The Playwrights Database
ROBERT BAGG (1935 - )
Nationality: USAemail: Click here to contact Website: Click here
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Bagg was born on 21 September 1935 and grew up in Millburn, New Jersey, where he attended its excellent public schools, played varsity golf, JV football, and began to publish humorous columns in the school paper. Fascinated by the exotic personality, romantic adventures, and harsh death by drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he determined to see if he could make poetry his own line of work. His parents did not disapprove but sent him to amherst College thinking that the faculty there would either endorse or discourage this particular vocation. at amherst he had the good fortune to study with Walker Gibson and James Merrill and to alarm Robert Frost, who chided him for writing about sex, noting that Yeats waited until old age to broach that aspect of experience. In 1957, his senior year, Bagg won the lugubriously named Mount Holyoke College Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize. as Fate would have it, his college roommate was Ralph Lee, a brilliant mask maker and stage director. Bagg's Greek professors urged him to translate a short satyr drama, The Cyclops by Euripides; Lee crafted gorgeous masks for the play's huge one-eyed monster and directed it with gusto. Just before graduation the two collaborated on another play, based on the Nausicaa episode of Homer's Odyssey. That undergrad exposure to Greek drama set Bagg off on a lifelong career vector, translating the athenian playwrights into contemporary speech. The University of Utah's Greek Drama Festival has staged three world premieres of his translations; Gerald Freedman staged his Bakkhai at the Great Lakes Theatre Festival in 1995. after graduating from amherst College, Bagg spent two years, with his first wife Sarah and their young family, hanging out with expats and natives in France and Italy, immersing himself in two sophisticated ancient cultures, both of which provided subjects and perspectives for his later poetry. While abroad from 1957 until 1959 he wrote his first book of poems, Madonna of the Cello (Wesleyan University Press, 1961). after a semester at Harvard he earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Connecticut, taught briefly at the University of Washington (1963-65), and then spent the rest of his career at the University of Massachusetts in amherst, where he served as Department Chair from 1986 to 1992. His teaching specialties were English Romantic Poetry, Modern Poetry, and Great Books from Homer to Hemingway. He retired in 1996 to make up for lost time (ten years as an administrator) by translating more Greek plays, and writing essays and poems. His translations of Euripides and Sophocles (eight to date) have been staged in 60 productions worldwide. Over the years Prix de Rome, Ingram Merrill, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, NEa, and NEH fellowships have supported his projects. He has five children from his first marriage to Sarah Robinson Bagg, and has been married for thirteen years to Mary Bagg, a freelance writer and editor. They live in western Massachusetts. He is currently writing a critical biography of the poet Richard Wilbur.
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below is a list of Robert Bagg's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Antigone Bakkhai, The Cyclops, The Hippolytus Oedipus At Kolonos Oedipus The King Women Of TrachisAntigone
Forbidden by her uncle, the tyrant Kreon, to bury her brother Polyneikes because he betrayed and attacked his own city, antigone defies the edict, finds her brother's corpse, buries it, and carries out the required funeral rites. Guards on watch catch her in the act and bring her to Kreon, who immediately sentences antigone to be incarcerated in a sealed underground chamber. Haimon, antigone's betrothed, who happens to be Kreon's son, confronts his father, defends antigone, but fails to persuade his father to spare her. In a burst of anger Haimon denounces his father and runs off to rescue antigone. The direct confrontation between political and personal loyalties, which the characters eloquently debate, results not only in the deaths of antigone, Haimon, and Kreon's wife, but in the moral and political destruction of Kreon. The play is particularly valued for providing one of dramatic literature's most heroic female roles, for the bravura poetry of its choral odes, and for the momentum of its intense, rapid-fire dialogue. Bagg's translation hews closely to the Greek so that Sophocles' own dramatization of a far-from-straightforward tragic clash of motives and principles may be experienced and antigone's often over-ridden complexities preserved.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Sophocles. 10 performances directed by Barbara Smith
1st Produced:
University of Utah, Greek Theater Festival 16 Sep 2001
Organisations:
University of Utah, Greek Theater Festival
1st Published:
in The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos, and antigone. University of Massachusetts Press, amherst (2004) 1-55849-454-5
Music:
-
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Genre:
Drama Translation
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 3 Other: Male chorus and leader
Further Reference:
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Top of PageBakkhai, The
