Before the Première: Recording the Performance of Ancient Greek Drama

This paper explores some ways of recording the performative elements of the plays during their theatrical staging (meaning before the ‘premiere’). It examines the possibility that, given the rhythmic and melodic nature of ancient Greek language and the descriptive and/or perlocutionary character of scenic information within the texts, the authors could inscribe music and gestural expressiveness into the linguistic code. The high level of performativity implied in the ancient texts probably delayed the need to develop a specific technology for recording the different multimedia components of Greek theatrical plays.