consequently, one of the defining characteristics of Owen\u2019s play is ruination applied repeatedly to the representations of person and place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start of the play, Effie introduces herself with a knowing nod to the on-going national media narrative that demonizes the working class and persons in receipt of state benefits.[[2]<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup> Effie\u2019s introduction immediately ruptures any assumptions that this is a heroine cast in the virtuous mould of the self-sacrificing Iphigenia found in Euripides\u2019 source text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See I know what you think
When you see me pissed first thing wandering around.
You think –
Stupid slag. Nasty skank. <\/p>\nOwen 249<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Effie goes on to describe her day-to-day existence and the relentless cycle of excess and recovery, with graphic descriptions of her physical ruin following the revelry of the night before. The city locale, with its capitalist consumerist ideology, cultivates Effie\u2019s behaviour, and part of her tragedy is that she succumbs to the conditioning of the economic situation and geography. Splott\u2019s identity, as captured in the 2014 Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, is that of an electoral ward that sits in the top ten percent of deprived areas in the country when considering factors such as Employment, Health, Community Safety and Education. Effie exists as a character with individual agency, but in Owen\u2019s depiction of her world, with its intersecting forms of deprivation, there are limited options available to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Effie\u2019s apathy is generated by the continually deteriorating situation in the microcosm of Splott, and Owen uses this to comment more broadly upon the wider impact of austerity in areas of the UK hit hardest following the economic crash of Autumn 2008. The deterioration is evident in the frequent references to the organic and inorganic world that frames Effie\u2019s narrative as it presents a sense of ruin. An inventory of eco-political, austerity-driven failures serves as a form of epilogue and prologue. In the list feature several government-run public services that allegorically represent healthcare, education and leisure services: \u201cdoctors shut,\u201d \u201cthe library they closed, \/ The swimming pool got knocked down\u201d (Owen 250, 306).[3]<\/a> Despite the spatio-temporal distance, the repercussions of David Cameron\u2019s \u201cAge of Austerity\u201d speech in Cheltenham, England in April 2009, and the subsequent policies of the Coalition Government become disconcerting realities for Effie and the wider population of Splott. The landscape of the play is \u201cshut\u201d, \u201cknocked down\u201d and \u201cburned\u201d (Owen 250, 306). The allegorical ruin of the inorganic landscape marked here by declining social provision acts as a simultaneously contemporary and historical palimpsest that traces this particular moment in time through its interrelated economic, social and ecological failings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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