Professor George Rodosthenous (University of Leeds) will deliver the guest lecture at this year's Joint Postgraduate Symposium on Ancient Performance and Reception, but all are welcome, attendance at the symposium is not required to join the guest lecture.
If Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy established the director as auteur, the digital era demands recognition of a new figure: the digital auteur, for whom technology is not a scenographic supplement but a structural, dramaturgical, and performative force. The ancient Greek stage deployed its own technologies (the mēkhanē, the ekkyklēma, and the guilds of technitai) as perception structures shaping audience understanding. Contemporary directors now mobilise real-time video, immersive sound, and digital scenography as their functional equivalents. Yet, these tools intensify the ethical question posed by The Bacchae: as we witness suffering through screens and virtual mediation, do we become, like Pentheus, guilty voyeurs? By juxtaposing ancient technē with digital avatars and real-time mediation, this keynote suggests that the central technology at stake is not the crane or the camera, but perception itself, and invites reflection on how digital spectatorship might shape our experience of empathy, attention, and ethical engagement.
George Rodosthenous is Professor of Theatre Directing at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, and has directed 13 new adaptations of Greek tragedies and other theatre pieces of verbatim and musical theatre in Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, UK.
For more information and to access the Zoom link to join the event online, visit the APGRD's webpage for the event.
