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GREEK THEATRE AND CIVILISATION
Publications
The Greek Theater (Associated University Presses)
Greek Tragedy and the Modern World (Methuen)
Contributor to Classical Drama and its Influence - essays
presented to H.D.F. Kitto (Methuen)
Many of his translations from Greek poetry are published in Greek
Poetry - New Voices and Ancient Echoes (Agenda
vol.36, nos. 3- 4).
Leo has also written a traveller's history of Greece - Greece
for Everyone (Sidgwick & Jackson).
He has been the Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor at McMaster
University, Ontario, (his appointment held in the Department of
Classics ). His academic speciality is the drama of fifth century
Athens, on which he wrote his Ph.D., and he has given many lectures
on Greek drama in British universities such as Oxford, Bristol,
London, Birmingham, in about fifty universities in the U.S.A.
and Canada, and several in South Africa.
The special focus of The Greek Theater is the chorus
dance of the fifth century plays, and he has given many workshops
on the choreography of these dances, including to the cast of
the Royal National Theatre, as well as in university drama departments
and schools.
See under RADIO for his programmes on Radio 3 of his Greek translations
- An Unconquered God,
and Woman's Brief
Season.
See under FILM & TV for his two films The
Drinking Party and The
Death of Socrates, adaptations of Plato dialogues.
See under THEATRE for the Greenwich Theatre production of the
Antigone
of Sophocles translated and directed by him. This translation
was later produced at Ampleforth College.
Current Activities
Leo is working on further translations of the chorus lyrics in the plays of Sophocles, with the intention of doing further work on the dances of the Sophoclean chorus, following on from his ground-breaking work on the chorus dances of the Antigone of Sophocles.
Critics have said -
on The Greek Theater
| There are two aspects of Aylen's book which command
attention. One is his general, polemical emphasis on the
sheer uninhibitedness of 5th-century Athenian drama, on
the cultural and imaginative affinities between Aristophanes
and his supposedly more solemn tragic colleagues. Sophocles
breathed the same air as Aristophanes, not the same air
as Aristotle. Aylen reads the tragedians from an Aristophanic
perspective, as it were, revelling in their riotous colour
and verve, their tonal instabilities and unpredictable rhythms,
their hospitality to grotesque and burlesque humour. Their
heart, he argues, is in the choral dances, and he strains
to conjure up how exactly these dances may have looked and
sounded and felt. This too commands attention, because while
many literary critics have handsomely acknowledged the "centrality"
of the choral lyrics through detailed analysis of their
densely evocative images and elusive syntax, no one has
tried systematically to imagine how these words were given
body and motion in the choral dance. Aylen believes that
the metrical patterns of these lyrics provide an exact choreographic
code, "as detailed and precise as Shakespeare's built-in
instructions to actors as to how to speak his blank verse".
And he proceeds to demonstrate this argument, through closely
argued accounts both of climactic moments in a number of
different plays, and of whole plays in the case of Prometheus
Bound, Antigone and The Frogs. Here, as often throughout
the book, he is at his most daringly imaginative and persuasive
with Aristophanes. |
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Adrian Poole, Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge,
THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT
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Aylen writes from the viewpoint of a theatre director
about to stage a Greek play rather than a university scholar.
Certainly the experience gained in his recitals of his own
poetry and his TV documentaries would amply justify the
claim that he has combined the 'two strands of theatrical
exploration - the scholar's and the performer's'. His central
thesis, that he has broken the 'choreographic code' of 5th
century Greek drama, and that the dance lay at the epicentre
of the plays, as written and as performed, is brilliantly
documented and argued.
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Ossia Trilling, DRAMA
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| We have in The Greek Theater more than the usual display
of scholarly exploration; we have a personal and professional
manifesto of a scholar-teacher-performer on the Greek theater
and Greek drama. Aylen does make a real contribution in
confronting the choreographic code in the lyrics of the
Greek plays and in arguing that there is a clear choreographic
structure for each chorus but also that the structure of
each play in its entirety is a dance-drama - a challenging
approach that is totally defensible and theatrically responsible. |
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John E. Rexine, Chairman of the Department
of Classics, Colgate University PLATON
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on Greek Tragedy and the Modern World
| A good book to have written. |
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Raymond Williams, THE SPECTATOR
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| An important book that towers high above the pedestrian
level of most of what nowadays goes by the name of 'critical
literature' on drama. |
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Martin Esslin, THE LISTENER
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| This very young sage writes with an impressive authority
about the issues which matter most to all of us. |
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Philip Toynbee, THE OBSERVER
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on Greece for Everyone
| Warmly written. Just the book to take to the country. |
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Antonia Fisher, SUNDAY TIMES
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From the
Antigone of Sophocles, translated and directed by Leo Aylen
for the Greenwich Theatre - The opening War Dance
From the
Antigone of Sophocles, translated and directed by Leo Aylen
for the Greenwich Theatre - The song of man and the City
From the
Antigone of Sophocles, Leo Aylen's translation, performed
by the boys of Ampleforth College - The opening war dance
From the Antigone of Sophocles, Leo Aylen's translation,
performed by the boys of Ampleforth College - The song of man
and the city
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