Greek-Cypriot Historical Plays and Contemporary Culture and Identity and Culture

Abstract

A multi-disciplinary critical analysis of Greek-Cypriot historical plays, of the 1878-2004 period, as indicators of collective identity trends in Cyprus, at the time of their production. Through Political Theory, History/Historiography and Theatre Studies, the study explores identity in modernity at a time when the formation of a national identity was the major sociopolitical development. It also takes into account the dramatic production of communities in continental Europe, Greece, Malta and Crete, as well as the corresponding literary and aesthetic movements. Furthermore, through the structuralist textual analysis of Roland Barthes, the figure of the hero/heroine is central in the examination of the texts. Drawing, also, on intertextuality and its mechanisms, it is revealed that hte plays protagonists with their actions and inter-connections, are indications of the identity the author is associating with the community. The focus is on plays whose themes emerge from three distinct historical periods and deal with specific historical personae: Antiquity; the Axiothea/Nikokles plays; Byzantium; the Justinian/Theodora/Belisarius plays; and French Medieval Colonization; the Peter I Lusignan plays. A comparative analysis of the plays, within and between each thematic category, exposes two ideological frameworks: on the one hand, the over-arching presence of Helleno-centric nationalism on the island and the construction of an imagined community and on the other the importance of the colonial legacy in Greek-Cypriot ideological discourses, in parallel to other communities around the Mediterranean.