Four By Euripides

Considering my years-long involvement with a Greek-mythology theater festival and my years-long obsession with Donna Tartt's The Secret History, it's shameful to admit that I didn't read Bacchae till last July. And additionally a bit strange to write a review of these plays six months after reading them. Ah well...

 Euripides V: Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus by Euripides
Bacchae and Cyclops translated by William Arrowsmith
Iphigenia in Aulis translated by Charles R. Walker
Rhesus translated by Richmond Lattimore
edited by David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Mark Griffith & Glen W. Most

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting mix of plays, displaying variety even while working within the limits and conventions of Greek drama. Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis are two of the last plays Euripides wrote—Bacchae has strong horror elements to it, while Iphigenia in Aulis is more of a traditional tragedy in which noble figures face agonizing choices. Cyclops is the only extant Greek satyr play, a burlesque of the episode in The Odyssey where Odysseus must save his men from a man-eating cyclops. And Rhesus is a wartime tragedy set in Troy, which may or may not have actually been written by Euripides.

I found Iphigenia in Aulis the most well-plotted, psychologically penetrating, and downright tragic of these plays, as the characters go back and forth on whether to sacrifice Iphigenia. Bacchae is also great, especially its choral hymns in praise of Dionysus' mountainside cult and wild rites. Euripides makes clear why so many people are drawn to Dionysus, as well as the terrible costs of denying his energies.

Rhesus did not hold my attention nearly so well, perhaps because its stakes are lower. It's the story of a noble prince of Thrace, who comes to aid the Trojans, but is ambushed and killed by Greek spies before he can do anything. Sure, that's not a happy story, but it's not nearly so tragic as tearing your son limb from limb while under the influence of religious mania (Bacchae) or being forced to kill your daughter in order to ensure a favorable wind to sail to Troy (Iphigenia in Aulis).

As this was my first time reading all of these plays, I cannot comment much on the translations, though I did find the Rhesus translation a bit awkward—it refers several times to a soldiers' "bivouac," and that word took me right out of the play.

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"Orpheus and Eurydice" by Jeremy Dobrish: Mythology for Hipsters

I've spent a significant portion of my life over the last four years involved with a theater festival that commissions new plays based on Greek mythology, and I translated Jean Cocteau's Orphée and produced it at Theater Pub last April. So it's no surprise that my friend Stuart (founder of both the Olympians Festival and Theater Pub) dug up a copy of an obscure Orpheus and Eurydice adaptation that played off-Broadway circa the turn of the millennium, and gave it to me with an "I think you should read this."

Orpheus And Eurydice by Jeremy Dobrish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jeremy Dobrish's Orpheus and Eurydice is a modern, hipster adaptation, in which Orpheus is the frontman of In Your Thrace, a popular rock band. (Jason and Hercules are the other band members.) This version is fast-paced, theatrically savvy, and laden with in-jokes and unusual choices. Despite being one of the title characters, Eurydice is a silent role (the other characters are fond of reminding us that "traditional mythology has very little to say about her"). Orpheus narrates the first part of his trip to the Underworld in a long monologue, but we never hear him sing or play any of his music. Instead, toward the end of Act Two, Death and her two assistants perform an elaborate song-and-dance routine called "What Is Love?"

The depiction of Death and her assistants, by the way, is pretty clearly ripped off from Jean Cocteau's play Orphée. I can't decide whether this is a fun homage or an act of plagiarism, just as I can't decide how I feel about many of the other aforementioned choices (Eurydice's silence; Orpheus' Underworld monologue; Death's song-and-dance).

Still, I'd be interested in seeing this script performed (preferably in a black-box theater by my local hipster company) in order to see how it works onstage, and to make up my mind. Overall, I'd say that it reads like the work of an overeducated twentysomething theater-and-mythology nerd, but hey, I'm one of those myself.

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How the Bechdel Test Made Me a Better Playwright @ SF Theater Pub Blog

Here's a blog post I've been meaning to write for nearly a year: How the Bechdel Test Made Me a Better Playwright.

The post tells how I wrote the closing scene of my screenplay Aphrodite, or the Love Goddess to make it comply with the Bechdel Test. The scene worked like gangbusters, and I probably could not have arrived at it if I hadn't been thinking of the Bechdel Test. I'd love it if other playwrights considered using the Bechdel Test in this fashion, as a way of sparking their imaginations and leading them down pathways that they hadn't previously considered.

(An anecdote that didn't make it into the column: At the time I had the first living-room reading of Aphrodite, I hadn't written the final scene, but I was mapping it out in my head. I told my cast, "I want it to show Rosalie with another woman, because that hasn't happened yet," and everyone in the room went "ooooh," really salacious-like, because it sounded like I was saying that the scene would depict Rosalie with another woman sexually. I blushed like crazy and said "No! Not like that!"

Well, I suppose one does have to wonder: if Aphrodite is the goddess of love and many of the gods are bisexual, why are there no myths that show Aphrodite with female lovers? [Answer: the Greeks were a patriarchal culture in which it was OK for men to be homosexual, but not for women to be lesbian. Another answer: there is something very homoerotic about paintings that show Aphrodite and the Three Graces all clad in mere shreds of gauze, isn't there?] Nonetheless, that's not the direction I wanted to go in with my screenplay. Maybe it would've been more courageous -- and still Bechdel-test compliant -- if I had.)

Anyway, like I said, I've wanted to write this post for a year and I ended up doing it for my Theater Pub blogging gig, so go check it out.

Greek mythology isn't brain surgery... or is it?

From Rivka Galchen's article on Elmhurst Hospital, The New Yorker, May 13, 2013:

A young, very dark-skinned patient was jogging lightly up and down the hall. His brain appeared to be herniating out of his skull and, indeed, it was, because he had had a portion of his skull removed, with the goal of safely accommodating brain swelling. [...] The swelling goes down; the piece of skull bone, having been stored in the patient's thigh, is eventually returned to its proper location.

So wait. If you have brain swelling, first they cut your skull open, then they store a piece of it in your thigh? OH MY GOD, THIS IS LIKE ATHENA AND DIONYSUS IN ONE.

It's enough to make me want to get a swelled head.

