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Mary-Kay Gamel

Mary-Kay Gamel, a professor of classics and theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will present the Winslow Classics Lecture at Hamilton on Monday, Feb. 1, at 4:10 p.m., in the Kennedy Auditorium (Science Center). Her lecture, titled “Revising ‘Authenticity’ In Staging Ancient Drama,” is free and open to the public.

Some of those who stage ancient Mediterranean drama believe that they must strictly follow ancient performance conventions. Gamel will argue that such an “archaeologically correct” approach overlooks the role of the audience in creating meaning from performance. Her talk, illustrated by video clips, will suggest ways in which a broader, more flexible approach to staging can create both stronger effects on contemporary audiences and a total theater experience that more closely resembles ancient performances.

Gamel was educated at Smith, Harvard and Berkeley. Her areas of specialization are performance studies, Greek and Latin literature, myth, the reception of Greek and Roman texts and artifacts, film, and feminist approaches to literature and performance. Gamel has staged many productions of ancient and medieval drama, often in her own translations and adaptations, and has written on the performance of ancient drama in both the original and later contexts.

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