Trojan Women
Program Information • Cast • Production Staff
The Trojan Women
By Euripides
Translated by Nicholas Rudall
Adapted and Directed by Joanna Settle
New York Theatre Workshop
Public Reading
April 7, 2003
About the Text:
In the introduction to his translation of The Trojan Women, Nicholas Rudall writes, “One year before the first performance of The Trojan Women, in 415 B.C., Athenians had invaded the island of Melos, which was Greek but determined neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta. Athenian forces captured the island, put the men to death, and enslaved the women and children. This barbaric act provoked the people of Athens; Euripides’ play thrusts us into the presence of the pain of innocent victims of war.”
This script, which involves almost no action, once again finds itself a topical and contemporary work 2,400 years after it was written. The members and artistic associates of D13 were deeply drawn to the story, the strength of Nicholas' Rudall's raw and contemporary translation, and the emotional texture of the work.
Hecuba is caught between Andromache (Sarah McMinn) and Talthybius (David Briggs), who has just told her that the Greeks have decided to kill her young son.
Progress To Date:
D13’s interest in producing The Trojan Women began when Artistic Director Joanna Settle was hired by the Juilliard School (her alma mater) in the fall of 2002 to direct the script for the Drama Division's graduating class (Group 32). Company members Katie Taber and Anne DeAcetis were invited to join the cast as guest artists. Also hired onto the team were D13 Artistic Associates Andrew Lieberman (set designer), Obadiah Eaves (composer), Peter West (lighting designer), and David Neumann (choreographer).
The production was staged on a steep wall at a 30-degree angle to the floor, creating an immediate performance challenge. This physical environment also served to make clear the level of danger facing the Trojan women as spoils of war.
In the fall, the play was performed near the one-year anniversary of September 11th. The remount in the spring opened with the start of the war in Iraq (indeed, our 8pm invited dress rehearsal on March 19 began at Saddam Hussein's deadline to leave Baghdad). The production,with a running time of 1 hour and 15 minutes, was an intensely personal experience for performers and audience alike.
New York Theatre Workshop supported D13's efforts to move the production with a “Monday At 3pm” reading, and facilitated a very helpful talkback with the audience and artistic staff of NYTW. Their support allowed us to rehearse for one week with the new cast.
Filled with singing and sonic underscoring, constant choreography, and plainspoken storytelling, we intend to remount The Trojan Women with a full D13 cast and design team within the next year.
Please contact Artistic Director Joanna Settle at jsettle@division13.org for more information. Video and audio samples are available.
Echoes of a Horrific War Long Ago
New performance of 'The Trojan Women' brings a contemporary message about war
By Miriam Sauls
Friday, November 11, 2005
Durham, N.C. -- Euripides wrote The Trojan Women nearly 2,500 years ago and based it on a war that had been fought many centuries earlier, the message to audiences is still relevant today, according to the Duke faculty member who translated a new version of the play for the production.
Arts
The Department of Theater Studies’ production of The Trojan Women, currently running in Sheafer Theater, means to speak to audiences in a timely voice, said Peter Burian chair of classical studies, professor of comparative literatures and theater studies and dramaturg for the production. He and UNC-Chapel Hill professor Alan Shapiro translated the play for the production.
While the women of the ancient city of Troy are the characters in the play, the subject is war itself and the terrible consequences of war even for its survivors. “The overwhelming sorrows of the women of Troy, the brutalization of the world that follows Troy's fall, will still, if given a chance, tell us something we need to know about ourselves and the world we inhabit,” Burian said.
Ellen Hemphill of the Department of Theater Studies faculty directs The Trojan Women. She said she was drawn to how the play underscores some of the unchanging aspects of war.
“Women and children are always the ultimate victims of war,” Hemphill said. “They are not mentioned in statistics; they are not glorified as heroes; they are losers even if they were not on the battlefield — they lose husbands, sons, fathers, and if they are in the battle zones, their homes, other children or their own lives. There is still that same brutality worldwide; women are raped and scattered and forced to move from their homes — whether in Iraq or the Congo or elsewhere.”
Hemphill is known for her use of movement and music and surprising settings to bring an audience closer to the emotional core of a production. To dramatize the timeless situation of war-torn women, she chose to take the “noble” women of Troy and put them in demeaning situations — in circus acts, in circus costumes, in a burned out circus tent — to show how their treatment as the spoils of war ‘feels.’
“The relevance of Trojan Women to our own concerns is only increased by considering its immediate historical context,” Burian said. “It was first performed in Athens in the spring of 415 B.C.E. A few months earlier, the Athenians, at the height of their imperial ambitions, had voted for a massive expedition to Sicily, the wealthy ‘far west’ of the Greek world; the great fleet was at that very moment being readied in Athens' harbor. And in the previous year, Athens had attacked the little island of Melos, which was guilty only of trying to remain neutral in the Peloponnesian War. When the Melians steadfastly refused to agree to Athenian demands, the fleet laid siege to their city; the islanders surrendered, and Athens razed the walls, killed all the men, and enslaved the women and children.