Taking Characters from Greek Mythology

"How can you copyright an enterprise, a profession? I must be free to film a story of a newspaper publisher. If I am restrained, it will force us all to go back and take our characters, say, from Greek mythology. And even then I suppose somebody would contend he was Zeus."

--Orson Welles, quoted in Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu by Simon Callow

 Working hard on my 1940s play that depicts Zeus as a movie-studio boss (ooh, how meta!).

See also the New York Times' recent review of a film book, Gods Like Us, about movie stardom, abounding with Greek-mythology references.

Quick Hits: My Awesome Friends

Some quick mid-February links that I cannot wait to share with you:

• My awesome friend Claire Rice is writing a new play titled English for Beginners and posting it all on her blog. It's been featured on Arena Stage's New Plays Blog and has a significant portion of the San Francisco theater community buzzing. Particularly because English for Beginners is an ensemble comedy-drama about 13 playwrights on a writing retreat in the Marin Headlands. (When Claire told me about this project, my first question was "OK, just how much of a roman à clef is this going to be?") I get super excited whenever I learn that Claire has posted a new scene and I am never disappointed. Of course, part of my enjoyment derives from trying to identify the real-life models for Claire's characters -- if you want an example of that, read the most recent scene (an interlude in which all 13 characters talk about their routines for writing) and then read this blog post of mine from last spring. But I think that any theater person, even if they don't live in the Bay Area, will recognize and identify the characters and situations of English for Beginners. Can't wait for the next installment.

• My equally awesome friend Megan Cohen has just started a blog that's going really big, really fast. She has three posts so far, Tim Bauer (whose own blog has recently undergone a redesign) has linked to all of them, and her latest post just got highlighted by Lifehacker! Megan's friends are fond of saying things like "I wish I could shrink Megan down and put her in my pocket and keep her around all the time to say witty and offbeat and wonderful things."  And now that she has a blog -- it's like you can do just that!

• Ulterior motive in including some quotes about Helen of Troy in my last blog post: San Francisco Theater Pub's February show will be a staged reading of Euripedes' romantic drama Helen. Appropriately enough, it's taking place on Valentine's Day. In the meantime, Stuart Bousel, the hardest-working man in show business, did an erudite series of posts about the myth of Helen for the San Francisco Theater Pub blog, as well as an interview with Kirsten Broadbear, who will play this iconic character. Scheduling conflicts prevented me from acting in the show as originally planned, but I'll be at Theater Pub tomorrow anyway, wrapped in a bedsheet and taking your money. (I'll be handling the box office and wearing a toga.) Happy Valentine's Day!

"The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony": Advanced-Level Greek Mythology

When you get involved with a theater festival based on Greek mythology, friends who wish to know more about Greek myths will come to you for book recommendations. I got asked about this last month and, to my chagrin, realized it had been years since I had actually read a mythology book. Sure, I had researched certain topics when it became necessary to do so (I came up with the plot of Pleiades after reading the Wikipedia entry), but I hadn't delved deeply into a volume of mythological writing.  I decided to remedy this and picked up a copy of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, by Roberto Calasso.

Calasso is an Italian author and this book came out about 20 years ago to some acclaim, winning a French prize for Best Foreign Book (meilleur livre étranger).  Tim Parks' English translation also won an award.  The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony is Calasso's idiosyncratic take on the corpus of Greek mythology, weaving stories together, drawing parallels, identifying motifs, discerning deeper structures, and investigating what the myths imply about Greek and Western civilization. He incorporates anecdotes from Ancient Greek history as well as from myth. The book is in twelve chapters, which might lead you to assume that each chapter focuses on one of the twelve Olympians, but Calasso's structure is far more twisty than that. Stories lead into stories in a style that one associates far more with The Arabian Nights than with the Greeks -- even though any student of Greek myths knows that, because they are the stories of an extended family, it is easy to link them together.

If I had to pick one word to describe The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, it would be "European."  It's not that the translation is clumsy.  If you examined the individual sentences, you would not know that they had been written in a foreign language. Rather, what seems foreign to an English-speaking reader is the book's content -- its structure, its thoughts, its outlook on the world.  I feel that continental Europeans have a much higher tolerance for abstract thought than Anglo-Americans do, and The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony is full of abstract thoughts.

Thus, Calasso will begin with an intensely readable retelling of a myth (here, Paris' abduction of Helen):

Of all times to go away, the prince chuckled to himself, Menelaus had chosen these very days. He was gong off to Crete, for his grandfather Catreus's funeral. As he left, Menelaus, serious as ever, told Helen to look after their guest. After that, there were absolutely no other men about. Helen and the prince were each sleeping alone in the same palace. In the emptiness of the palace halls, Aphrodite assembled those archons of desire Himeros and Pothos, and the Charites too. But on the visible plane, the person who acted as pimp was Aethra. Paris gripped Helen's wrist. The Trojan's escorts loaded up her riches and the things the prince had pretended were gifts. Paris stood tall on a chariot drawn by four horses. Helen was next to him, tunic tossed back over her shoulders, offering her body half naked to the night, where nothing could be seen but Eros's dazzling torch twisting and turning in front of them. Behind the fleeing couple, another Eros was waving a torch. The two lovers and their escorts raced across the open space of red earth and scattered olive trees that led down from Sparta to the coast.

And then he will move into a much more abstract, philosophical mode, to discuss the deeper meaning of the mythological figure:

To defend herself, Helen relies on the brilliant surface, makes it throb as no other figure, however fleshy, could, since other figures have no doubles, and indeed as no idea ever could, since ideas have no pores: this is the supreme level of existence, mocking every other. The object of the dispute between Homer and Plato is the body of Helen. Both men won. When we see the goddess reproduced thousands upon thousands of times, the Platonic curse of the copy triumphs. But the goddess is a star and occupies a unique, unassailable place in the sky.

At this point I should confess that I have a low tolerance for abstract thought and a great affection for striking, specific details. I am hard pressed to care about the "Platonic curse of the copy," but I love the "tunic tossed back over her shoulders" and the "gripped wrist" and the "red earth and olive trees." (Though, note that Calasso presupposes a great deal of mythological knowledge on the part of his readers. The story of Paris and Helen may be famous, but very few people know about Himeros and Pothos, or that the "Charites" are better known as "The Three Graces.") The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony certainly made several myths come alive in my mind as never before; but at other times it would lose me, and deaden the myths again, with excessive philosophizing.

