Mali Skotheim will give her shoptalk on the poets and actors who traveled to compete at the Greek dramatic festivals in the Roman era. Each festival was intrinsically tied to a place. Yet the performers came, by and large, from abroad to compete. Traveling players were part of the appeal of these festivals, which advertised the geographical range of their competitors by listing the names and hometowns of victors on publicly displayed victory lists. For festival audiences, an international celebrity appearance must also have generated some excitement. Actors traveling abroad to compete and win at international festivals brought glory to their hometowns, which often celebrated their accomplishments abroad in stone at home. The talk will address the role of travel at the festivals and in the lives of the performers, the relationship of festival and performers to place, and how travel facilitated relationships between places, linking each Greek city to a wider Greek world.

Skotheim is the Arthur Ross Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Ancient Studies at the American Academy in Rome and a PhD candidate in the Department of Classics at Princeton University.

You can watch this event live at https://livestream.com/aarome