“Given this context, we can only marvel at Euripides' daring and wonder what the reaction of contemporary Athenians must have been to so bleak a vision of conquest,” Burian added. “The Trojan Women dramatizes not the Greek victory, but Troy's fall, seen, with all her men gone, from the point of view of the women about to be sent into slavery. And at the center of it all is Hecuba, the old queen, on stage from beginning to end, absorbing blow after blow, loss after loss of everyone and everything she loves, of every remaining hope.
“What's Hecuba to us? She is the quintessential victim of the folly of war, who fights victimization with every means she has, until she has none left. She is every mother of a fallen soldier, a daughter raped, a child killed in cold blood. Yesterday, we saw Hecuba in the streets of Chile and Rwanda. We see her today in the streets of Baghdad and Mosul. When will we not have to see her again?”
For more information, contact: Miriam Sauls, Department of Theater Studies | 919 660-3343
Home>2005>Echoes of a Horrific War Long Ago
A Pre-Production Discussion of The Trojan Women
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The Trojan Women is an anti-war play. It is also a play about women, a play about human relationships, a play about loyalty, and a play about classical mythology. However, at its core, it is a play about the perils and tragic foolishness of waging war. In his introduction to the play, translator Nicholas Rudall explains that the play was first performed in Athens in 415 B.C. In 416 B.C., Athens had invaded the neutral Greek island of Melos. Athenian troops had enslaved the island’s women and children after killing off the men. Euripides’s native audience would have seen his play as an obvious critique on the invasion that took place only one year earlier (3). The Trojan Women directly criticizes its society publicly from the vantage point of the Theatre of Dionysus. Cassandra says early in the play, “In the end it comes to this: a wise man will never go to war.” This is the paramount theme of the play. Poseidon tells us in his prologue, “The man who sacks cities and desecrates temples and the holy tombs of the dead is mad. His own doom is merely…waiting (14).” Euripides structures the play around this simple, but vital notion: “War is foolish.” This truth coupled with the historical context of the piece makes it very difficult, if not irresponsible, to direct this play today without allowing our nation’s current military involvement, “The War on Terror,” to influence how this production takes shape. In the end, war solves very little. Euripides knew this, and his play may now serve the same function in A.D. 2004 that it served in 415 B.C.
Clearly, I am an idealist, but I am not so naïve as to think the world will be changed because of one play. The theatre is the most politically powerful of any artistic medium. Still, nothing was markedly changed after the original performance of The Trojan Women some 2,400 years ago. With that said, I do view this play as a potential catalyst for debate. In the months after September 11, 2001, one dared not argue or even question our government. Now, where will this new war end? The questions go on, but few people dare to discuss them outside of their own closets. At the very least, this production has the potential to spark that discussion within our community.
To achieve this, the design team and I must underscore the parallels between the ancient Greeks and our modern culture. However, there is a fine line between clarity of the metaphor and browbeating the audience. The audience will arrive at the theatre saturated with news of our current crisis. All we have to do is provide hints and flavors, and they will make the natural connection. The costumes must suggest modernity without designating individual cultures. The Greek guards’ costuming should suggest Western military without stitching a flag on their shoulders; the Trojan women’s attire should display influences from the various cultures invaded by the west without pointing at specific nations. The effect will be that the Trojan women are part of an ambiguous foreign culture while the Greeks represent that which is familiar to the audience. To be clear, I do not want to overtly depict an American versus Iraqi situation. This would limit the play immensely. The conflict with Iraq is but one of many American conflicts. We should focus on placing subtle clarifying emphasis on the parallels between our nation’s military crises and the crisis between Ancient Greece and Troy. We merely have to hint.
The theatrical tradition of the ancient Greeks is captivating. Greek theatre seems virtually uncorrupted by commercialism. Theatre was not merely entertainment. Rather, it was completely fused within their society. It was a vital part of their cultural and religious rituals, and as such, The Trojan Women is one of the most unabashedly ritualistic pieces to come out of the ancient Greek tradition. The play overflows with songs, chants, organized ululations, prayers, and dirges. Again, in his translator’s note, Nicholas Rudall states, “Within the conventions of Greek drama, singing or chanting intensified the emotional impact…The Trojan Women contains proportionately more singing than any other Greek tragedy (4).” Euripides uses ritual as a medium for his message of peace.
In directing this play, I want to maintain this inherent sense of ritual, which is the author’s original intent. I am continually inspired by Anne Bogart’s book A Director Prepares. She writes, “As theatre artists, our job is to set up the circumstances in which an experience might occur (69).” With this production, I want to set up the circumstances for an event of shared ritual. As a director, I strive to regain elements of theatre’s ritualistic heritage. I want to create performances that continue to resonate with audiences long after the curtain call ends, and I am passionate about the power theatre has to transform audiences. When people are included and implicated in the world of the play, they are not as likely to dismiss the performance as mere entertainment.