To make matters worse, this erratically organized book has no index or chapter headings.  I doubt I shall ever read this book cover-to-cover again, but it contains several interesting passages that I might like to go back and reference. But how could I, without an index? I rarely write in my books, but I finally got so frustrated that I grabbed a pen and, on the title page of each chapter, wrote down a list/outline of the topics covered therein.  Here is the start of my list for Chapter VIII, which may give you some idea of the way Calasso skips from topic to topic and mixes mythology, philosophy, and history.

• Zeus, Metis & Athena
• Pallas; the Palladium (statue)
• Medusa
• Doubles & simulacra
• Athena's virtues; her virginity
• Athena, Hephaestus & Erichthonius
• Athens
• Splendor, presence, form, aesthetics, perfection, appearance
• Eleusis
• The "Greek thing" -- Greek identity
• Spartan self-sufficiency and control, unity and hatred
• Terror maintains the social order -- A police state

I would therefore recommend The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony to advanced-level students of Greek mythology only! You will not appreciate its insights unless you are already familiar with the myths and have started to see some common themes or parallels that link them.  And because its structure is unlikely to make sense to anyone not named Roberto Calasso, it is less useful as a mythographical resource than it would be otherwise.

Announcing Aphrodite

Guess what's happening exactly one year from tonight?

The San Francisco Olympians Festival will present a staged reading of a new one-act play about the goddess Aphrodite... written by me!

The theme for the 2012 Festival is Titans vs. Olympians. Each evening will pair two one-acts (45-60 minutes), one based on an Olympian god and the other based on a thematically related Titan. At the end of the evening, the audience will vote on its favorite play. Aphrodite will be paired with Phoebe and Theia, by my friend Amy Clare Tasker.

It's a great lineup of writers next year, a good mix of fresh faces and Olympians favorites, and we're already getting into the competitive spirit -- there's been a lot of incredibly geeky trash-talking between Team Titans and Team Olympians.

I don't want to give too much away, but the general idea for this yet-to-be-written play (working title: The Love Goddess) is that it will depict Aphrodite as a 1940s Hollywood starlet and retell the story of the Aphrodite-Ares-Hephaestus love triangle.

Yes, it's another "historical" play for me. As you know, my research often spills onto my blog (there were lots of posts about the 1930s while I was writing The Rose of Youth and about the 1960s-70s when I was writing Pleiades), so I expect there will be some blog posts about the 1940s in the coming months. I'm already putting together a list of movies I need to see (Rita Hayworth figures heavily) and books to read.

And I find it appropriate that the staged reading will take place on December 7, since that date is indelibly associated with the 1940s.

Mark your calendars, and wish me luck as I begin this new play!

Image: The Rokeby Venus by Velázquez, one of my favorite paintings of Venus/Aphrodite.

"Suddenly, Greek gods can be just as interesting and relevant as real people"

A Metafilter thread today led me to this passage from the novel Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson, that deals with the continuing relevance and power of Greek mythology to the modern world. An extract:

"Okay. So the Athena that you honor on your medallion isn't a supernatural being--"

"--who lives on a mountain in Greece, et cetera, but rather whatever entity, pattern, trend, what-have-you that, when perceived by ancient Greek people, and filtered through their perceptual machinery and their pagan worldview, produced the internal mental representation that they dubbed Athena. The distinction being important because Athena-the supernatural-chick-with-the-helmet is of course nonexistent, but 'Athena' the external-generator-of-the-internal-representation-dubbed-Athena-by-the-ancient-Greeks must have existed back then, or if she existed back then, the chances are excellent that she exists now, and if all that is the case, then whatever ideas the ancient Greeks (who, though utter shitheads in many ways, were terrifyingly intelligent people) had about her are probably quite valid."

It goes on from there and is thought-provoking. A nice thing to read as the San Francisco Olympians Festival draws nearer.

Under the Sea: "Salty Towers" at Thunderbird Theatre

Pity poor Poseidon. After he and his two brothers defeated Cronus and divided the world between them, Zeus gained dominion over the heavens and was crowned king of the gods. Hades gained dominion over the underworld and an everlasting bad-ass reputation. And Poseidon gained dominion over -- the ocean? Well, maybe some gods would have made the best of it, but Poseidon doesn't seem to have been too happy. Most of the myths about him depict him as an angry and resentful god, unleashing mighty storms upon unlucky mortals (Odysseus, Hippolytus, Idomeneo). And in perhaps the most famous myth featuring Poseidon, he loses the contest to become patron god of Athens when he gives the city a spring of salt water (whereas Athena provides an olive tree). Not very impressive, to be sure.

For their play Poseidon in the San Francisco Olympians Festival last summer, authors Bryce Alleman, Dana Constance and Kathy Hicks decided to accept that Poseidon is an underdog among gods, and mine that for comedy. As they see it, Poseidon is the beleaguered proprietor of a shabby undersea hotel. He hopes to win the right to host the Olympics and thus get revenge on Athena, but complications arrive in the form of his venomous wife Medusa, his mischievous hotel staff of sea creatures, and several troublesome guests.

Twelve months later, Thunderbird Theatre is giving this play a full production, having hilariously re-christened it Salty Towers in the meantime. Yes, it's a parody of Fawlty Towers, with Poseidon in the John Cleese role. I should note, though, that I've never seen an episode of Fawlty Towers but didn't feel lost or confused during the play. (And yes, this also means that the plays of last summer's Olympians Festival are now batting 3 for 12 when it comes to full productions!)

Salty Towers authors Bryce, Dana, and Kathy are all company members of Thunderbird, which was founded over 10 years ago with the goal of producing original comedic plays. Not black comedies or drawing-room comedies, but unabashed broad humor, farce, and parody. As such, Salty Towers was written in "Thunderbird style," featuring a large cast and a story that is more a succession of incidents than a complex narrative. New characters and sub-plots are constantly introduced throughout the play, and then everything gets resolved by a deus ex machina: Poseidon accidentally gets knocked out for two days, has a dream sequence, and when he comes to, everything is OK. You could argue that the Greeks invented the deus ex machina and thus it is brilliantly clever for a Greek-inspired play to employ this technique, but I feel like that would be overthinking things. Though it would be more challenging, I did wish to see the characters work their conflicts out organically.

