OLLI101810 - Ancient Greek Drama

Course Description

Ancient Greek Drama

Instructor: Toby Zinman

Day of Week: Thursday

Dates: Sept. 24 – Nov. 19 (9 sessions)

Time: 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Location: Online via Zoom

Maximum: Unlimited

More than 2,500 years later, these plays still thrill audiences. Follow the bloody footprints down the long corridor of time through Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Oedipus, Euripides’ Medea, and other works that complete these mythic stories. Contemporary translations bring the drama to life in all its power, without the togas and archaic language. These playwrights invented theater as we know it. The course will provide historical and intellectual context—including ancient Greece, Hegel and Freud—while allowing plenty of time for discussion and reflection on participants’ thoughts and reactions.

Instructor Bio: Toby Zinman is a retired English professor at the University of the Arts and recipient of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award. A scholar of American theater, she previously served as chief theater critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer and has written for The New York Times, The Times of London, Variety and American Theatre United States, which named her one of the 12 most influential critics in the United States. She is also a widely published travel writer.