Greek Tragedy Study Club, University of Tokyo

**Agamemnon** at Hibiya Outdoor Amphitheatre, 1961

Greek Tragedy Study Club, University of Tokyo (GTSC) was a student theatre company that was founded at The University of Tokyo and active from 1957 to 1970. They studied and revived Greek tragedy on stage. While main members were students from the Faculty of Letters, experts from various fields and students from other universities also joined their productions. They performed eleven times in total in Tokyo, of which records are still preserved.^[1]

Overview

The club, first founded to study Greek tragedy as drama and then to revive and perform it in its original style, was registered as an official student society of The University of Tokyo in 1958 and named Greek Tragedy Study Club, University of Tokyo (GTSC). Their first production was

Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles, performed at Hibiya Outdoor Amphitheatre on the 2nd of June, 1958.

In the following years, starting from Antigone by Sophocles as their second production in May 1959, the club expanded their repertoire to

Prometheus Bound (originally written by Aeschylus, performed in1960), Agamemnon (id., 1961), Philoctetes (Sophocles, 1962), Troades (Euripides, 1963), Heracles (id., 1964), Persae (Aeschylus, 1965), Bacchae (Euripides, 1966). All the nine performances at Hibiya Outdoor Amphitheatre were supported by The Asahi Shimbun Company.

During those years, they started to use masks in the ancient Greek style for their third production Prometheus Bound. In Bacchae they even brought back the 'Three-Actor Rule', where three male masked actors play all the roles of drama.

After each production they held a review meeting to summarise their achievement in performance and study. These essays, together with the scripts for performance, were published as journals, Greek Tragedy Studies (up until the 5th performance).

In later years, the company moved their venue to Den'en Colosseum. In their production there in 1968, Suppliants by Aeschylus, they followed the Greek tradition to perform tragedy in the daytime.

Their last production came on stage in 1970. Aeschylus's Seven against Thebes, performed in an indoor venue (Chiyoda Town Hall), marked the end of 14 active years of the club.

In October 2017, the club gathered again to hold a conference, To the Very Echo: Performances of Greek Tragedy by the <GTSC>, in a series of events commemorating the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Seijo University.

In March 2019, they published To the Very Echo: Performances of Greek Tragedy by the <GTSC>　(eds. Mitsuya Mori & Atsuko Hosoi; publ. by Ronsosha, Tokyo. ISBN 978-4-.8460-1798-9). In addition to some records of the lectures given at their event in 2017, the volume also contains the data of each production since their foundation in April 1957.