There’s a moment in grad school at Berkeley I often remember with great fondness. It was the first of many such recollections, and they do say we always remember our first.
The moment happened after a performance of Aristophanes’ The Frogs. The performers were British university students who presented the work in Greek, sans subtitles or translation. Luckily, the group of us grad students from the Berkeley Department of Dramatic Art Greek and Roman seminar class had read the work (in English) and were familiar with what was going on.
That was fortunate because the performers were not great actors, and there wasn’t much to the staging—though I recall the chorus waving pennants to support Aeschylus or Euripides. And who could ever forget that (maybe too-often repeated) chant of “Brekka-kak-kak-coax-coax!”
Afterward, a group of us collected outside the venue and began discussing the performance. There were members of the second year class as well as us first-years. But there we were, not sitting around a large seminar table presided over by a faculty member, but rather standing on a sidewalk and having a very intellectual discussion. It just happened. Even in that moment, I recognized it for a significant milestone in my intellectual development.
I recall that moment more than many that occurred in the seminar room in two years.
MUSOFYR 