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “ritual” as: “A set form or system of rites, religious or otherwise (1258).” Ritual is a formalized process. Despite the ethereal connotations, ritual can be analytically broken down to its essential elements for use in the modern theatre. Objectifying the elements of ritual does not reduce the effect of the experience from the audience’s perspective; ritual is a powerful all-encompassing, sensual, and emotional experience. This has become something of an obsession for me. Whenever I witness ritual, whether as a participant or as an observer, I cannot help but analyze the occasion. In doing this, I have found that the basic tenants of ritual include atmospheric aroma or incense, stylized movement, repetition, music, and intimate spaces. While many cultures use these elements each with varying degrees of importance, these essential elements are cross-cultural. They can each be found in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and countless other religious rites. This provides modern theatre artists with a list of clear sign systems from which to work, and their cultural universality encourages their practical use in today’s theatre.
One of the most fascinating of ritual’s basic elements is the use of aroma. Infusing the theatre with carefully selected fragrances can clearly influence the audience’s response to the performance. The use of frankincense and myrrh during The Trojan Women will undoubtedly help create a reverent atmosphere in the theatre appropriate to ritual. The process of sanctification begins the moment the audience and actors sense the aroma upon entering the space. Given the historical and widespread ritualistic use of these resins, the audience will easily translate the use of incense as an act of ritual.
The use of aroma in the theatre is by no means a new concept. In her journal article titled “Olfactory Performances,” published in spring 2001 issue of The Drama Review, Sally Banes writes, “The deodorization of the modern theatre may also be one facet of a conscious move away from religious ritual (68).” She further blames the sterilizing, hygiene campaigns of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s for the reduced use of aroma as a legitimate sign system in the theatre; odors were increasingly linked with the proliferation of disease. For whatever reason, semioticians of the theatre continue to overlook the impact that odor can have on a performance. Kowzan, one of the most influential semioticians of the theatre, includes only auditive and visual signs in his table of classification. Odor seems like an obvious omission. How much would the smell of burning flesh affect the overall meaning during comedies like Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers? This is an extreme example, but suddenly, Kowzan’s classification seems overtly incomplete. Like Peter Brook’s use of incense in the 1985 production of The Mahabharata, incense in The Trojan Women will immediately begin building a sacred atmosphere in the theatre.
Along with aroma, the use of stylized movement is essential to create a sense of ritual in the theatre. Whether it is choreographed or free form, subtle or overt, rituals feature some sort of stylized movement. Early on, while working on the script, I began thinking of this play as having a structure similar to a modern stage musical. The play moves freely between chants, dialogue, and movement interludes in much the same way that a musical transitions between songs, dialogue, and choreographed dance breaks. Looking at The Trojan Women in this way allows me much more creative freedom. While structurally it will remain important to build to certain plot points, I am not locked into trying to force the play to flow linearly like modern realism.
The world of the play has its own rules, its own culture. I am fascinated by theatrical productions wherein the director and the actors create a distinct style of movement specific only to that world. This is what I am aiming for with this show. There are clear points in Euripides’s script that seem to be set aside for stylized, ritualistic movement. For example, there are moments during long elegies where I will use the four-member chorus to create brief emotionally charged movement sequences to punctuate the dialogue. While these interludes will feature both abstract and mimetic physicalizations of the characters’ emotions, I do not want the movements to be immediately representative of modern dance or mime. Again, these characters should move in a manner specific to their “culture.” I will emphasize expressionistic movement over concrete gesture. The emotional quality of the actors’ movements and the further development of ritual are the central focus of these sections.
The play will open with movement set to music that will tell the story of the Trojan War. The play itself begins at the conclusion of the war and presupposes that audience will have significant knowledge of the war. That was an easy assumption in 415 B.C., but today it is necessary to help the audience. The opening piece will serve as a prologue. It also extends the atmosphere of ritual. The trick will be to tell the story of Troy’s demise through movement alone. Before the actors and I can begin working to build the opener, we must thoroughly research the circumstances and history surrounding the Trojan War. Clearly, we are not going to be able to tell the entire story, but it is essential that we have a strong knowledge base from which to work. The opening piece should provide general historical information and set the emotional tone of the play. I am more interested that the audience witnesses a war in the first moments of the performance than I am that they witness the Trojan War specifically. I plan to work with improvisation and free form expressive movements around a central, general historical outline, Greeks versus Trojans. The play will be set in a place of worship, which is desecrated during the war. Poseidon tells us this in the first minute of the play. “Now the sacred places of the gods are silent, the temple walls weep blood…all respect has died (11).” When the audience enters the theatre, the set should appear untouched, sacred. Through the opening movement, the actors will tear the set apart, creating the necessary war torn, despoiled image. The audience will in essence witness the destruction of Troy through the guise of expressive ritualistic movement.
Whether in the form of a mantra, a prewritten mass, or a statement of creed, repetition is at the heart of ritual’s formalized process. Clearly, some productions lend themselves more easily to this than others. For example, in my production of Ionesco’s The Lesson, I edited the script to create a sense of formalized repetition in both movement and dialogue. The audience may not have left pondering the ritual, but the repetition created a ritualistic atmosphere that made the performance unique. The Trojan Women was written with this treatment in mind. Euripides uses repetition throughout the play. Often characters repeat a phrase several times in the course of a monologue. The effect is a formal poetic texture. Along with this textual repetition, much of the movement established in the opening movement piece will be repeated through the course of the play to bring the audience’s attention back to the war.
