Timberlake Wertenbaker with Miriam Leonard on the Transformative Power of Greek Tragedy

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Timberlake Wertenbaker grew up in the Basque Country and is one of our most celebrated playwrights. She is Professor of Playwriting at the University of East Anglia. Her work exhibits a lifelong fascination with Greek tragedy, and she has translated and adapted for stage and radio Sophocles’ Oedipus, Antigone, Elektra and Ajax, and Euripides’ Hecuba and Hippolytus. In November 2020, her adaptation of Ovid’s ‘Phaedra’ was performed online at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre as part of 15 Heroines.

In her work on Greek tragedy she is particularly interested in the fluidity of the self, and in how forces within the human being do battle with one another. She draws out the alternative voices that challenge prevailing ideologies, such as normative views of war, politics, and life. Ultimately she explores how Greek tragedy constantly renews itself to teach us about ourselves.

We are grateful to the Leventis Foundation for supporting this event.