The large cast of characters parading across the stage, though, provides a great showcase for Sara Briendel's witty costumes. The gods wear 1970s styles on top and togas on the bottom, while papier-mache and puppetry allows actors to portray sea creatures. As for the characterizations of the gods -- always one of my favorite parts of an Olympians Festival play -- I liked the comic depictions of Dionysus as a Jim Morrison-quoting stoned hippie and Hestia as a giggling, frumpy nerd. But I'm not sure I understood the decision to portray Hermes as a snooty closeted homosexual (usually he's more of a trickster jock), and while it was briefly amusing to hear fire-stealing Prometheus talk like a 1930s Chicago gangster, the portrayal was overly broad. Meanwhile, Poseidon himself is sympathetic, but not the most memorable or compelling character in the play. Throughout it, he's essentially reacting to the crazy hi-jinks of his customers and staff, not making decisions of his own.

One of Poseidon's employees at the undersea hotel is a Portuguese man o' war. In the real world, this jelly-like creature has long venomous tentacles, but in Salty Towers, it's portrayed more like an electric eel, with tentacles that light up and deliver electric shocks. And maybe that's a good metaphor for Salty Towers as a whole. It has the capacity to deliver jolts of wit, laughter, and electricity. But the play also lacks an internal structure that would give it a more solid shape.

Salty Towers is playing through July 23 at the Exit Theater. See thunderbirdtheatre.com for more info.

Domestic Goddess: "Juno en Victoria" by Stuart Bousel

Juno en Victoria, currently playing at Stage Werx in a production by Wily West Productions, is doubly distinguished: the second Stuart Bousel play to premiere in June (the first was Edenites) and the second Olympians Festival play to receive a full production (after Hermes, in March). Fortunately, it lives up to its pedigree!

One of my favorite aspects of the Olympians Festival is how the writers re-contextualize ancient myths, setting them in other historical eras where they will resonate better. Thus, Juno en Victoria re-imagines the story of Hera, goddess of marriage, as a Victorian comedy of manners -- a perfect match of theme and time period. When Hera says at one point, "I am my marriage," it doesn't sound like hyperbole, but the simple truth. Stuart is also a literature nerd who gets a kick out of mashing up Greek mythology with Victorian fiction and history, and the play is rife with fanservice allusions.

(Geeky playwriting tangent: I am also impressed by the way Edenites and Juno display Stuart's command of two very different dramatic structures. Edenites is a series of short scenes modeled after a talky '90s indie movie, while Juno is an old-fashioned three-act, one-set, drawing-room comedy. Interestingly, though, both plays deviate from the norm by including several direct-address monologues. I felt that the monologues worked a little better in Edenites than in Juno, although the penultimate monologue in Juno is one of the play's best jokes, and Hera's concluding speech is a knockout.)

The play takes place during an English summer in the High Victorian era, at Zeus and Hera's country house. They seem like a happy couple, and their youngest daughter Hebe is about to make an excellent marriage to Heracles (amusingly portrayed as a Bertie Wooster-ish twit). The main action of the play, though, focuses on Hera and her spinster sister, Hestia. Hestia suspects that Zeus is philandering again, and is determined to find out the identity of Zeus's new paramour. Hera, meanwhile, appears unconcerned by her husband's dalliances; thus we (and Hestia) wonder whether Hera is just putting on a front. Adding some Cockney attitude to the cast of characters are the family's servants, Iris and Ganymede.

With Edenites, I felt like the male and female roles were equally well written and performed, but, for personal reasons, I connected to the women's stories more. Juno en Victoria, though, is unquestionably the women's play. The men are supporting characters, Zeus never appears onstage (though his presence looms large), and the women in the cast also seem to inhabit their roles more fully. Kalinda Wang, as Iris, is no glittering rainbow-goddess, but an embittered young woman who gives full voice to her working-class resentment. Kat Bushnell is a vivacious Hebe, making a memorable entrance where she trips, breaks a tea-set, and curses like a sailor.

The play's innovative characterizations -- Heracles as a likable idiot rather than a hero; Hebe as a Victorian girl who clearly won't just lie back and think of England on her wedding night -- show that Stuart's love for Greek mythology and the Victorian era never crosses the line into slavish reverence. Nowhere is this more evident than in his treatment of Hera and Hestia, the central characters. In myth, Hestia is the modest and self-effacing virgin goddess who gives up her throne to Dionysus. In Juno en Victoria, Hestia is a meddling busybody with a sharp tongue. At the staged reading of Juno en Victoria (then called Hera) last summer, I was seated behind a pillar and couldn't see any of Celeste Russi's performance as Hestia. Nonetheless, her dry line readings and impeccable comic timing had me in stitches. Fortunately, Russi is reprising the role of Hestia in this production, and she's even better when you can see her as well as hear her.

Most importantly, of course, there is Hera. In myth, Hera is often portrayed as a nagging shrew, but the Hera of this play is complex and sympathetic. As Hera, the lovely Michelle Jasso perfectly embodies the Victorian ideal of "the angel in the house" (perhaps we should say "the goddess in the house"?). Her characterization reminded me of Elizabeth McGovern on Downton Abbey -- warm, understanding, irresistibly cozy, and surprisingly open-minded. She is dignified and gracious, the perfect hostess, but possesses a secret, steely strength.

In the Victorian era, A Doll's House shocked audiences by showing a charming wife and mother who left her marriage when she realized it was built on a lie. In our own time, Juno en Victoria is surprising because it investigates the psychology of a wife and mother who chooses not to leave her marriage, though she knows it is based on a lie. But could you really expect the goddess of marriage to behave differently?

Juno en Victoria plays at Stage Werx through July 2. Tickets here.

Disclosure: this play was written by my friend Stuart Bousel, directed by my friend Claire Rice, and is associated with the Olympians Festival, for which I am a co-producer...

Top image: Celeste Russi as Hestia, Michelle Jasso as Hera. Bottom image: Michelle Jasso as Hera, Kat Bushnell as Hebe.

Zephyrus

Even before I became involved with the San Francisco Olympians Festival, my family and I were naming our computers after Greek mythology (with one detour into the Hindu pantheon).

