The MacMillan Institute Tragedy Reading: The Eumenides

“What are its dark secrets that even the rumor of them so fascinates and enthralls?”

So asks Louise Cowan about tragedy as an art form in her “Introduction” to The Tragic Abyss. She laments that we—as Americans and moderns—“lack the viscera for tragedy,” being “all minds and sensibilities.”

The art of tragedy enables viewers to “rise from the devastating experience with a sense of having been fulfilled” while it “liberates them to shape their lives into the wisdom of comedy.”

Join these unquiet yet cleansing journeys into the “heavy breath” of dramatic tragedies.

Each month, those who come will read aloud the tragedy du jour. We will gather, life’s actors, for a “cold reading” on an empty stage (in a different auditorium each time), creating a “moveable feast” of pity and fear.

No rehearsals, no costumes, no lighting or makeup.

The thing itself in the company of those who are also open to tragedy’s mysterious power to heal.

Plan to participate. (Less bold participants can swell the chorus.)

Our final “performance” — Monday, November 29, 2021 ǀ 4125 Buena Vista St. Dallas, Texas 75204

6:00 p.m. Reception ǀ 6:30 p.m. Reading ǀ $10.00

Reading The Eumenides, translated by Robert Fagles (BYO copy)