Peter Meineck Ph.D. (Classics, Nottingham) is Clinical Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies and specializes in the performance, reception and history of ancient drama. He is currently working on a project on cognitive theory and ancient drama. He has also held appointments at Princeton University and the University of South Carolina and is also Honorary Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham in the UK. He is originally from London and now resides in New York. He has studied in the departments of Greek and Latin at University College London and in the Classics department at the University of Nottingham and has worked extensively in London and New York professional Theatre. He is also the Founder of the award-winning, Aquila Theatre (
www.aquilatheatre.com) which he established in 1991 to present innovative productions of classical drama and has since produced and/or directed 56 shows, wrote, translated or adapted 23, and designed lighting for 43 in New York, London, Holland, Germany, Greece, Scotland, Canada, Bermuda, and the United States in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, the ancient Stadium at Delphi, Lincoln Center, and the White House. He also created Aquila’s education program at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem and Aquila’s national theatre education programs.
Professor Meineck has published several volumes of translations of Greek comedy and tragedy with Hackett and his translation of Aeschylus'
Oresteia was awarded the 2001/2 Louis Galantiere Award by the American Translators Association. He received the 2009 NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award, a 2009 Humanities Initiative Team Teaching Award, the American Philological Association Outreach Prize and a 2010 National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman's Special Award. Peter has published widely on the subject of the reception and performance of ancient drama in journals such as
Arion, the
American Journal of Philology, the
New England Journal of Classics,
Classical World, the
New England Journal of Theatre, and
American Theater. Recent and forthcoming work includes chapters in
Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy (CUP 2012),
The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (Oxford 2013),
The Performance of Greek and Roman Drama (Brill 2013),
Out of Silence: Censorship in Theatre and Performance (EyeCorner 2012), and
Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism (Layman Poupard 2012). He has also several entries in the
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy (Wiley Blackwell 2013), is editing a volume entitled
Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks and working on a new book on cognitive theory and Greek drama entitled
The Embodied Theatre: cognitive studies of Greek drama.
Professor Meineck also works as a Greek literature and mythology consultant, such as to Will Smith on the film
I am Legend, National Geographic, Warner Bros. Disney and FuseTV and is also director of the National Endowment for the Humanities
Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives program, (
www.ancientgreeksmodernlives.org) a national collaboration between the theatre and the public library with the Urban Libraries Council, NYU’s Center for Ancient Studies, the American Philological Association and the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. This program has a special focus on US veteran community and in 2011 was invited to perform at the White House. He has received many prestigious grants for his work with Aquila, including The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York State Council for the Humanities. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Charles Hayden Foundation, The Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, The Lucile Lortel Foundation and the New York Times Foundation. Professor Meineck has served with the Royal Marines, is a New York State EMT and volunteers with the Katonah and Bedford Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps. He is the proud father of Sofia Estrella and Marina Hippolyta.
Professor Meineck is currently a fellow at the Harvard University Center For Hellenic Studies and was awarded a Loeb Library Foundation fellowship for a new translation of Menadner’s
Samia. He has also translated Euripides’
Herakles for Aquila Theatre, which was presented in Los Angeles and Athens, Greece and will be performed in New York in 2013 supported by the Onassis Foundation.
