Electra

Electra, by Sophocles (circa 495-406 B.C.). Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan war, it is based around the character of Electra, and the vengeance that she and her brother Orestes take on their mother Clytemnestra and step father Aegisthus for the murder of their father, Agamemnon.

Electra (circa 413 B.C.), by Euripides (485-406 B.C.). The play deals with the same theme as that of the similarly named tragedy by Sophocles.

Electra (1900), by Spanish playwright Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920). The play discusses the problem of the girl who is being impelled towards a convent life for which she is entirely unsuited.

Performance history in South Africa

Electra by Sophocles, as adapted by Barton and Cavander, directed by Gaerin Hauptfleisch for the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department, September 1997 in the Little Libertas Theatre. The cast: Lorraine Burger, Tania Strauss, Nina Swart, James Lapping, Carlien Mostert, Susan Rabe, Keith Bain.

Translations and adaptations

Electra by Sophocles. *** Translated into Afrikaans by J.P.J. van Rensburg (Elektra, published by Human & Rousseau, 1969) and performed by PACT in 1965, directed by the Greek director Costas Michaelides, starring Anna Neethling-Pohl. Also by the University of Pretoria in 1966?* **

Presented by Universiteitsteater Stellenbosch in the H.B. Thom Theatre and the Bellville Civic Theatre in June 1968. Directed by Tine Balder, starring Frikkie Engels, Fred Nel, Herman Pretorius, Esther Brandt, Annelize van der Ryst, Deon Joubert and others.

Electra by Sophocles, adapted by John Barton and Kenneth Cavander. Published in The Greeks : ten Greek plays given as a trilogy, Heinemann, 1981.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_(Sophocles)

World Drama by Allardyce Nicoll, 1949.

UTS theatre pamphlet

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