My first computer was Athena -- goddess of wisdom.

Then I had Sarasvati -- named after the Hindu goddess of art and literature, whose symbol is the swan.

Next came Orphée -- yes, you read that right, Orphée, not Orpheus. I used the French version of the name because I got the computer when I was in France (Sarasvati having sung her swan song) and was feeling inspired by Cocteau's quasi-mystical belief in the Orpheus legend.

But two weeks ago, Orphée descended into the Underworld and didn't come back, and rather than trying to resuscitate him, I decided it might be time for a new machine. Say hello to Zephyrus.

Zephyrus is a MacBook Air, and I think I'm in love. Who was it that said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?" (I remember being an imaginative little girl, wanting to believe that fairy tales were true, and asking my father "Daddy, do you believe in magic?" And, ever the computer geek, he would reply "Well, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic...") With Zephyrus, it's easy to feel the magic. It's amazing that everything I need or want in a computer can now fit into a machine that weighs less than three pounds. I have visions of myself toting it everywhere, writing in every coffee shop in town.

And as for the name? There are several reasons behind it:

• The computer is a MacBook Air, and Zephyrus is one of the four winds in Greek Mythology.


• Zephyrus is the gentle and propitious West Wind, and I live in a city where the wind predominantly comes from the West (and is rarely gentle and often chilling, but oh well).


• One of our upcoming Olympians plays is about Zephyrus. It falls on the weekend I'm producing, and I'm super excited about it: it's Brideshead Revisited crossed with Greek mythology!


• It just so happens that I got this new computer in April, and as Chaucer teaches us, there is a link between April and Zephyrus:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes...

"Hermes," an Olympians Festival Success Story

It's been eight months since I devoted my weekends to working the box office at the San Francisco Olympians Festival -- and it's seven months until Olympians Festival II: Heavenly Bodies, for which I am a writer and associate producer. Don't mistake this for a lull or a fallow period, though! I'm hard at work on my play -- and feeling inspired by seeing Bennett Fisher's Hermes, a script from last summer's Olympians Festival, in a full production this month.

Hermes was one of my favorite plays last summer, and I'm happy that so many more people now have the chance to see it. It's a fast-moving drama about four American derivatives traders devising shady ways to profit from the Greek financial crisis. When they cross one ethical line too many, they attract the attention of Hermes -- god of business, money, liars and thieves. While Hermes is a very angry play, enraged at the manipulation of the financial markets by amoral and rapacious actors, it is also very funny. Hermes comes back to earth in the form of a fratty bro who enjoys giving people stupid nicknames and punching them in the balls.

Stuart Bousel, founder and producer of No Nude Men and the Olympians Festival, says Hermes merits a full production because it embodies the original goal of the festival: to prove the continuing relevance and power of Greek mythology. Ben Fisher doesn't just retell a myth about Hermes, he invents a new one, and explores an aspect of Hermes' personality that often goes unremarked upon. (We tend to think of Hermes as a cheerful trickster, not an amoral bully.) The Greek gods were very human gods, each representing a different aspect of human nature or human life. Because the themes that they embodied are still with us today, so, too, are the gods themselves.

Not only is Hermes a great example of the relevance of Greek mythology, but it is also a great example of the relevance and power of theater itself. As I said, this play centers on the Greek financial crisis -- a real event that happened just one year ago. This kind of rapid response to world events is something that theater (especially small, non-commercial theater) can do but other narrative art forms, such as fiction and film, have more trouble achieving. In Act II of Hermes, the god causes the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, to erupt, stranding the human characters in Europe. When I saw this scene in the July reading of Hermes -- just three months after the volcano had erupted in real life -- I was amazed at the audacity and cleverness of it. When was the last time you saw a play that even referenced an event that happened so recently? And Ben does more than reference the event -- he works it into the plot and mythological framework of the play.

The craftsmanship of Hermes therefore fascinates me: it was written almost in real time, reacting to events in the outside world. When you've got a commission to write a play about Hermes, and various factors conspire to cause a debt crisis in Greece -- Greece, of all places! -- you'd damn well better take advantage of that. And yet, despite the immediacy of the piece, it also has a reflective side, finding interesting things to say about greed, power, and the similarity between gods and debt: "both are substitutes for more tangible assets."

Helping to make the intangible words on a page into a tangible full production are director Tore Ingersoll-Thorpe and six talented actors, all of whom are skilled at delivering the tangy dialogue. Juliana Egley, Geoffrey Nolan, Carl Lucania and Brian Markley play the derivatives traders, Lauren Spencer plays the goddess Hestia (a bartender and waitress), and Brian Trybom plays Hermes. You'll never look at this god the same way again -- and that's the point of the Olympians Festival, isn't it?

Hermes plays at the Exit Stage Left through March 26 -- details and tickets here.

Photo by Claire Ann Rice. Brian Trybom as Hermes, Geoffrey Nolan as Jack.

My Favorite Moment from "Downton Abbey"

I definitely became a fan of Masterpiece Theater's broadcasts of Downton Abbey over the past four Sundays. While the beginning of the first episode drew me in with its amazing tracking shot through the rooms of Downton, the moment that really hooked me was a scene early in the second episode, after the characters and their relationships had been set up. As a writer, I must say that once you've gotten the exposition out of the way, everything becomes so much more fun!

This isn't one of the big, dramatic (sometimes melodramatic) moments of Downton Abbey, but it is a great example of one of my favorite things about period dramas: people finding clever ways to insult one another in polite company.

So, the set-up: Matthew Crawley, a young lawyer from Manchester, has recently learned that (for reasons too complicated to get into here), he will inherit the estate of Downton Abbey and the title of Earl of Grantham from a distant relative. The present Earl, a middle-aged man with three daughters, welcomes Matthew to Downton. However, other members of the family wish to alter the law so that the Earl's eldest daughter, Lady Mary, can inherit the estate.

If Mary cannot inherit, some people think that the next best thing would be for her to marry Matthew. But Mary is an aristocratic snob who has taken an instant dislike to this middle-class interloper. At a family dinner, she strikes up the following conversation:

MARY: I've been studying the story of Andromeda; do you know it?

MATTHEW: (suspiciously) Why?

