THE STAGE'S HOTTEST PLAYWRITE: AESCHYLUS

Thought lost forever, Aeschylus' play Achilles now will enter the 21st Century:

A Greek play is to be staged for the first time in more than 2,050 years after fragments of the text were found in Egyptian mummy cases.
Cyprus's national theatre company, Thoc, plans to perform a modern take on Achilles, a Trojan war trilogy by the dramatist Aeschylus, known as the father of tragedy. It will be performed in Cyprus and Greece.

Scholars had believed his trilogy to be lost for ever when the Library of Alexandria burned down in 48BC.

"But in the last decades archaeologists found mummies in Egypt which were stuffed with papyrus, containing excerpts of the original plays of Aeschylus," said the director of Thoc, Andy Bargilly.

Aeschylus wrote about 90 plays, but few survive.

Drawing on references by other ancient playwrights and the recently found texts, Thoc and researchers believe that they have the closest possible adaptation.

Fascinating.

[Link via LRC]