Advertisement
Stay in the Loop
BSR publishes on a weekly schedule, with an email newsletter every Wednesday and Thursday morning. There’s no paywall, and subscribing is always free.
Fringe Festival: "Waiting for the Ship at Delos'
Jim Rutter
Socrates was framed; what else is new?
JIM RUTTER
As a philosophy undergrad, I once saw a staged reading of Plato’s dialogues. And I can tell you that whatever the Greek philosophers might have added to the dramas of their time, they certainly didn’t grow up influenced by TV.
No such criticism can be leveled at Steve Hatzai, the Philadelphia actor who has written Waiting for the Ship at Delos: The Last Days of Socrates. Hatzai knew well enough from his days as a performer to break up the monotony of the straightforward Socratic conversations into flashbacks that shifted between Socrates imprisoned in his cell and scenes from the trial that convicted and sentenced him to death.
And while the most longish of these vignettes— Socrates’s defense— went on a bit too long and with too little for Melitus (Socrates’s accuser) to say (other than some variant of, “That’s preposterous!”), the play consistently engaged on both intellectual and emotional levels. Like the best historical dramas, Hatzai took one of history’s original iconoclasts and humanized him, allowing Bob Weick to flesh out the freethinking legend with fits of anger and frustration over his plight.
Hatzai gooses up the drama by inventing a warden’s son who learns from and learns to love the aging thinker, and by allowing Socrates a modern cross-examination method that was forbidden by Athenian law. Unfortunately, Hatzai added little else of his own voice or commentary.
The Western canon-based university system already encourages every undergrad to believe that Socrates was unjustly tried, convicted and executed. Hatzai has nothing more to add— unlike, say, Nietzsche, who argued that, by any reasonable standard, Socrates was indeed corrupting the youth of Athens. Whether or not he deserved to die for it, or whether any government or great leader—from Athens to Abe Lincoln—has a right to penalize sedition is an interesting moral dilemma. Hatzai gives us historical drama, nothing more.
JIM RUTTER
As a philosophy undergrad, I once saw a staged reading of Plato’s dialogues. And I can tell you that whatever the Greek philosophers might have added to the dramas of their time, they certainly didn’t grow up influenced by TV.
No such criticism can be leveled at Steve Hatzai, the Philadelphia actor who has written Waiting for the Ship at Delos: The Last Days of Socrates. Hatzai knew well enough from his days as a performer to break up the monotony of the straightforward Socratic conversations into flashbacks that shifted between Socrates imprisoned in his cell and scenes from the trial that convicted and sentenced him to death.
And while the most longish of these vignettes— Socrates’s defense— went on a bit too long and with too little for Melitus (Socrates’s accuser) to say (other than some variant of, “That’s preposterous!”), the play consistently engaged on both intellectual and emotional levels. Like the best historical dramas, Hatzai took one of history’s original iconoclasts and humanized him, allowing Bob Weick to flesh out the freethinking legend with fits of anger and frustration over his plight.
Hatzai gooses up the drama by inventing a warden’s son who learns from and learns to love the aging thinker, and by allowing Socrates a modern cross-examination method that was forbidden by Athenian law. Unfortunately, Hatzai added little else of his own voice or commentary.
The Western canon-based university system already encourages every undergrad to believe that Socrates was unjustly tried, convicted and executed. Hatzai has nothing more to add— unlike, say, Nietzsche, who argued that, by any reasonable standard, Socrates was indeed corrupting the youth of Athens. Whether or not he deserved to die for it, or whether any government or great leader—from Athens to Abe Lincoln—has a right to penalize sedition is an interesting moral dilemma. Hatzai gives us historical drama, nothing more.
Sign up for our newsletter
All of the week's new articles, all in one place. Sign up for the free weekly BSR newsletters, and don't miss a conversation.
