This chapter explores what we mean by ‘adaptation’ when discussing classic Greek tragedy in performance and to what extent terms such as translation, version, (re)writing, (re)imagining, etc. can or indeed should be distinguished from one another. Examining the nomenclature attached to four different recent theatrical adaptations of classic Greek tragedy, namely Medea, Phaedra, Iphigenia, and The Persians, this chapter establishes that the differentiation between adaptation and related modalities such as rewriting, translation, and version, is intrinsically linked to processes of reception. Elucidating the difficulty of establishing boundaries between original writing and rewriting, or indeed adaptation for performance, this chapter takes the position that the act of (re)writing asserts the validity of an established dramatic text; it confirms that a text belongs to the category of classic drama. At the same time, it promises an often radical (re)investigation of its premises.

The distinction between document and text – the material and meaningful dimensions that give definition to one another – builds the agency of readers into the work-concept. Readers lend the work power. They give it renewed life. There is no transcendence for the work in this model but there is a phenomenology of it available.

This position affects literary studies. Bibliography and book history can usher us towards a long view of the life of works, in which our own readerly role in the present is affirmed. Our moment is now and we want to grasp the work, to internalise it and to assess it. Given the trajectory of works across time, access to versions of works is necessary. Chapter 6 argues that, contrary to scholarly editors’ usual belief, all work-editing is versional, whether based on intention, social-reception or documentary principles. This is because emendation is inevitable.

A practical testing of this understanding in a digital project that puts archival–editorial and work–version relationships into play is then described: the Charles Harpur Critical Archive (charles-harpur.org).