MARY: Her father was King Cepheus, whose country was being ravaged by storms. And, in the end, he decided the only way to appease the gods was to sacrifice his eldest daughter to a hideous sea monster. So they chained her, naked, to a rock--

DOWAGER COUNTESS: (nervously laughs) Really! Mary! We'll all need our smelling salts in a minute!

MATTHEW: But the sea monster didn't get her, did he?

MARY: No. Just when it seemed he was the only solution to her father's problems, she was rescued.

MATTHEW: By Perseus.

MARY: That's right. Perseus. Son of a god. Rather more fitting, wouldn't you say?

MATTHEW: That depends. I'd have to know more about the princess and the sea monster in question.

As the scene ended and I laughed with delight, I knew I'd be telling several of my friends about it. All right, so I hang out with people who are inordinately fond of British period pieces, people being bitchy to each other in polite company, and allusions to Greek mythology. This kind of thing is catnip to us. (As a bonus, the Dowager Countess is played by Maggie Smith, and she is awesome.)

You can watch Downton Abbey for free on the Masterpiece Theatre website until February 22, which is how I re-watched and transcribed the above scene. If you're like me and my friends, and this excerpt has piqued your interest, go check it out.

Image: Publicity shot of Matthew (Dan Stevens) and Mary (Michelle Dockery).

Notes on Two Theatrical Sequels

There's been a lot of talk about how 2010-2011 is the year of multi-part plays in Bay Area theater. Three theaters teaming up to present The Brother/Sister Plays, Shotgun producing both The Salt Plays and The Norman Conquests, Sleepwalkers producing the This World and After trilogy... there's a lot of theater to see and, as you can tell, I haven't always been good about writing up what I see. It's even worse when I've written an enthusiastic blog post about the first play in a duology or trilogy, and then neglect to share my thoughts after I see the second play. Herewith, some catching up...

Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet (at ACT, closed in November) -- I basically enjoyed this play, and after the harrowing drama of In the Red & Brown Water and The Brothers Size, it is nice to know that Tarell Alvin McCraney can write a coming-of-age comedy. As I recall, there were some hilarious lines in this play. True to its title, one of the best words to describe this play is "sweet." However, the ending of it was incredibly anticlimactic. It would have been anticlimactic if Marcus were just a stand-alone play (the characters spend all of Act II worrying that a Katrina-like hurricane is going to hit their bayou town, but the hurricane never shows up) and it's even worse considering that Marcus is not a stand-alone play, but the conclusion of an ambitious trilogy. We know from Red and Brown Water and Brothers Size that McCraney can write unflinching, emotionally gripping finales... why did he falter when writing the ending of Marcus?

Also, part of me wonders whether ACT shouldn't have produced In the Red and Brown Water and Marin produced Marcus, instead of the other way around. Red & Brown Water is the biggest play of the trilogy -- the most characters, the most overtly mythological themes, the most stylized. So mightn't it be better in ACT, the biggest theater; and mightn't Marcus, a gentle comedy, be better in the medium-sized Marin Theater? Then again, ACT has the most tickets to sell and the most subscribers to please. Under those circumstances, Marcus is probably the most crowd-pleasing show of the trilogy, and the safest bet.

I really need to buy and read the whole trilogy of plays now; despite my occasional caveats, this is exciting writing, and I am sure I can learn from it.

The Salt Plays, Part II: Of the Earth (at Shotgun Players through January 16) -- After producing writer-director Jon Tracy's innovative Iliad adaptation In the Wound at John Hinkel Park this summer, Shotgun presents the sequel, an adaptation of The Odyssey, in their indoor space. One of the most thrilling aspects of In the Wound was its huge cast and innovatively staged fight scenes; I feared that Of the Earth, an indoor play with just eight actors, would be more sedate and conventional. I shouldn't have worried, though: the staging is imaginative, very physical (the taiko drums return!) and makes good use of the space. For instance, video is incorporated into the production, something that obviously could not happen at John Hinkel Park. A five-woman ensemble plays all of the roles besides Odysseus, Telemachus, and Penelope: they transform themselves into Greek gods and goddesses, Odysseus' crew, Circe, the suitors. You haven't lived till you've seen five women, using nothing but their bodies, some ladders, and a lighting instrument, come together and characterize the Cyclops. It is an amazing theatrical moment.

The Salt Plays are a very unconventional take on Greek mythology. For instance, the gods are given different motivations than they have in Homer: the driving force of the play is Zeus' insistence that Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena must atone for having caused the Trojan War, and must punish Odysseus for killing Iphigenia. It is exciting to watch such a fresh take on such old myths, but some plot points in both In the Wound and Of the Earth were unclear. At times, Jon Tracy seems to pack too much into each of these plays -- the text is dense, and on top of that the staging is complex and physical.

I love what Tracy does with most of the mythological figures, but I don't like the way he's characterized Penelope. Usually, Penelope is one of my favorite characters -- seriously, read The Odyssey and be amazed at how such a strong, well-rounded female character appears in a poem that was written in the eighth century B.C. But in the Salt Plays, she seems kind of one-dimensional and weak. The play captures the part of her that is a loving mother and faithful wife, but not the intelligence and cunning that draws Odysseus to her (and she to him). Tracy presents Odysseus as an antihero, full of flaws, and Penelope as the perfect woman -- whereas the The Odyssey makes the point that Odysseus and Penelope are an evenly matched pair. (A very radical point, for such an ancient work.) I love how The Salt Plays treat the other female characters, and in particular how Of the Earth has actresses portray Zeus and Poseidon -- it's just a shame that, in this telling, Penelope becomes a more conventional ingenue.

Shotgun's "In The Wound" (No, this has nothing to do with firearms)

So, what should you do this weekend if you're jonesing for some outdoor theater that features a big cast and a story that takes place in the ancient world? Don't head to Marin--instead, make your way to John Hinkel Park in Berkeley, where Shotgun Players is producing In the Wound, an invigorating new play based on the Iliad.

I wish I had time to write a longer review, but I think I have to go with some bullet points (no pun intended) about what makes In the Wound well worth a trip to the Berkeley hills:

• A 31-person cast! Thirty-one! I'm trying to remember the last play I saw that had a cast that big...and drawing a blank. The cast really proves the depth and diversity of Bay Area acting talent, and creates some dazzling moments of theater.
  
