Romanska on Greek Tragedy & Inclusion: Pen America
In an episode of These Truths podcast, which examines literature, Black playwrights Lynn Nottage and Jeremy O. Harris discuss modern theatre and inclusion as one of their topics. Harris says that Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Dramaturgy Magda Romanska is one of his favorite professors, and that they have discussed “the incompatibility of both Blackness and disability with the Aristotelian form of tragedy.”
Harris references a conversation with Romanska (paraphrasing her words):
“If society has already imposed a tragic flaw upon you, [and] that is not a flaw of your own making but a flaw of society, then how do you watch someone overcome that, or succumb to it?” You can’t. It’s not the same as watching Willy Loman or, you know, Walter White. She’s like, “So, actually, the Greeks are incompatible to the disabled body, to the Black body. And maybe something that we should look towards is the structure of Chinese tragedy.”
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