Adapting Greek tragedy during the War on Terror: Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender

Cole, Emma

doi:10.1386/jafp.9.1.37_1

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Crimp's play is a hypermodern reworking of Sophocles. As Cole (2016) has highlighted, the play's form is distinctly conscious of its classical roots, and includes sections of verse. However, as Crimp 'couldn't imagine writing a play that wasn't cut, linguistically, culturally, from the material of contemporary life' (cited in Sierz 2006: 64), both his verse and prose are littered with modern and postmodern references.…”

Section: Hyllosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cruelty, tenderness and anger: Ensuring the Women of Trachis speak to our times

Bush

2019

Journal of Adaptation in Film &Amp; Performance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

At a time when the vocality of women's anger seems particularly pertinent, this article examines two contemporary adaptations of Sophocles' Women of Trachis, both of which draw our attention to the abused and traditionally mute character of Iole. Timberlake Wertenbaker's 1999 radio adaptation, Dianeira, illustrates dramatically the perils of keeping Iole silent; whilst Martin Crimp's 2004 stage adaptation, Cruel and Tender, imagines the result of giving her a voice. This article considers how both plays resonate with the gendered and international conflicts of the contemporary world. ARTICLEA lot of women will be very angry. Some might even take to the streets. But this won't be the tipping point. There won't be a tipping point, there never is. There will just be the subterranean lava flow of women's angerslow, blistering, savage and inexorable. We'll go to bed angry, we'll get up angry, we'll drink our coffee and fix the kids' breakfasts angrily, […] we'll eat silent lunches with rage and we'll pick up groceries on the way home with vengeance on our hearts. We'll kiss our partners and our kids goodnight wrathfully. […] The anger will shift, seismic but unseen. Before the lava used to burn us to ash on the inside. It's bubbling over now. Enough of us have ripped open our bodies to let the boiling soil of our lives out that the heat itself causes fires. Sure, you can put one or two out at a time. A single flame is easy to catch. But the lava is elemental and everywhere. Kavanaugh will be confirmed. And in less than a generation he'll be a petrified ash fossil, frozen in a rictus of agony in the new Pompeii. Nothing will seem to have changed, until it's too late. The lava of our anger is going to cover the earth and bury you. (Alexander 2018) It reads like the climactic speech from the final act of a tragedy -a contemporary imagining of Medea, perhaps -but the text above is taken from a blog post, responding to the inevitable confirmation of alleged rapist Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. It is just one in a spate of recent articles concerning women's anger (Alexander 2018; Bate 2018; Pine 2018). Central to the thrust of many of these pieces is the need to direct that anger productively into protest, on both a political and a personal level. The passage quoted above suggests that the way to stop the angry lava 'burn [ing] us to ash on the inside' is through small, vocal acts of resistance, for example, amongst one's family and colleagues. In her recent publication, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, Soraya Chemaly argues a similar case at greater length, using the examples of her stifled mother and mute great grandmother as warnings against the dangers of seething in a silent anger. Another vivid illustration of this peril can be found in Timberlake Wertenbaker's Dianeira, a 1999 radio adaptation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis. Wertenbaker signposts the anger integral to

show abstract

Section: Hyllosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cruelty, tenderness and anger: Ensuring the Women of Trachis speak to our times

Bush

2019

Journal of Adaptation in Film &Amp; Performance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

"Cruel and Tender", de Martin Crimp, las "Traquinias" del s. XXI

Ventas

2023

Cuad. Filol. Clas. Estud. Griegos e Indoeur.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cruel and Tender, una tragedia escrita por Martin Crimp que vio la luz en 2004 bajo el subtítulo “After Sophocles’ Trachiniae”, no ha recibido prácticamente ninguna atención por parte de los expertos en tradición clásica. Esta investigación pretende ayudar a llenar ese vacío. Para llevar a cabo este estudio sobre la presencia de las Traquinias de Sófocles (s. v. a.C.) en el drama de Martin Crimp, se ha decidido comparar las estructuras, las tramas, los coros y los temas de ambas obras con la intención de descubrir en qué aspectos el dramaturgo británico se ciñe más a su modelo y en cuáles no. Asimismo, se han estudiado las expresiones y los símiles sofocleos introducidos en Cruel and Tender, en tanto en cuanto son una manifestación más del hipotexto de dicha obra.

show abstract

Adapting Greek tragedy during the War on Terror: Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender

Abstract: General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms

Cited by 2 publications

References 12 publications

Cruelty, tenderness and anger: Ensuring the Women of Trachis speak to our times

Cruelty, tenderness and anger: Ensuring the Women of Trachis speak to our times

"Cruel and Tender", de Martin Crimp, las "Traquinias" del s. XXI

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About