Following repetition, music is arguably the most universal aspect of ritual. It is hard to imagine a ritual without some form of musical expression. In this production of The Trojan Women, I plan to work closely with my sound designer to create a soundtrack for the piece that will help promote and maintain the sense of ritual. As part of my research, I have been listening to a wide variety of music in search of the right sound. Some examples that fit my concept include Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard, and Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner.” The first two have the classic sound of ritual. They feature chant, organ tones, drums, and a sense of raw emotion. Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” fits well into my political concept, and the gritty harmonics and strange, erratic nature of the piece meld nicely with the emotional atmosphere of the play. The recorded music will be used to underscore moments such as the opening movement. In addition, the script calls for much of the dialogue, particularly the choral sections, to be chanted or sung. However, I want to be careful not to overuse chant in the play as it can begin to drone. I plan to add bits of it throughout, highlighting key moments. For example, as the Greeks carry the body of Astyanax away, the chorus will chant his funeral dirge. I want to reserve chant as a way to emphasize moments of distinct emotional peaks. I do not aim for the actors to sing these sections beautifully. The resulting sound may be atonal and dissonant; I am more interested in the emotional quality of the sound than I am the musicality.
Once the ritualistic elements of aroma, movement, music, and repetition are in place, it is important to discuss the location. Rituals typically take place in intimate spaces, set aside for the occasion: temples, churches, mosques, threshing circles, or dancing grounds. The space must fit the ritual. For this play, the proximity of the audience to the performers must be very intimate. For this to be a shared ritual, there cannot be barriers between the two. This production will take place in the Kiva Theatre on the UI campus. While this is the space assigned to the production, it is also the theatre I would have chosen. The intimate arena space forces the audience to sit very near the action. For this production, we will set up the seating into an avenue configuration. This accomplishes two things. First, on a practical level, in order to facilitate 14 actors moving freely through the space, the playing area must be extended past the central circle of the stage. It just gives the performance more space. Second, it provides for a more communal atmosphere with each half of the audience able to see the other. This should work against the established theatrical convention of a clear separation between audience and performers. The characters are free to interact with the audience. At times they will speak to them. At times they will not. At some points, the actors themselves will be speaking to the audience. This communal seating arrangement allows the audience to be a part of the experience rather than mere observers. The audience should feel like participants. They are a part of the world, part of the ritual.
The Trojan Women is an extremely complex politically motivated play. Written over 2,000 years ago, the play remains applicable today, but it lacks much of the major dramatic action of its modern counterparts. While this poses many challenges, it also opens the doors for creative freedom. This production will not be a typical passive experience for the audience. Instead, I hope to create what Euripides intended, a ritual for peace. In the final moment of the play, the chorus chants, “My city is no more. But we will walk on. We will walk on (61).” While the play mourns the atrocities of war, it leaves the audience with a statement of perseverance, of hope.
Our design process begins on October 23, 2003. At that time, I will give my initial presentation along with music samples and a three-dimensional emotional response. My focus for the initial meeting is to motivate and inspire the design team for the project ahead. I plan to rely upon my stage manager to facilitate all major production and design meetings. I anticipate that the technical rehearsals and performances will run smoothly if the designers and I are accustomed to working with her from the beginning.
The design process for this production will be a communal effort. This is a collaborative process, and it is vital that the designers and I, like the actors, create a tightly knit ensemble, dedicated to working towards a common goal. In A Director Prepares, speaking about the process of creation, Anne Bogart quotes a New York Times interview with actor William Hurt. He says, “Those who function out of fear, seek security, those who function out of trust, seek freedom (83).” This is precisely the point. Above all else, the design process for this show must be free.
During the design process for On the Verge, we were able to solve many of the play’s challenges, or “problems” as we called them, early on in the process. Everyone worked together. The sound designer helped to solve set issues. The set designer helped to solve lighting issues. Throughout the process, we successfully created a mutually trusting and fruitful process. Now, with The Trojan Women, I am again working on a play that is full of exciting challenges. The design team must seek this sort of free communal process.
Innovation dictates risk. Again in her book, Bogart offers sage advice regarding the value of embarrassment to the theatrical process. She writes, “Embarrassment is a partner in the creative act … If your work does not sufficiently embarrass you, then very likely no one will be touched by it (113).” If my collaborators and I seek safe time-tested choices, we are merely rehashing old tricks. Actors should not get away with working from a bag of tricks and clichés, nor should the designers allow themselves such security. We must risk failure and embarrassment, if we are to create something truly fresh. I am passionate about this production and anticipate amazing things to come out of the design process.
