Antigones un Mēdejas ceļi Baltijas teātrī

The study compares the development of the reception of three ancient tragedies – Sophocles’ Antigone, Euripides’ Medea and Seneca’s Medea – in the Baltics. The article summarises the results of several previous studies on the reception of ancient tragedy in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. A diachronic study provides an overview of the history of the translation and production of ancient tragedies in the Baltics. The study of the development of reception is complemented by a survey of translated and staged reception texts of the myth from later periods, focusing in greater detail on the most significant productions and their criticism. In order to limit the broad material of later reception texts, only texts of the dramatic genre have been selected for more in-depth analysis. The reception of ancient texts and the interpretation of myths in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have both common and different features. The similarities are determined by historical and socio-political events shared across all three Baltic states; the differences stem from cultural and linguistic specificities. The chronology of the translation and staging of ancient tragedies and their reception texts reveals the transfer of ideas and the similarities in the directions of interpretation dictated by the zeitgeist and current events. The example of the reception of Antigone myth demonstrates the convergence of ancient sources and reception texts to form a unified understanding of myth in the cultural space. Moreover, this development of the reception of Antigone myth took place throughout the Baltics. Later texts, in particular, were decisive in shaping the reception of the Medea myth. Although the reception texts and their popularity in the theatre differ among each of the Baltic states, the interpretations of the Medea myth in the Baltic cultural space are largely similar.