Seeing Theatre: The Phenomenology of Classical Greek Drama

The ancient Greek theatron was literally “the place for seeing.” In this talk, Professor Weiss will explore how frequently classical Greek drama exposes and interrogates the spectator’s own viewing experience. Drawing on a range of textual and visual evidence, she will argue that, by making the representational machineries of their productions intelligible and available, Greek tragedy, comedy, and satyr play invite their audiences to participate in the production of meaning.

Naomi Weiss is professor of classics at Harvard University, where she has been teaching since 2014. She received her B.A. and master’s from the University of Oxford and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Much of her research has centered on the performance of archaic and classical Greek poetry, especially tragedy. Her first book, The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Tragedy was published by the University of California Press in 2018. She has co-edited two volumes: Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry: Theories and Models (Brill 2019) and Music and Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds (Cambridge University Press 2021). Her second monograph, which has just been published, bears the same title as her talk: Seeing Theater: The Phenomenology of Ancient Greek Drama (University of California Press 2023).