Auditions for The Trojan Women will take place on Friday, December 12th with callbacks to follow on Sunday, December 14th. I will be casting six women and five men. Leslie Swancutt, a graduating MFA acting candidate, has already been cast in the roll of Hecuba. The rehearsal process will begin the week before classes resume for the spring semester, roughly January 7th. That should give us a full six weeks for our rehearsal process, not including technical rehearsals. The process will begin with several reads of the play followed by a few days of table work. I love research, but it is important that the work around the table manifests itself on stage. I do not want to waste precious rehearsal time for the sake of invisible research. The actors will do research into the Trojan War and Greek mythology, but the time around the table will focus on marking dramatic and emotional rhythm, getting used to the translator’s use of language, and building an atmosphere of trust in rehearsal. Like the design process, the rehearsal work cannot progress if people are acting out of fear or distrust. All ideas are welcome. Jerzy Grotowski echoes this thought in his book Towards a Poor Theatre, “…every aspect of an actor’s work…should be protected from incidental remarks, indiscretions, nonchalance, idle comments, and jokes (213).” Every actor must be able to completely trust everyone involved. Risks must be taken with this piece. Therefore, rehearsal must be a free, safe place for creation and experimentation. In short, everyone must focus on acting in a purpose driven ensemble where there are no stars and the work is always at the center.
Because the production will be a ritualistic event, the rehearsals should also have that flavor. Our rehearsals will have a formalized process. Rehearsals will begin the same each night. We will begin with exercises to warm up and focus. Once everyone is focused and ready to proceed, we will begin working with movement. The point of these exercises is to get the actors to start creating intuitively and expressively. Sometimes this will take the form of games. At other times, I will give the actors a general outline or a piece of music as a stimulus. These movement exercises will help us to create the expressive movement sections including the opening prologue. After working in this way for a while, the actors will have created a large vocabulary of movements to pull from in later rehearsals. After the movement work, we will begin working on the rest of the show, building each scene consecutively.
Directing this production of The Trojan Women is extremely challenging. I have a large cast, a demanding concept, and a classical text, but I am passionate about the work. The production has the potential to create much needed discussion in our community. That potential brings with it a high responsibility. I look forward to the beginning of this process.
Bibliography
Banes, Sally. “Olfactory Performances.” The Drama Review. 45, 1 (T169), Spring 2001: 68-76.
Bogart, Anne. A Director Prepares. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Euripides. The Trojan Women. Trans. Nicholas Rudall. Chicago. Ivan R. Dee, 1999
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969.
Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language. College Edition. Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1964.
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Biography
Greetings! My name is Charlie Pepiton. I'm currently serving as Assistant Professor of Theatre at East Texas Baptist University. My wife, Beka, and I live on Lake o' the Pines with the dynamic duo of Aunt Avis & Theophilus.
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All Content ©2000 - 2004 Charles M. Pepiton The lasting significance of The Trojan Women
By Piyaseeli Wijegunasingha
3 April 2000
Use this version to print
An adaptation in Sinhala of Euripides' play, translation by Ariyawansa Ranaweera, script by Ananda Wakkumbura and Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka, directed by Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka
Euripides (485-406 BC) is considered to be the most socially critical of all the ancient Greek tragedians. The Trojan Women (415 BC) has long been considered an innovative artistic portrayal of the Trojan War and a penetrating depiction of the barbaric behaviour of Euripides' own countrymen, the Athenians, towards the women and children of the people they subjugated in war.
In The Trojan Women we also see portrayed in a rather pronounced way, an ancient people (to be more specific, women belonging to an ancient people), led by the circumstances they find themselves in, to question their faith in the traditional pantheon of gods. For instance we see Hecabe, the Queen of Troy, who has become a prisoner of war, questioning faith in the gods as well as man's dependence on them. The futility of expecting wisdom and justice from the gods is expressed again and again.
Euripides' play reveals how an ancient people is brought to recognise the naiveté of the belief in a pantheon of gods with complete power over the destinies of men. The gods are spoken of and portrayed in The Trojan Women as jealous, head-strong and capricious. These facts themselves would have disturbed the more politically conservative contemporaries of Euripides, and it is well known that he was looked upon with mistrust by ruling class ideologues of his day.
Whatever the beliefs expressed by the characters Euripides created, and the beliefs he himself held, man had still to travel a long way before becoming conscious of the fact that he had the social ability to become master of his own fate. What was expressed in the belief in the gods held by the Greeks of the heroic age, as well as of the classical age, if not the relative “helplessness” of social man before nature, including society?
The Trojan Women, like any other significant literary work, in an artistically powerful and memorable manner, adds certain grains of truth to human knowledge: that man caught in the midst of the contradictions of war, whether it be archaic tribal war or wars created by ruling classes in modern society, becomes the perpetrator of the most ruthless violence on his opponents, especially on defenceless women and children.
