Three Electras and the Multivalent Mask

The different treatment of the Electra theme by the three great tragedians- Aescylus, Euripides and Sophocles- was my inspiration for a short piece of mask theatre, called Three Electras. To create it I took a passage (in English translation) from each Electra play, linking them together to form a modern piece of ritual theatre, for three female performers. The chorus (of two) were envisaged as 'an actor ' and their changing relationship with Electra was explored, not only in the verbal medium of the texts but also (and in response to these) through the physical form of body and movement. In this way I employed the language of physical theatre and mask, to bring to the fore aspects that may go unnoticed in other readings of the plays. The three chosen passages arguably display a changing conception of the tragic genre and the role of the chorus within it and suggested to me that this might be expressed physically in three different performance styles. Much has been written about, and debated upon, the nature of the original performances. However, Three Electras, was not an attempt to reconstruct the ancient practices, to rediscover 'authentic' schemata or staging. It was rather, another type of translation, using in a visual language and perhaps could be seen as giving concrete form to some of the poetic imagery of the plays, with symbolic and even some psychological dimensions. Although this was not an exercise in re-creating the ancient forms, I hoped that it might contribute to the debates surrounding them as well as serving to clarify some of the views on fifth century tragic masks. With this in mind I put aside the Three Electras for a while and pick up some of the contested strands related to mask and performance style in the ancient theatre. I start with two opposing views. According to the first, the ancient theatres were characterised by excellent acoustics but wer