Table Of ContentHellenic Common
Hellenic Common argues that theatrical adaptations of Greek tragedy exemplify
the functioning of a cosmopolitan cultural commonwealth.
Analyzing plays by Femi Osofisan, Moira Buffini, Marina Carr, Colin
Teevan, and Yael Farber, this book shows how contemporary adapters draw
tragic and mythic material from a cultural common and remake those sto-
ries for modern audiences. Phillip Zapkin theorizes a political economy of
adaptation, combining both a formal reading of adaptation as an esthetic
practice and a political reading of adaptation as a form of resistance. Drawing
an ethical center from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s work on cosmopolitan-
ism and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s theory of the common, Hellenic
Common argues that Attic tragedy forms a cultural commonwealth from
which dramatists the world over can rework, reimagine, and restage materi-
als to envision aspirational new worlds through the arts.
This study will be of great interest to students and scholars of drama, adap-
tation studies, literature, and neoliberalism.
Phillip Zapkin is Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Pennsylvania State
University, USA.
Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies
Problems of Viewing Performance
Epistemology and Other Minds
Michael Y. Bennett
Dramaturgies of Interweaving
Engaging Audiences in an Entangled World
Erika Fischer-Lichte, Christel Weiler and Torsten Jost
Shakespeare and Celebrity Cultures
Jennifer Holl
Actor Training in Anglophone Countries
Past, Present and Future
Peter Zazzali
Hellenic Common
Greek Drama and Cultural Cosmopolitanism in the Neoliberal Era
Phillip Zapkin
Shakespeare’s Hobby-Horse and Early Modern Popular Culture
Natália Pikli
Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwik Flaszen
Five Encounters with the Sage
Juliusz Tyszka
Opera in Performance
Analyzing the Performative Dimension of Opera Productions
Risi Clemens
Performances that Change the Americas
Stuart Day
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre–Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS
Hellenic Common
Greek Drama and Cultural
Cosmopolitanism in the Neoliberal Era
Phillip Zapkin
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Phillip Zapkin
The right of Phillip Zapkin to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zapkin, Phillip, 1987- author.
Title: Hellenic common : Greek drama and cultural cosmopolitanism in the
neoliberal era / Phillip Zapkin.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Routledge advances in theatre and perfromance | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010069 | ISBN 9780367536466 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367536480 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003082743 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama—Modern presentation. | Greek drama
(Tragedy)—Adaptations—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PA3238 .Z37 2022 | DDC 882.009—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010069
ISBN: 9780367536466 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780367536480 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003082743 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003082743
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
For
Andi, my partner
Sandy and Mike, my parents
and Molly, my sister.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Buying Piraeus, owning Greece 1
A very brief history of neoliberalism 4
McTheatre: Neoliberalism on stage 6
Adaptation, theatre, and resistance to neoliberal hegemony 8
The cultural commons 12
Chapter summaries 14
Conclusion 18
1. Adaptation: Shared cultural myths 22
The field of adaptation 23
The political economy of adaptation 28
Why the Greeks in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? 32
Global Greeks? 38
Adaptation’s cosmopolitan political potential 41
Conclusion 43
2. Economic (neo)colonialism: Exploitation makes
globalization go ‘round 47
A global economy 48
Economic anti-colonialism: Protest in Femi Osofisan’s
Women of Owu 50
Art and culture as survival tools 57
The god of profit: Nation building and global economics
in Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes 61
Violence and disaster capitalism 65
Politics of disavowal: Neoliberal rhetoric and results 68
Conclusion 71
viii Contents
3. …And their families: Neoliberal family and the
dissolution of the social 74
Family and the neoliberal paradox 75
Competing models of family in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats 79
Contradictions to neoliberal ideals: Travellers and domestic labor 88
Breaking down society, building society through theatre 93
Conclusion 96
4. Korinthiazomai: Rewriting desire and perverse enjoyment 99
The psychology of neoliberalism 100
New plays from old fragments 104
Commodified society: Sex, religion, and family 107
Alcmaeon’s symptom 111
Creon’s obsession 115
God from the law 119
Conclusion 121
5. Ubuntu: Building a common world 124
Cosmopolitan ethics 125
Molora and its classical intertexts 130
Molora and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 133
African languages and performance forms 138
The humane power of the Xhosa Chorus 140
Conclusion 144
Conclusion: Buying Greece: Or, you get what you pay for 148
Theatre takes on culture 150
Theatre takes on capitalism 154
Index 160
Acknowledgments
From the beginning of my dissertation process in 2014 to the book you
now hold in your hands—and thank you, reader, for buying or borrowing
a copy—this has been a long and beloved labor for me. This book would
not have been possible without the help and input of so many people who
deserve, at the very least, a special mention here.
In particular, I’d like to thank my dissertation committee for their help
throughout the initial iteration of this project. Starting with Ryan Claycomb,
my chair, mentor, and friend. You’ve been one of the biggest intellectual
influences on me and my scholarship. Lisa Weihman, Katy Ryan, Dennis
Allen, and Emily Klein, thank you all for the feedback, the discussions,
and the dissent (even about me using psychoanalytic criticism). My deepest
respect and love.
Thank you to my brilliant partner Andi Stout, who has discussed politics,
economics, neoliberalism, and my book/dissertation at length with me, even
when she didn’t want to. I’d also like to thank my parents, Sandy and Mike,
and my sister, Molly. You have always been supportive, and without you all I
would not have been able to complete this.
Thank you, Routledge editors, particularly Laura Hussey and Swati
Hindwan, who did so much work to help get this book into its final form.
Sections of this book have been previously published—in whole or in
part—in different iterations, and I would like to extend my gratitude to the
editors and peer reviewers of PMLA, Comparative Drama, and Modern Drama
not only for allowing me to reprint the following sections, but also for your
invaluable feedback that strengthened both the articles and this book as a
whole.
Portions of Chapter 5—Ubuntu: Building a Common World—originally
appeared as “Ubuntu Theatre: Building a Human World in Yael Farber’s Molora”
in PMLA, volume 136, issue 3, May 2021, published by the Modern Language
Association of America.
Portions of Chapter 2—Economic (Neo)Colonialism: Exploitation Makes
Globalization Go ‘Round—about Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu orig-
inally appeared as “Charles de Gaulle Airport: The Camp as Neoliberal
