ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the peculiarities of the Christos Paschon, in particular its ambiguity as both sacred drama and secular cento, and the problems of performance and performability. It discusses the Christos Paschon’s status as a tragedy and explores its potential for performance. It rejects certain contexts, for example full Euripidean staging and also Western liturgical drama, and shows how it makes sense in the performance culture of twelfth-century literary society. It shows how it depends on rhetorical performance practice in the schoolroom of ethopooia and also on the streets with popular lament. It shows also how it depends on performance on the page and indicates parallel usage of monologue, dialogue and stichomythia in the period. It touches on the Cannibal poem and the small dialogues of Prodromos and Haploucheir. Performance, it is suggested, should be sought either in the schoolrooms of Constantinople or in the theatra associated with Komnenian princesses.
