Thoth distribution@thoth.pub Google 20260825T171953

urn:uuid:6da2123c-c8ae-4c61-b40d-2080474e2efb 03 15 9781685711412 00 EB E107 10 01 01 Dancing with Philoctetes Reflections on Pain and Remembrance 1 A01 Abigail Akavia <bold>Abigail Akavia</bold> is a scholar and theater practitioner based in Germany. She holds a PhD in Classical Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago, with a dissertation on the poetics of listening in Sophocles, and has worked onstage and behind the scenes in theaters in Israel, Chicago, and Leipzig. She is particularly drawn to re-imagining ancient Greek narratives and other narratives of trauma through non-literal media such as music, dance, sound, and images. 01 eng 00 116 03 12 ANF 23 Autotheory 10 PER011030 23 Sophocles 12 DB 23 Literary Studies 10 PER011040 23 Philoctetes 12 DD 23 Greek tragedy 23 Premodern 23 theater 23 dramaturgy 23 contemporary performance practice 23 translation 23 disability 23 embodiment 23 grief 23 empathy 23 voice 01 06 03 00 Abandoned by his community, doomed to a solitary existence with his voice as sole companion: can Sophocles’ <italic>Philoctetes</italic> still speak to us? What do his screams have to say?<italic>Dancing with Philoctetes: Reflections on Pain and Remembrance</italic> juxtaposes a new adaptation of Sophocles’ play with an essay describing the process of bringing it to life in a world on the brink of a pandemic. Akavia investigates Sophocles’ nuanced portrayal of the fragility of empathy in the face of suffering, and also shares the challenges of embodying and vocalizing Sophocles’ text onstage. She proposes that the pandemic and its aftermath offer a renewed perspective on <italic>Philoctetes</italic>’ thematization, not just of empathy and disease, but of the longing to return: to home, to health, to what memory holds.Akavia’s treatment of Philoctetes starts out from his body and voice and journeys on to loneliness, toxic masculinity, nostalgia, cancer, dreaming, parenthood, language, ballet lessons, siblings, music, and growing up. Here, scholarship and creative non-fiction combine to tell a story of reading, performing, thinking about, and living (through) tragedy.Listen to Abigail Akavia reflecting on her adaptation of <italic>Philoctetes</italic> on <italic>TangentCast</italic>: Tangent 01 punctum books 04 01 20231215 02 WORLD 06 15 9781685711405 06 15 9781685711412 WORLD 09 punctum books 20 01