The performance reception of Greek and Roman plays

Ancient drama has exerted a uniquely formative influence on cultural and intellectual life since the Renaissance, and today ancient plays are being performed in both the commercial and amateur theatre with greater frequency than at any time since antiquity. The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama was founded in 1996 by Edith Hall and Oliver Taplin in response to the need for a coordinated research effort devoted to the international production and reception of ancient plays since the Renaissance. They included within its scope revivals and adaptations on stage, film and radio, and in opera and dance. The purpose of the APGRD is threefold: (i) to serve as a repository of physical materials relating to the history of ancient drama in modern performance, such as playbills, programmes, reviews, drawings, photographs and audio-visual recordings; (ii) to compile a comprehensive production history of ancient drama on the modern stage, published electronically as the APGRD Database, which is proving to be an invaluable research tool for an international body of scholars in a wide range of disciplines and specializations, from those investigating the performance history of a particular play, for example, to those seeking to map the cultural history of a particular country in a specific decade; a second database which strives to map performance in antiquity is currently in preparation; (iii) and, most importantly, to publish interpretative research based on these findings.