• Inventively staged fight scenes (stylized, rhythmic fighting with a stick held in each hand) involving most of said 31-person cast. Accompanied by taiko-style drumming and other live percussion and chanting.
  
• Now that I no longer have my prejudice against adaptations of mythology, I am amazed at how rich these stories are--how many different ways you can interpret them, and how every adaptation of the Iliad must choose to emphasize something different. In the Wound focuses on how the Greeks' sacrifice of Iphigenia haunts them throughout the Trojan War and requires expiation. I had never considered this aspect of the story so deeply before.
• In the Wound also has an unusual way of presenting this familiar story, doling out key information in flashbacks. Okay, sometimes it got a little confusing. But, in theater, confusion can sometimes be a useful device to keep the audience paying attention. The In the Wound playbill lists three actresses simply as "Goddess," but it is not until the end of Act 1 that you learn which specific goddesses they are. Greek mythology nerds will be playing Guess the Goddess* all through the first act.
• The play is set in a timeless milieu that blends classical and contemporary references, encouraging you to reflect on warfare ancient and modern. Furthermore, I saw the play on September 11, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at the front of my mind. In the last decade, there has obviously been a lot of war-themed theater produced in America. Would I have seen a play based on the Iliad on 9/11/10 if the United States had not been attacked on 9/11/01?
• Odysseus, played by Daniel Bruno, is the main character of In the Wound, and he's intriguingly complex: a family man, a technocrat, a "cruel" man who suggests killing Iphigenia and a thoughtful man who questions his role in the cycle of warfare. Anti-heroes make for good theater, and Odysseus' story isn't done yet. I am thrilled that in December, Shotgun will produce Of the Earth, a new adaptation of the Odyssey, picking up where In the Wound left off!
  
• Suggested donation to see this epic spectacular is just $10!
  

*Not to be confused with Get the Guests.

Image: Iphigenia (Nysbeth Rieman) is carried off to be sacrificed. Photo Credit : Benjamin Privitt.

The Disappearance of a Prejudice

I used to have a secret, snotty prejudice against playwrights who adapted old stories--particularly myths and fairy tales--into works of theater, rather than inventing new stories and characters that would, in time, become as famous as these old myths. Why draw water from a 2000-year-old well when you could instead prospect for your own new source of fresh water? I also thought that the theater risked disappearing up its own arsehole of literary pretension if too many playwrights adapted old stories rather than creating new, contemporary, relevant ones.

I didn't tell very many people about this prejudice, because deep down I knew it was unjust and that it would make people angry. In the meantime, I tied myself up in knots with my insistence that I had to create original stories, that my newness had to explode in a burst of glory! And when this all did come out, in the course of a drunken night in Berkeley with two playwriting friends, they almost pitied me for my rigidity. They saw how my prejudice was holding me back. They told me "Shakespeare didn't invent any of his plots!" but I scorned this. I think there was a part of me that wanted to hold myself to an even higher standard than Shakespeare.

In the last year, though, I'd say that my prejudice has gradually, subconsciously slipped away. For one thing, I fully embraced the idea that the way a story is told, how the material is shaped and what stylistic devices are employed, is more important than the actual story. (Previous post on this topic as it relates to some of my favorite movies.) For another, I have seen so much inspiring theater that is based on Greek mythology, there's no way I could retain my bias against it. The Huffington Post has a great rundown of just how much wonderful Greek-inspired theater we have seen in the Bay Area lately. It's been quite a year!

On a personal level, I was so inspired by the 12 plays of the San Francisco Olympians Festival, particularly the way they covered such a wide range of genres, themes and styles. Though each play dealt with a Greek god--and many of them contained delightfully nerdy in-jokes for people who know a lot about Greek mythology--each bore the unmistakable stamp of its writer's voice, and each could still be enjoyed by people who are unfamiliar with the original stories. I have recently been named a co-producer of Olympians: Round 2 (oh yeah, it's happening! October 2011) and I am super excited. And, did I mention I'm also translating Jean Cocteau's Orphée?

So I realized this morning that my prejudice is dead and buried. And damn, that feels good.

July is Olympians Month!

Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays for the rest of July, the gods will come to life in San Francisco! The San Francisco Olympians Festival, featuring staged readings of 12 new original plays that each focus on one of the major gods of the Greek pantheon, is going on all month at the Exit Stage Left (156 Eddy Street).

A little more about the plays, authors, and schedule (copied from the Facebook event page):

DIONYSUS by Nathan Tucker, July 8
An esoteric mystery cult in San Francisco invokes the godhead of an ancient deity, manifesting his presence and unleashing the Wrath of Dionysus.

APOLLO by Garret Groenveld, July 9
Apollo's Gift - that of foresight - was given to Cassandra out of love and proves the undoing of their chances.

POSEIDON by Bryce Allemann, Dana Constance and Kathy Hicks, July 10
Fish speak because they have something to say; Gods because they have to say something.

HERMES by Bennett Fisher, July 15
Four derivative traders seeking to benefit from the Greek financial meltdown create a fraudulent company to mask the debt as an asset. This act of deceit brings unforeseeable consequences and an unexpected visitor.

ARTEMIS by M.R. Fall, July 16
By escaping to the beach, Artemis thought she would outrun the clouds of dread building inside her; little did she know a storm was waiting for her along the shore…

ZEUS by Helen Noakes, July 17
If Zeus is your daddy does it make you a delightful delusional, a delicious demigod, or just plain fabulous? Zeus Story tells all!

DEMETER by Claire Ann Rice, July 22
Anyone who knew the rituals have paid the ferryman for passage elsewhere and all that is left are Goddesses without believers, prayers without answers, and mothers without children.

APHRODITE by Nirmala Nataraj, July 23
In this dark comedy about the lengths women will go to for love and acceptance, a washed-out infomercial star confronts her demons through dating mishaps, plastic surgery, and mysterious visitations from the paragon of feminine allure—Aphrodite herself.

ARES by Sean Kelly, July 24
Bill is due to ship out on a Third-World peace-keeping mission when he accidentally makes a sacrifice to Ares, God of Bloodlust. Together they turn a basic military action into a violent quest for revenge.