Anoja Weerasinghe plays Hecabe in Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka's production. It is well known that her house, with all her possessions of artistic and cultural value, was burned to the ground by goon squads employed by unscrupulous politicians in the recent spate of post-presidential election violence in Sri Lanka. Reading the statement Weerasinghe made to the press regarding this incident one feels that it carries traces of her personal understanding of Euripides' play . Emphasising that we are not in agreement with her politics, we would like to quote the following passage from her statement to the press:
“Why did they harass me in this way? It is simply because I am a woman. Maybe they thought that I am a single woman. They showed their power, truly their cowardice, to an unarmed and innocent actress. I have spoken out about the intimidation faced by women. I have appealed for the creation of a society that is safe for women ... and I have urged lawmakers to formulate a legal framework that will make this possible ... ”
It is clear that particularly the phrase, “I have appealed for the creation of a society that is safe for women,” expresses the agony long undergone by a woman who is also a professional artist, due to social suppression as well as oppression. Though Anoja Weerasinghe believes that a society safe for women can be created by urging lawmakers to formulate a legal framework, the only society that can ensure safety for women is one consciously organised along socialist principles—where not only the public ownership of the means of production historically necessary for the social liberation of women, but also all the necessary resources for the all-sided spiritual development of mankind, will be available.
The capacity of The Trojan Women to suggest powerfully and vividly the destruction wrought on women in general as a result of war rests to a great extent on the fact that the characters differ from each other in their social situations as well as in their personalities.
Even if one prefers to refrain from suggesting that in the aftermath of the Trojan War some women suffer more than the others, it must be stated that the Trojan slave women (in the play's chorus) continue to bewail their inability to know the fate which awaits them, whereas the women of the aristocracy are able to learn their respective destinies from the messengers who arrive from time to time from the enemy camp. The slave women bemoan not only their future, about which they are in the dark, but also their being severed from the environment and the life which they have got used to even as slaves. That the Trojan slave women are subjected to even more degrading and bestial treatment by the enemy is clearly brought out in Bandaranayaka's production.
The leaders of the Greek army consider the aristocratic female prisoners “prestigious” spoils of war to be divided amongst themselves. The very fact that they are noblewomen seems to add to the “glory” of the men who are able to carry them home as part of the loot won in war.
Hecabe, the Trojan King Priam's widow, is to become the slave of Odysseus, a man she abhors. Hecabe's younger daughter Polyxena is sacrificed at the tomb of the Greek hero Achilles as an offering to his corpse. Even though Polyxena does not appear on stage, what we learn of her creates in the spectator's mind the image of a young girl of child-like innocence and purity.
Andromache is the widow of the renowned Trojan hero Hector, fallen in battle. Hector is Priam's and Hecabe's son. Andromache, surrounded by Greek soldiers, appears before the Trojan women prisoners' camp clutching Hector's small son to her body. In lamenting her misfortune, she reveals that her life's aim was to be a dutiful wife whose praises would be sung by the people:
Andromache: “I aimed at a glorious name and though I won this in generous measure, good fortune eluded my arrow. All the accomplishments that bring credit to a woman I strove to put into practice in the house of Hector. In the first instance in the matter where a woman gets a bad reputation (whether she attracts criticism or not), namely not remaining indoors, I suppressed my longing and stayed in the house. And inside the house I would not tolerate the idle gossip of women but was content to have in my mind a teacher I could trust.... And it was because my reputation for this reached the ears of the Greek army that my doom was sealed.”
Andromache has been chosen by Neoptolemus to be his concubine and she faces the dilemma of a woman who had been a devoted wife now forced to share the bed of a stranger—one of the enemy who had killed her husband and laid Troy to waste.
Andromache: “Now if I dismiss any thought of my beloved Hector and open my heart to my new husband, it will seem that I have betrayed the dead. But if alternately, I turn away from him in loathing I will earn the hatred of my own master.... Not even hope have I, something that is left to all mortals, nor do I delude myself that fortune will show me any kindness, though, even fancies like this bring comfort.”
The women waiting at the camp which is their temporary dwelling as well as their prison, until their fates are finally sealed, descend deeper and deeper into the depths of misery as they are exposed to the barbarism of the enemy. This situation comes to a head when Talthybius, the Greek messenger, returns from the enemy camp to say that the council of war has decided to execute Hector's and Andromache's small son, who if he lived could become a danger to the Greeks.
Hecabe's elder daughter Cassandra had been the maiden priestess of Apollo. Talthybius reveals that Cassandra had been “chosen as a special prize by the Greek king Agamemnon to warm his bed in the hours of darkness.”
In the Sinhala version of The Trojan Women, Cassandra captivates the imagination of the audience as a sexually inhibited young woman whose perceptiveness and intelligence are of an extraordinary brilliance. Cassandra and Helen stand out as the characters that hold most appeal for a modern audience. Helen's situation is also distinguished by the fact that she is the only woman targeted by the Trojan women themselves for hatred and condemnation. They accuse her of being the cause of the war that has brought death to all the Trojan warrior heroes and has culminated in the downfall of Troy itself. She is also considered to be the bane of her own kinsmen—the Greeks.
In the eyes of the Trojan women, including Hecabe, Helen lacks “womanly virtues” and is completely bereft of refined sentiments. Her renowned beauty is a snare that she calculatingly and opportunistically utilises to manipulate men like Paris in her insatiable quest for sensual pleasures and luxurious living.
