An Emotional Engagement with the Classical Past: Karolos Koun and the staging of ancient Greek drama in the twentieth century

Karolos Koun was convinced that the relationship between the Modern Greek people and ancient Greek culture was not an intellectual one nor was it based on a rational appreciation of ancient Greek civilisation achieved through the study of academic sources. For Koun the connection was primarily an emotional one, based on an irrational force that was rooted in the ‘psyche’ of the Greek people. To reconnect with the ancient Greek dramatic texts, both the performers and the spectators had to rid themselves of any assumptions about the staging conventions of antiquity. Instead the plays had to be inspired primarily by live popular traditions. Koun saw the staging of ancient Greek drama as a way of reclaiming the past for the Modern Greek people by means of a performance practice that had to be rooted in live folk traditions, Greek religious customs and spontaneous improvisation instead of imported performance traditions or methods that aimed at archaeological fidelity. For Koun trying to find a route into the ancient plays was an on-going process, a quest, an emotional journey which aimed to create the performance conditions that connected the Modern Greek performer and spectator with each other and with their past