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Actors' Shakespeare Project's Medea
Feb. 13th, 2012 11:09 pmThe Actors' Shakespeare Project has occasionally forays outside their nominal role of performing Shakespeare. They've done John Webster's Duchess of Malfi, for instance. This time, they go both older and newer: Euripedes' play is, of course, about 2440 years old, but the translation they use for their script is the 2008 translation by Scottish poet Robin Robertson, into contemporary prose.
Their costuming and stage setting is similarly modern-yet-out-of-time -- all the male actors are in obviously modern dress -- one of Medea's sons is wearing Superman pajamas at one point -- but the female characters' costume is less clearly time-delineated, and the three women who represent the female population of the city, and are also sort of the Greek chorus, and who have emotional resonances with the Fates and the Furies, are in obviously Greek-influenced costumes. The stage is strewn with modern toys -- a Rubix cube, Slinky, some Transformers, that sort of thing -- and also unhewn rocks, which are arranged in a possibly-magical circle.
We saw the production yesterday, at a Sunday matinee, and ASP follows those Sunday matinees with an actor talk-back session, so we got to ask questions and hear a little more about how the actors, themselves, were thinking about their roles. Jennie Israel talked about how she chose to play Medea as a woman who is fundamentally sane and rational, who is NOT crazy, whose every action comes out of her consistent worldview (of which an important point is, "those who wrong me must NOT get away with it").
Here's the thing: Medea is fundamentally sympathetic. She explains to the women of Corinth/the chorus/all of us how she was wronged, and makes us all believe it, and understand that she's fundamentally in the right here. And then, as her plan unfolds, we are, all of us, implicitly complicit in it, because we bought into it at the beginning.
I think I'm going to have to get spoilery from here on in, so I'll throw a cut tag in. I know that the whole "spoiler freshness" rule would tend to exempt works that are twenty-four centuries old, but the thing is, if you're in Boston, and you DON'T know much about the myth of Medea, and you can manage it, go ahead and see it WITHOUT knowing what you're getting into. I mean, as much as possible I try to avoid spoilers about Shakespeare plays I haven't yet seen.
Which probably doesn't really follow for Greek tragedies -- Euripedes' audience would have already been generally familiar with the myth of Medea when they went in to see the play, so they wouldn't have needed spoiler warnings -- the cool thing about this play is what he DOES with the characters and how he presents the emotions behind the actions. So feel free to keep reading even if you aren't familiar with the play, but also, feel free to skip it. As you see fit.
( Read more... )
For all that, though, the most terrifying part of the play was the fact that the characters were totally, completely realistic.
Their costuming and stage setting is similarly modern-yet-out-of-time -- all the male actors are in obviously modern dress -- one of Medea's sons is wearing Superman pajamas at one point -- but the female characters' costume is less clearly time-delineated, and the three women who represent the female population of the city, and are also sort of the Greek chorus, and who have emotional resonances with the Fates and the Furies, are in obviously Greek-influenced costumes. The stage is strewn with modern toys -- a Rubix cube, Slinky, some Transformers, that sort of thing -- and also unhewn rocks, which are arranged in a possibly-magical circle.
We saw the production yesterday, at a Sunday matinee, and ASP follows those Sunday matinees with an actor talk-back session, so we got to ask questions and hear a little more about how the actors, themselves, were thinking about their roles. Jennie Israel talked about how she chose to play Medea as a woman who is fundamentally sane and rational, who is NOT crazy, whose every action comes out of her consistent worldview (of which an important point is, "those who wrong me must NOT get away with it").
Here's the thing: Medea is fundamentally sympathetic. She explains to the women of Corinth/the chorus/all of us how she was wronged, and makes us all believe it, and understand that she's fundamentally in the right here. And then, as her plan unfolds, we are, all of us, implicitly complicit in it, because we bought into it at the beginning.
I think I'm going to have to get spoilery from here on in, so I'll throw a cut tag in. I know that the whole "spoiler freshness" rule would tend to exempt works that are twenty-four centuries old, but the thing is, if you're in Boston, and you DON'T know much about the myth of Medea, and you can manage it, go ahead and see it WITHOUT knowing what you're getting into. I mean, as much as possible I try to avoid spoilers about Shakespeare plays I haven't yet seen.
Which probably doesn't really follow for Greek tragedies -- Euripedes' audience would have already been generally familiar with the myth of Medea when they went in to see the play, so they wouldn't have needed spoiler warnings -- the cool thing about this play is what he DOES with the characters and how he presents the emotions behind the actions. So feel free to keep reading even if you aren't familiar with the play, but also, feel free to skip it. As you see fit.
( Read more... )
For all that, though, the most terrifying part of the play was the fact that the characters were totally, completely realistic.