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a performance epic retelling of the journey of
Medea |
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Upcoming - Dec 11 07: concert version of selected sections Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, NYC, 7:30 pm “challenging and
excellently crafted” – Edinburgh Theatre
Guide Recent:
Part 1,
MEDEA IN AIA – April 06 Parts 4,5,6, THE LATER MEDEAD WKCR
recording of monologues from Home
to www.fionatempleton.org |
Anna Kohler & George Schoenstein |
The Medead is a multilayered poetic soundscape,
performed by multiple and contradictory actors. The Medead: the epic life and journey of Medea as a very different figure to the
evil foreign woman shown by the Greeks, including little-known versions from
her origin at the east of the Black Sea. Me Dead: a journey down into the language
and action of dream and the subconscious. Me Dead: not myself. Me Dead: the price of war. Medea: measure, mother, mindfulness Medea: nobody (in the feminine) Medea: the genitals. The Medead: a night and day, a life, a
journey of culture through history. |
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The Medead story Background The play starts with Medea's
origin in Aia, in the land of Colchis, which is now Western Georgia. There her
figure is very different to our now-familiar Euripidean infanticide; she was
grand-daughter of the sun, and associated with pre-Greek cosmic legends. Then
both the figure or ideas of Medea travelled (or were taken) to Greece, which
was mythologized as helping the Greek stranger Jason to obtain the golden
fleece and travelling on the voyage of the Argonauts. Other Greek legends about her
include rejuvenation of the family of Jason; rejuvenation of the nurses of Dionysos;
the alleged child-killing in Corinth which may derive from Orphic initiation
cults; her instrumentality in the change from the old order of Aegeus in
Athens to the new democracy of Theseus; her banishment from Greece and her
return to Aia, where she was revered; and the supposed founding by her son of
the Medes, who together with the Persians were the great eastern peoples, in
struggle against which Greece defined itself. The Greeks depicted Medea’s
figure - female, foreign, and powerful in both medicine and language - in
terms as terrifying as it was threatening to their progressive rationalism.
In fact their version of her became the antithesis necessary to the
construction of Greek culture, in turn so fundamental to Western culture. The Medead incorporates not only the well-known parts of the
legend that the west has inherited, but older references and connections,
many less literary but with surviving traces in cultures further east. These,
including materials from Medea’s birthplace in Georgia, put the figure into a
more rounded perspective, and throw light on the implicated relationships
between rationalism and magic, will and the emotions, politics and the
retelling of history, east and west, and the patrilineal tradition and a
woman’s body. The text plays in the seam between poetry and playwriting,
close to theater's origins and echoing the multiplicity of conscious and
subconscious forces at work in it. It arcs from ancient time to the present,
as if the life of Medea spans millenia. As a cultural construct, Medea’s
figure has extraordinary symbolic power. The jealous infanticide was written
by Euripides for a competition judged on the expedient power of its political
image as well as its literary merit. But since then the historico-mythic has
been assumed as a psychological possibility not just into the normative view
of women but also into the performing bodies of women themselves. It seems
necessary to counter with another, fuller imaginative construct, and
specifically in live performance.
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MEDEA IN AIA
MEDEA IN CORINTH
MEDEA IN ATHENS
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In The Medead eight
actresses each play a different stage of Medea’s life, from a child to
elderly; they also play other female characters. Four male actors cover various
roles, and all performers also play their own ghosts as well as prophetic
birds. Anna Kohler, a
Wooster Group Associate, has worked extensively with Fiona Templeton as well
as with John Jesurun, Hal Hartley, Michel Laub and Richard Foreman; Valda Setterfield, who
has worked with directors and choreographers from Yvonne Rainer to Mikhail
Baryshnikov, and is a long-time collaborator with David Gordon; Tim Hall, former Associate member
of Forced Entertainment; Swiss actress
Graziella Rossi; Robert Kya-Hill, working in both classical and contemporary theatre,
and film; Clarinda MacLow, 2004 Bax awardee for her company CML Performance;
Richard Foreman performer Stephanie Silver; Wooster Group and Builder’s Association associateTanya Selvaratnam; Jane
Comfort and solo dancer Peter Sciscioli; and Sean Donovan, who creates his own dance and performance works. 2006: Part 1, Medea in Aia at 15 Nassau (LMCC Swing Space), NYC 2005: Tramway, Glasgow: Parts 4,5 &6 as The Later Medead 2005: Chisenhale Dance Space, London: research worksops on audience interaction
for Parts 1&2 2004-5
in residence at Mabou Mines/Suite 2001: Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster University, England. Participants were Graziella Rossi,
Tim Hall, Sarah O'Brien, Aysan Celik, Navraj Sidhu, Anna Kohler, Ian Blower,
Roberta Kerr, Dominic Fitch and Caroline Jones. The play has also been
developed at PlayLabs, The Playwrights' Center, Minneapolis; at New
Dramatists and at New York Theatre Workshop.
In 2005 a film was shot for Part 6
in the Republic of Georgia with a travel grant from TCG/ITI. Support: Grants from
the Rockefeller MAP Fund; TCG/ITI to travel to the Republic of Georgia, North
West Arts; the Arts and Humanities Research Board; Franklin Furnace; a
Senior Judith E. Wilson Fellowship at the University of Cambridge’s
Lucy Cavendish College; MacDowell Colony, Yaddo,VCCA; a New York Foundation
for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting; an AHRB Fellowship at the Department
of Theatre Studies, Lancaster University, & the Foundation for
Contemporary Arts award for theatre 2003-4 Venues: The
Medead will be co-produced by the
Schouwburg (City Theater) in Rotterdam, and by the Tramway in Glasgow. Development: New Dramatists, New York, directed by
Rachel Dickstein; New York Theatre Workshop; the International Women
Playwrights’ Festival in Athens, Greece. Development casts also
include Black-Eyed Susan, David-Patrick Kelly, Aysan Celik, Roy Sadler, Sarah
O’Brien, Ian Blower, Caroline Jones, Roberta Kerr, Dominic Fitch MEDEA RETURNS
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Last Revised: winter 2005