Dionysos, son of Zeus, enters Thebes disguised as a tall, good-looking stranger. To exact revenge for his dead mother's sullied reputation, he coerces the city's women into his cult, where to worship the god is to abandon the drudgery of civilized life for rapturous ecstasy-dancing, singing, drinking wine, slaughtering wild creatures and eating their flesh and blood. When all the women have run wild on the mountain, the priggish Theban king Pentheus acts to arrest the charismatic stranger and capture the women. Once in custody, the god plays on Pentheus' repressed lusts and desires to first disorient and then destroy him.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Euripides. 3 performances directed by Kenneth Washington
1st Produced:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City Aug 1978
Organisations:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City
1st Published:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1978 978-0870231902
Music:
-
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Genre:
Drama Translation
Parts:
Male: 7 Female: 1 Other: Female chorus and leader
Further Reference:
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Top of PageCyclops, The
Synopsis:
Returning from the Trojan War, Odysseus and his men come ashore on an island to search for provisions. Roaming inland they find a cave and ransack it. They then encounter a band of horny satyrs, who warn them that the one-eyed giant Polyphemous (a Cyclops) will soon return. He does, trapping them all in his cave, then begins to eat them, one by one. Odysseus distracts, and soon inebriates Polyphemous with wine from his ship's larder. Once the Cyclops falls asleep, Odysseus and his men sharpen a thick pole, heat it in Polyphemous' campfire, and ram it sizzling into his huge eye. Blinded, Polyphemous is helpless to prevent the Greeks from slipping out of his cave. They immediately return to their ship; Polyphemous hurls a huge boulder after them, which nearly capsizes the escaping Greeks.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Euripides. 1st production directed by Ralph Lee; subsequently performed At the Yale Drama School.
1st Produced:
amherst College Jan 1957
Organisations:
amherst College
1st Published:
In Liberations. Spiritus Mundi Press, PO Box 205 Worthington, Ma 01098 (1969) -
Music:
-
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Genre:
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Parts:
Male: 4 Female: - Other: Male chorus of satyrs 4; Odysseus' sailors 2-6
Further Reference:
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Top of PageHippolytus
Hippolytos, son of the hero King Theseus, spends his days tracking game and reveling in his chastity; both activities honor the goddess artemis. They also infuriate aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality, who opens the play by confiding to the audience her intention to destroy this insolent young man. aphrodite intends to use Phaidra, Theseus' wife and Hippolytos' stepmother, as her weapon, and inspires in Phaidra a virulent lust for Hippolytos. Unwilling to proposition her stepson face-to-face, Phaidra allows her maid to act as go-between. When Hippolytos hears that Phaidra desires him he not only rejects her but excoriates the entire female sex as depraved, deceitful, and desperate. Humiliated, Phaidra commits suicide and exacts her revenge on Hippolytos by leaving a note to Theseus claiming that Hippolytos has raped her. Devasted, Theseus deploys a magical prayer to Poseidon, asking the god to kill his son.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Euripides. Has been staged in eleven productions to date in England, Greece, And United States, most recently At Barnard College in NYC in October 2008. Revised version of play will be published by Oxford in December 2009. ISBN: 978-0195388770
1st Produced:
Toronto: Firehouse Theatre Nov 1974
Organisations:
Firehouse Theater, Toronto, Canada
1st Published:
Oxford University Press Inc, USA (4 April 1974) 978-0192125712
Music:
-
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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Drama Translation
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 4 Other: Chorus of women
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageOedipus At Kolonos
Old, blind, depleted in body by years of wandering through attika in the care of his daughter antigone, Oedipus arrives at the sacred grove of the Eumenides in Kolonos, a village on the outskirts of athens. apollo had promised years ago, during the same session at Delphi in which the god warned the young Oedipus he was destined to commit patricide and incest, that he'd receive a kind death in this grove. Forced from experience to realize that apollo's oracles should be trusted, Oedipus now presents himself at the appointed place, ready to die. Defiantly stationing himself just outside this grove at Kolonos, Oedipus in succession receives: a delegation of Old Men from Kolonos; his daughter Ismene, who arrives from Thebes on horseback bringing shocking prophecies; King Theseus of athens, who offers him refuge; Kreon, who tries to kidnap him back to Thebes; and finally his disowned son Polyneikes. at last thunder and lightning announce that it's time to keep his rendezvous with a wondrous death, in the course of which the gods of the underworld symbolically re-enact, and absolve him of, the horror of the very crimes they drove him to commit.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Sophocles.