Helen, challenging Hecabe's view and defending herself, traces, in a manner that would have seemed logical to Athenian theatre audiences of the day, the source of the calamity in the whims and fancies of headstrong and capricious gods and goddesses. Anyway, it is significant that in doing so she blames the goddess of sexual love—Aphrodite—for her own elopement with Paris. Of course, Helen's claim is in accordance with the mythological sources from which Euripides drew his material—but this does not necessarily prevent the modern spectator from concluding that Helen is justifying her elopement with Paris on the basis of having fallen in love with him:
Helen: “The man ...... whether Alexandros or Paris is the name you wish to give him, had a powerful goddess at his side when he came. This was the man you left behind in your home, you worst of husbands and sailed away from Sparta to the land of Crete. So much for that matter. Next I will put a question not to you but to myself. Why was it that I left your house to go away, quite in my right mind, with a stranger, betraying my country and home? Punish the goddess and show yourself stronger than Zeus, who rules over the rest of the gods, but is that lady's slave; the blame is not mine (emphasis added).
Chorus leader: ... “She speaks with fair words from a foul heart; now that inspires fear.”
We see Hecabe herself though in a different context admitting the power of sexual love:
Hecabe: “There is no lover who does not love forever.”
The Helen we see in Bandaranayaka's production of The Trojan Women strikes a chord of deep sympathy within the modern spectator through her honest and faithful endeavour to understand herself. Due to this the spectator also comes to recognise in Helen a precursor of many a tragic heroine portrayed in modern literature—especially in the classical novel—who, due to sexual love outside wedlock, is prompted to turn her back on the institution. That Helen had not been happy in her marriage to Menelaus is revealed not only by what she says, but also by the male chauvinistic and over-bearing attitudinising of Menelaus when he meets her outside the women prisoners' camp.
It is clear Helen has not been happy in Troy either—especially during the years Troy has been under siege by invading Greeks. Helen, when she appears in front of the women prisoners' camp, seems not only estranged from the Trojan women, she is also rather aloof from the destruction wrought on the Trojans by the invaders. The fact that her attire is different from that of the other women prisoners shows that she is being treated deferentially by the Greek soldiers. Although Hecabe pounces on the fact that Helen is “showily” attired as further proof of her moral laxity, the audience, which learns that Helen had been forcibly taken in marriage by another Trojan leader after Paris's death, realises the absurdity of Hecabe's accusation. In the eyes of the spectator, Helen remains a woman who manages to keep her head high in spite of trying, painful and difficult circumstances.
It is clearly with the intention of bringing the play closer to the present-day Sri Lankan audience that Bandaranayaka has incorporated a group of soldiers dressed in Sri Lankan armed force camouflage uniforms into the play. These soldiers act as a part of the Greek army and are shown harassing the women prisoners. The prisoners, while justifiably denouncing the invaders, also highly praise the merits of laying down one's life for the sake of the motherland.
In a context where Bandaranayaka has included soldiers dressed in Sri Lankan army uniforms those declarations can all too easily be interpreted as a defence of the program of national separatism.
The remarkable success of Bandaranayaka's production is due not only to the fact that it powerfully conveys the essential content of Euripides' work, but also because the staging satisfactorily accomplishes the difficult task of generating in the minds of the spectators the mood and atmosphere contained in the original play.
This success is due in large measure to the fact that Bandaranayaka has been sensitive to something that had to be taken into consideration if a play like the The Trojan Women, which belongs to the Western classical tradition of drama, was to be successfully staged in a country like Sri Lanka. He sought the cooperation of actors and actresses as well as theatre technicians with a knowledge of the latter tradition. In other words, the director has engaged artistic personnel from Western-style theatre groups in Sri Lanka to complement the creative dramatic talent of the Sinhala theatre. In Bandaranayaka's production of The Trojan Women, the choreography of Jerome L. de Silva has contributed much to the success of the production.
Bandaranayaka was judicious in the selection of the cast too, and all the actors and actresses—some from the Western-style theatre—perform their respective roles with keen artistic comprehension of the individual characters as well as of the particular situation portrayed in the play.
Special mention should be made of Meena Kumari Perera who kept the audience almost spell-bound with her Cassandra—clearly a challenging and exhausting role, lucidly and exhilaratingly performed. Her performance reveals an artistic sensibility that demands recognition.
Jehan Aloysius' Menelaus also deserves mention. Aloysius, in the magnificent robes of a Greek aristocrat keeping up the regal mien, managed to reveal the essential weaknesses of the character too: a man whose craving for a woman provided neither the loving understanding nor the social protection she longed for. Junita Beling's rather low-keyed performance as Helen provided an attractive contrast to the other female characters.
The music is by Rukantha Gunathilake, and here too it is clear that Bandaranayaka has scored with his willingness to break new ground.
The Trojan Women has been criticised as too loosely knit and lacking cohesion. The action takes place entirely in the camp where the women prisoners are kept. Soldiers and messengers continuously arrive with messages and tidings from the Greek camp and the council of war being held there. The audience is made to understand that the Greek ships are ready to set sail for home. The action more or less consists in the women, one by one, being taken to the enemy ships. Therefore the very structure of the play gives it the appearance of a string of episodes, each coloured by the specific personality of the woman prisoner who figures prominently in it.
