Taking as its starting point Nancy's and Barthes' concepts of myth, this thesis investigates discourses around community, democracy, 'origin' and 'Western identity' in stage adaptations of 'classical' Greek tragedy on contemporary European stages. It addresses the ways in which the theatre produces and perpetuates the myth of 'classical' Greece as the 'origin' of Europe and how this narrative raises issues around the possibility of a transnational European community. Each chapter explores a pivotal problem around community in modern appropriations of Greek tragedy: Chapter 1 analyses the notion of collectivity as produced by approaches to the Greek chorus. It investigates shifting paradigms from Schiller to twentieth-century avant-garde experiments and focuses on case studies by Müller, Vinaver, Ravenhill and others. Chapter 2 explores the representation of violence and sex, assessing the 'obscene' as a historically-constructed notion, comprising those segments of reality that are deemed unsuitable for public consumption in a given cultural context. Through a comparative analysis of five adaptations of the myth of Phaedra - from Euripides to Sarah Kane - it assesses changing attitudes towards 'obscenity', touching upon legal, aesthetic and moral issues. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the limits of representation in relation to censorship through Castellucci's Purgatorio and Warlikowski's (A)pollonia. Chapter 3 explores the myth of the simultaneous birth of theatre and democracy in 'classical' Athens and investigates the ideological assumptions implied by imagining the audience as the demos of democracy. It argues that adaptations of Greek tragedy have been used in the 'democratic' West to achieve self-definition in the context of globalization and European 'transnationalisation'. This idea is explored through adaptations of Aeschylus's The Persians, which defined 'democratic' Athens in opposition to the 'barbarians'. Works by Sellars, Bieito, Gotscheff and Rimini Protokoll are discussed in this context. The thesis concludes with an analysis of Rimini Protokoll's Prometheus in Athens.

Nel contesto italiano, molti prodotti mediali sono di origine straniera: diffusi o trasmessi insieme a quelli di produzione nazionale, al tempo stesso cambiano spesso forma, per andare incontro al pubblico italiano, e diventano, almeno in parte, diversi dall’originale. La tesi vuole, pertanto, porre le basi teoriche per uno studio sistematico dei processi di “mediazione” che intercorrono nel passaggio di un testo mediale da un Paese all’altro: l’appropriazione nazionale (“italianizzazione”), l’adattamento, la distribuzione, la circolazione e la messa in pagina di contenuti e prodotti. Tali strumenti trovano poi applicazione (e insieme conferma) nell’analisi delle vicende italiane della sitcom americana, e di alcuni titoli in particolare, sotto tre punti di vista: la ricostruzione della storia del genere, che segue le evoluzioni del sistema televisivo e mediale nazionale e da questo è mediato; la definizione delle oscillazioni e variazioni che il testo affronta, senza limitarsi alla traduzione ma seguendone l’adattamento e la traslazione; infine, il racconto dei percorsi tra mercati, doppiaggi e reti che compongono la filiera della sitcom, mettendo in evidenza il ruolo intermedio svolto dalle routine produttive e dagli addetti ai lavori coinvolti nella distribuzione internazionale (e poi, nel nuovo contesto, nazionale). / In the Italian context, several media products have foreign origins: diffused or broadcast together with the national productions, they often change their nature in order to reach the Italian audience, and consequently become partially different products. Therefore, this dissertation aims to put the theoretical basis of a systematic study of the “mediation” processes that take place in the passage of a media text between two countries: national appropriation (“Italianization”), adaptation, distribution and circulation of different contents and products. Subsequently, these tools are applied on (and confirmed by) the analysis of the Italian vicissitudes of the US-made situation comedy, focusing on five titles, in order to study three aspects: the genre history on Italian TV, connected with the evolution of the national TV and media system; the variations and gaps that every text has to face, thus expanding the concept of translation into adaptation and transposition; in conclusion, the US sitcom chain in Italy, including TV markets, dubbings and broadcasting, highlighting the intermediary role played by production routines and professionals involved in the national and international distribution.

No description available.