1st Produced:
- -
Organisations:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
1st Published:
in The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos, and antigone. University of Massachusetts Press, amherst (2004) 1-55849-454-5
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Drama Translation
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 2 Other: Chorus of men; one silent woman servant; soldiers (silent).
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageOedipus The King
apollo contrives for Oedipus to rise from an unwanted, abandoned newborn to become ruler of Thebes, then to be destroyed, self-blinded, and ultimately exiled. Faced with the terrifying prediction that he'll kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus flees Korinth and the parents he believes to be his own. In a fit of road-rage he kills several men and arrives in Thebes just in time to put down the Sphinx, who was systematically disposing of those too dull-witted to solve her riddle. Oedipus is rewarded by grateful Thebans with their vacant throne and the newly widowed queen; she bears him children whom he will discover are his own half-brothers and -sisters. Nothing in Oedipus' world, and by implication our own, is in reality what it seems. Sophokles peppers the dialogue with double entrendres and puns that point to what the king doesn't know about his predicament-but readers and audiences do know. Ingenuity and swiftness of plot, as well as razor-sharp poetry, keep contemporary audiences riveted by the damage Oedipus suffers, and by the human eloquence with which he articulates the cosmic injustice the gods inflict on him.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Sophocles. Additional performances in Nashville, TN, August 1983, 6 perf; University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, Nov.1985, 6 perf, And Nazareth College, 8 perf. Oct, Nov 1998. A revised version of the play was published in 2004 in The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus At Kolonos, And Antigone. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. ISBN: 1-55849-454-5
1st Produced:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City Aug 1980
Organisations:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
1st Published:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1982 1-55849-454-5
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Drama Translation
Parts:
Male: 7 Female: 1 Other: Chorus, male; silent servants and attendants, female
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageWomen Of Trachis
Synopsis:
Deianeira, the home-bound and devoted wife of Herakles, opens the play by describing her unhappy marriage: her husband for the past twelve years has a custom of returning from his heroic chores only long enough to get her pregnant; then he's off again, encountering compliant women along with formidable monsters. Desperate after fifteen months without any news of him, Deianeira sends her son Hyllus to find his father. Just after Hyllus sets out, a messenger from Herakles turns up escorting a contingent of female slaves, including the strikingly attractive but totally mute Iole. Eventually Deianeira learns that Iole is actually Herakles' concubine, a princess whom he loves. Unwilling to be displaced, Deianeira soaks a robe in a love potion and sends it back to Herakles via the messenger. Unfortunately the centaur who gave Deianeira the potion had another agenda than making Deianeira irresistible to her husband. When Herakles makes his entrance, he is in no condition to love anyone, in screaming pain from third-degree acid burns. He demands Hyllus carry out his appalling final wishes: to burn Herakles alive and then marry Iole. In this play Sophokles explores shocking but psychologically astute ways to show good people going wrong.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Sophocles. 1Publication forthcoming in Sophocles Outcasts: Aias & Philoktetes, Elektra & Women of Trakkhis, from University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst.
1st Produced:
University of Massachusetts, amherst Ma Nov 1992
Organisations:
University of Massachusetts, amherst, Ma
1st Published:
in the North Dakota Quarterly, Vol. 74, Number 4, pp. 27-68 (Fall 2007) -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Drama Translation
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 1 Other: Chorus of women; one silent woman; soldiers (silent).
Further Reference:
-
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