Abigail Akavia currently lives in Leipzig, Germany. She received her PhD in Classics from the University of Chicago in 2018. Her research focuses on Greek tragedy and the limits of empathy. She is interested in the singing voice on stage and the multiple meanings with which it is charged. She also works on classical reception and pedagogy. Over the past ten years, she has taught undergraduate courses in ancient languages, myth, tragedy and performance, and critical thought. She has worked as a dramaturge in Israel and in Chicago. In 2013, she directed Oedipus the King (Sophocles) at the University of Chicago. Her latest stage role is Catherine in English Theatre Leipzig’s upcoming production of Proof (David Auburn).
by Abigail Akavia “I was surprised you didn’t start with Philoctetes,” my advisor tells me after my dissertation defense. In our institution, in the crowning moment of a student’s academic career, she is expected not only to publicly display sufficient knowledge in her research field, but also to narrate the ‘making of’ the dissertation topic.…
by Abigail Akavia A few thoughts about working from home, about “home”, about writing and about not-writing. About myself, with full realization of the incredible privilege that allows me to write—in normal days and, a fortiori, in days of pandemic. When the reality of the COVID19 tsunami began to hit us here in northeast Germany,…
by Abigail Akavia A. E. Stallings’ long poem “Lost and Found” (from her 2018 collection Like) delivers a mesmerizing meditation on loss in its various and myriad forms. I first encountered it read out loud, like a true epic, and I was gripped, astonished at once by the breadth of the journey Stallings invites us…
by Abigail Akavia When you opened the door to the apartment where I grew up, you could see all the way to the end of the living room and the large window that spanned its width, an entryway-less structure typical of apartment buildings in Tel Aviv. Our living room was particularly long, though, so that…
by Abigail Akavia On permanent display in the MFA in Boston is a bust by Oskar Kokoschka, “Self-Portrait as a Warrior.” The sculpture is a dramatic head with bulging features: bridge of the nose, cheek bones, and creased brows. The eyeballs are painted azure blue, the parts around them bright orange. The head’s wrinkled features are…
by Abigail Akavia This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Hanoch Levin. Levin was Israel’s most important and prolific playwright. In addition to 56 plays, most of which he directed himself, he wrote poems, sketches, and prose, and is often compared to such giants of modernism and absurd theater as Chekhov, Artaud,…
by Abigail Akavia Short Talk on Why Some People Find Trains Exciting / Anne Carson It is the names Northland Sante Fe Nickle Plate Line Delta Jump Dayliner Heartland Favourite Taj Express it is the long lit windows the plush seats the smokers the sleeping cars the platform questions the French woman watching me from…
by Abigail Akavia When I was in my early twenties I watched Catherine Breillat’s 2002 film Sex Is Comedy. It tells the story of a female director struggling to shoot a sex scene between her two young leading actors, who clearly can’t stand each other. The film follows the director through a series of off-camera…
by Abigail Akavia Two weeks ago I celebrated Passover with my family. It was an intimate affair, just four adults and three preschoolers in the small dining room of our rented apartment in Leipzig. Our secular way of life makes Passover, for us, a holiday of light-to-non-existent religious content; nonetheless the richness of the symbolism…
by Abigail Akavia Israel’s minister of justice stars in an ad for the perfume Fascism—if you follow Israeli politics even superficially, you probably have heard about this election campaign video for the New Right party, which sparked controversy in Israeli as well as international media. If you’ve actually watched it, you may have realized it…
by Abigail Akavia As was to be expected, artists are now calling to relocate the next Eurovision Song Contest, which is to be held in Israel in May. No less predictably, supporters are saying, more or less, “let’s leave politics out of it”. As if the Eurovision is nothing but a celebration of music, a friendly…
by Abigail Akavia A group of young women performing exercises at the ballet barre and an angry mob chanting “lock her up.” These two situations, where the exact same action is performed by a group of people, may have more in common than it appears at first. Kinesthetic empathy, a recent topic of research for…
by Abigail Akavia Tuesday, December 4th, was a day of widespread women’s protests against gender-based violence in Israel. A general women’s strike was declared, which garnered the support of governmental departments, municipalities, unions and major corporations. Demonstrations were held across the country: roads were blocked; water in public fountains was dyed red; at Habima Square…
by Abigail Akavia November 9th was the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. In Leipzig, where I live, as all over Germany, a series of events took place to commemorate the victims of that night of Nazi-led pogroms. The western part of Leipzig is a former industrial wasteland. Now rapidly gentrifying, it is still home to those…
by Abigail Akavia Two weeks ago, Maniza Naqvi evocatively wrote here on the resonance of a mythological rape in the eventual confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court (“The State of The Rape of Sabines”). Today, I would like to revisit Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, focusing on how the qualities of her voice…
by Abigail Akavia Would I rather go deaf or blind? Every once in a while, I come back to this question in some version or another. Say I had to choose which sense I’d lose in my old age, which would it be? I always give myself, unequivocally, the same answer: I’d rather go blind.…
by Abigail Akavia A few years ago I taught an undergraduate seminar on Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis and late 20th century adaptations of the play. Halfway through the quarter, a student confided in me that she was a sexual assault survivor, and that the content we were dealing with in class was bringing the…