The City Dionysia is a yearly event that takes place on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. The 12th-Annual City Dionysia competition will take place on Saturday, November 14, 10:30 a.m. – noon in Strosacker Auditorium. The City Dionysia is an opportunity for regional and state high schools to compete for cash prizes via a 15-minute performance of a classical play; the 2015 City Dionysia will feature Aeschylus’s  Agamemnon. A keynote address will be given on Friday, November 13, 4:30 p.m. –  6:00 p.m. at CWRU Clark 309 by Dr. Timothy Wutrich, Senior Instructor of Classics at CWRU. Past plays and first place finishers include:

2004: Sophocles’ Antigone (Lakewood High School)
2005: Euripides’ Medea (Garfield Heights High School)
2006: Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (Garfield Heights High School)
2007: Euripides’ Hippolytus (Shaker Heights High School)
2008: Euripides’ Bacchae (Shaker Heights High School)
2009: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (St. Edwards and Shaker Heights)
2010: Aristophanes’ Frogs (St. Edwards)
2011: Sophocles’ Philoctetes (St. Edwards)
2012: Sophocles’ Ajax (St. Edwards)
2013: Euripides’ Hecuba (Shaker Heights)
2014: Euripides’ Medea (Shaker Heights)

Here is a description of the objectives and rules for 2015:

Take Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and adapt the complete work or a portion of the work to a fifteen-minute performance.

Objectives: You should aim to entertain and to instruct. The best productions will demonstrate the relevance of this ancient work to today’s audiences, make the text accessible and provocative to these new audiences, and offer modern audiences new insights into the play and themselves.

Rules and Guidelines:

1. Script MUST be ORIGINAL & written by participants (but, of course, translations/adaptations may be consulted).
2. Performances must run NO MORE THAN 15 MINUTES.
3. Masks are optional.
4. Space for performance is approximately twenty-five feet by fifteen feet.
5. Set pieces must be supplied by the team, be portable, and be capable of placement and removal in three minutes. (Less is more.)
6. The teams, if desired, must supply costumes.
7. The members of any team must consist of students currently registered at the high school on the registration form.
8. The entries will be evaluated by a panel of judges based on the format and objectives outlined above.
9. Teams must supply their own a-v resources if they desire; equipment must be set up in the same three minutes as #5 and cleared away after the performance in less than three minutes.

To register please complete the Team Registration Form for Fall 2015 and submit it to classics@case.edu.

FIRST PRIZE: $250.00        SECOND PRIZE $125         THIRD PRIZE $75

Contact Information:

Email Timothy.wutrich@case.edu