Aristophanes at the BBC, 1940s-1960s

Wrigley, A. (2014) Aristophanes at the BBC, 1940s-1960s. In: Olson, S. D. (ed.) Ancient comedy and reception: essays in honor of Jeffrey Henderson. De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 849-870. ISBN 9781614511250 doi: 10.1515/9781614511250.849

Abstract/Summary

This essay investigates the performance life and history of Aristophanes’ plays on BBC Radio in the 1940s and 1950s, alongside a BBC Television production of Lysistrata in the 1960s, paying attention to both their production contexts and the way audiences engaged with them. It not only explores the various approaches that have been taken in response to the challenge of rendering a highly visual comic form - Aristophanic drama - in purely aural and imaginative terms for production on the notoriously ‘blind’ medium of radio, but also charts how works from the unfamiliar and sometimes obscure genre of ancient comedy were made intelligible and understandable for the mass, non-specialist audience. The symbiotic relationship drawn out between these mass media productions of Aristophanes’ plays and the spheres of education, publishing and the stage highlights important points of creative engagement between classicists and writers on the one hand, and creative professionals in radio and television on the other, focusing especially on the contributions of Gilbert Murray, Louis MacNeice and Patric Dickinson.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/71697
Item Type	Book or Report Section
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items
Publisher	De Gruyter
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