‘Sharing our glorious Globe stage’: interconnected hauntings in the modern performance of Shakespearean drama and Greek tragedy

SCA Research seminar series presents:

Date: Friday 12 June 2026

Time: 1pm-2pm

Location 09-835 

Presented by: Lucy Ruddiman 

This paper will use the 2015 production of The Oresteia at the Globe as a case study through which to examine discourses surrounding the performance of Greek tragedy in modern British theatre. The Oresteia formed part of the Globe’s 2015 ‘Season of Justice and Mercy’ which the then Artistic Director, Dominic Dromgoole, introduced by describing the ‘glorious Shakespeare plays’ that ‘will share our glorious Globe stage with The Oresteia’; which he presented as ‘the first great cornerstone of Western drama.’ The framing of this production shows a desire to connect Shakesperean drama and Greek tragedy as foundational forces in ‘Western drama’. This provides an insight into the interconnected anxieties that haunt the performance of Shakespearean drama and Greek tragedy. Both occupy contentious positions as theatre and literature and are haunted by similar anxieties concerning the authority of performance and the spectre of the ‘original’. These hauntings are made manifest by performing Greek tragedy in Shakespeare’s Globe, a theatre which acknowledges that it is ‘neither more nor less than the ‘best guess’ at Shakespeare’s theatre.’ I propose that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to understand the cultural and epistemological stakes of performing these plays today. 

 Lucy Ruddiman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Theatre at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the modern performance of Greek tragedy in British theatre. She is working to combine research into the transmission and performance histories of the Greek tragedies with the insights afforded by the theoretical lenses of translation, adaptation and reception theories to develop new methodologies for engaging with Greek tragedy. She is also interested in embodied ways of knowing and questions surrounding practice-as-research.

Emma Cole (as Interlocutor) is Associate Professor in Drama at the University of Queensland, and ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow. She is an award-winning classicist and theatre historian and is an expert on Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre. Her books include Experiencing Immersion in Antiquity and Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2025), Punchdrunk on the Classics (Palgrave, 2024) Postdramatic Tragedies (OUP, 2019), and Adapting Translation for the Stage (Routledge, 2017, co-edited with Geraldine Brodie). She is currently translating Euripides’ final trilogy and writing a book about the history of Greek tragedy in Australia. Alongside her research, she works as a dramaturg on new writing and classical adaptation projects, including on Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City (2022-3).