It should be emphasised that the structure in no way detracts from the basic unity of the play, which lies in its main theme: the devastation created by war in the lives of women and children.
See Also:
Euripides' Medea: A timeless drama
[4 August 1998]
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The Strength of ‘Women’
Nomadic’s Latest Revives Greek Classic
By Jaclyn Mosher
Hoya Staff Writer
Margot Lynn/The Hoya
‘TROJAN’ TORCH: Superb cast lights up the stage.
It is rare to find something compelling about a play’s intermission, but Nomadic Theatre’s newest production “The Trojan Women” makes that most conventional of theatrical rituals an unconventional part of this challenging yet rewarding production.
Sound designer Chris Hajduk (COL ’04) forsakes the light background music that usually accompanies intermission, and instead plays spoken word poetry recorded by the cast and featuring the work of Alan Ginsburg, Erica Jong, Anne Sexton, Sappho and the now omnipresent Sylvia Plath, among others. Truly, “The Trojan Women” never stops; the audience can get up to stretch their legs, but the powerful, elegant words run nonstop.
Written by the Greek dramatist Euripides and translated by Brendan Kennelly, “The Trojan Women” starts after the Fall of Troy at the end of the Trojan War. The Greeks have conquered Troy and won back the errant Helen (Kristen Krikorian, SFS ’04), better known as “the face that launched a thousand ships.”
As the play begins, Poseidon (Michael Slaby, COL ’04), god of the sea, delivers a mighty monologue condemning the men who fought this bloody war. “The war is over,” he proclaims, “now is the time for prizes.” The most sought after prizes of all are the devastated, grieving women of Troy, and the victorious Greek soldiers sort through them to take home as their servants and concubines.
Among these unfortunate women is Hecuba (Sarah Krokey, COL ’06), once Queen of Troy, now widowed and bereft of two noble sons. Surrounded by a chorus of anguished Trojan mothers, the strong, proud Hecuba rises to her feet, her pain driving her to fury against the Greeks who have destroyed her family and her dignity, and toward the reckless Helen.
Hecuba’s rage turns to tears with the arrival of her daughter Cassandra (Katie Einspanier, SFS ’05), who has been blessed (and cursed) with the power to see the future. A virgin raped by one soldier and claimed by another, Cassandra teeters on the edge of madness, proclaiming the fall of her conquerors before being brought to her new lord, King Agamemnon at the conclusion of the first act.
Hecuba’s daughter-in-law Andromache (Kat Cox, COL ’04) emerges in the second act, cradling her baby son and dreaming of the joy she shared with her husband Hector. She, too, is carted off as a prize, and her son is not spared the ire of the warring Greeks.
While one wishes that the blocking had covered more of the stage during a few scenes, director Elizabeth McBrearty’s (COL ’04) blocking is excellent when Hecuba and the chorus confront Helen and her husband Menelaus (John Seber, COL ’06), and she helps coax some truly powerful performances from her cast.
Hecuba is on stage for the entirety of “The Trojan Women,” and has quite a number of long, loud, emotional monologues. In contrast to the more fragile Cassandra and Andromache, Hecuba fights to keep her pain inside, and she can seem at times almost too stone-faced, too full of hate to be sympathetic. Krokey’s performance is impressive throughout, but her character’s most heartbreaking scenes come when she tries to comfort Cassandra and Andromache, who share her anger but not her sheer strength. In these latter scenes, Hecuba is not just a bloody pillar of her once great city, but a mother and grandmother, masking her pain to keep her children from falling into madness.
Einspanier handles her role excellently, wisely steering away from a wilder interpretation of her character’s mental instabilities that could have lessened the impact of her character’s teary departure. Cox is exceptional, and her softer delivery works well for the quiet, loving Andromache. Krikorian plays the eternally smirking Helen with ample amounts of slinkiness and guile (even if Helen never truly becomes anything more than a red — or in this case, a hot pink — herring).
As for the men of “The Trojan Women,” Adam Aguirre (COL ’06) is superb as sympathetic Greek messenger Talthybius, who is moved to tears by the fate of Andromache and her child. Seber does well trying to resist Helen’s charms, and Slaby performs his monologue with conviction, in addition to sparring memorably with the angry goddess Pallas Athena (Ashley Kay, COL ’04).
The costumes of Dana Petrillo (COL ’04), detailed with tatters and dirt, and the makeup of Kathryn Brand (MSB ’07), which shows the physical scars that the characters bear, are also excellent. Paul Hughes’ (COL ’04) lighting of the play’s fiery conclusion is striking.
The play’s two-hour plus running time might deter the reluctant theatergoer, as could the play’s literally constant dialogue. Yet those who fear that the classical subject matter of “The Trojan Women” can only appeal to mythology buffs couldn’t be further off base. A play that deals with the women who suffer familial loss, sexual abuse and the destruction of their homes in the wake of devastating war tells a story that, unfortunately, resonates throughout history and into the present day.