ATHENA by Ashley Cowan, July 29
While trying to balance her rational intelligence and notions of romance, Athena finds herself in a personal exploration fueled by the timeless question: can only fools fall in love or can it also exist among reason and logic?

HERA by Stuart Bousel, July 30
A Victorian-Era parlor drama about the perfect wife and mother, and the secrets which threaten to destroy her extensively engineered domestic bliss.

HEPHAESTUS by Evelyn Jean Pine, July 31
The world of Hephaestus, god of fire and volcanoes, erupts when his creations -- three gorgeous, golden robots -- revolt.

12 different gods. 12 different aspects of what it means to be human. I'll be working the box office for the festival every night... so stop by, say hello, buy a ticket ($10), and see some great new plays. Go to 4 readings, and get the 5th free!

All readings begin at 8 PM; box office opens around 7:30 (we do not take reservations). Before the show, you can check out our lobby exhibition of original artwork inspired by the 12 Olympians... and after the show, hang out with the writers and actors at a local bar!

Lots more information available at sfolympians.com.

"No man is feliz till he's six feet under": Oedipus El Rey

Blind, a modern-day adaptation of Oedipus Rex by Craig Wright, just opened in New York to bad reviews. But, perversely, I almost wish that I could see it for myself... because I recently saw another new adaptation of the Oedipus legend--Oedipus El Rey, by Luis Alfaro--and it was really amazing. So I'd be curious to see this other play to learn why Wright gets it wrong (ha!) and Alfaro gets it right.

It sounds like Wright's play, like Sophocles' original, focuses on the ninety minutes it takes King Oedipus to discover that he has killed his father and married his mother--a single scene, played out in real-time. But Alfaro's play dramatizes the backstory: he shows the young Jocasta giving birth to Oedipus, and how exactly Oedipus killed Laius and fell in love with Jocasta. It is vivid, it is fluid, and it covers a broad emotional palette. In ninety minutes, there's a tender love scene accompanied by a haunting a capella rendition of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," a rousing party celebrating Oedipus and Jocasta's wedding, a dream sequence where Oedipus converses with prophetic owls, and a truly shocking and gruesome ending. There were only six actors--Oedipus, Jocasta, and a four-man chorus who take on other roles as needed--and minimal scenery, enabling the play to cover so much ground so swiftly.

Sophocles' play is a detective story with a cathartic punch at the end, but the detective-story parts of the plot are glossed over in Alfaro's version. It's much more of a human drama, all the way through. He streamlines the original myth: Oedipus learns the truth shortly after marrying Jocasta, rather than after they have four children together. Also, in his version, Oedipus's foster-father is Tirésias, the blind prophet, not some random king of a neighboring city--which is such an amazing way to reinforce the theme of blindness that runs through the play, and makes Oedipus' decision to gouge his eyes out that much more resonant.

The Los Angeles Chicano setting of Alfaro's adaptation also lends it interest--I particularly liked the Chorus's translation of Sophocles into a contemporary Hispanic idiom, especially the final moral: "No man is feliz 'til he's six feet under." But I came out of Oedipus El Rey thinking less about how it was a "Hispanic play," and more about how it rewrote a familiar myth in a compelling and moving way, with a great storytelling instinct.

Oh, one more thing: I loved how Alfaro made the Greek concept of "hubris" intelligible to contemporary audiences by writing Oedipus as a very young, very cocky man. So not only the will of the gods, but Oedipus' youthful arrogance is to blame for what happens--he's sure that Laius deserved to die and that Jocasta will go to bed with him. And Joshua Torrez, who according to his playbill bio is only just out of college, did a great job in the role.

Oedipus El Rey has been a critical and commercial hit for the Magic Theatre and has been extended to March 14.

Odysseus in the Cafeteria

Photo from t-shirtexpressions.com, where you can buy your very own Ithaca is Gorges shirt!

My musings on The Odyssey below reminded me of my musings the last time I read it, 3 years ago. I was a freshman here at Vassar and full of wild dreams for the years to come. As I sat in the cafeteria reading The Odyssey, I saw a guy walk by wearing an "Ithaca is Gorges" T-shirt. I thought that if someone ever did an irreverent modern-day retelling of The Odyssey, it would be hilarious for Odysseus (and the rest of the Ithacans?) to wear that as a costume.

Then it struck me that the cafeteria was a veritable Aegean sea of tables... I could stage a site-specific Odyssey right there, with the support of my wonderful new university!

This never came to pass--I got involved with writing other scripts, didn't really feel like writing a funny-but-not-stupid adaptation of The Odyssey--but I recently dug up the notes I had written about this idea. Here they are, in all their overenthusiastic freshman glory:

Each table represents a different island that Odysseus visits. The audience sits at the tables and is called upon to play the denizens of the various islands, in a kind of audience-participation Greek chorus. (The major characters would be actors— everyone else would just play along.) Every time Odysseus gets driven off course, it is represented by an actor in “wind” or “sea” or “Poseidon” costume running over and pushing him to a different island. The trick would be to make the show not merely funny (the Ithaca shirt, the rather low production values) and bring back some of the magic of Greek theater. I SO want to do this! I feel SO inspired! The Odyssey is haunting me as it has haunted people for thousands of years! Yahoo!

Some of my other ideas included:

• Calypso music for Calypso
• The lotus-eaters represented as a bunch of contemporary stoners
• Physical representations of "rosy-fingered Dawn" and "wine-dark sea"
• Nausicaa as a source of comedy: a beautiful girl who loves to do laundry. She could sing “I love to go a-laundering…”
• A bunch of tables at one end of the cafeteria pushed together to represent Ithaca, the most important island. Other islands could be large or small, as the story demands.
• The "Wandering Rocks" represented by stagehands pushing tables around. Whirlpool Charybdis as a swirl of cloth.
• Minimal props: e.g. Odysseus should just mime the climactic shooting of the arrow through the axe-handles
  
• Lots of breaking of the fourth wall: a narrator who helps move the story along. But I've always hated narrators who are called simply "Narrator..." "Homer" is too obvious. A god--Athena?--as narrator? Leopold Bloom? Ulysses Everett McGill?
• References to other adapters of The Odyssey--James Joyce, the Coen Brothers (see item above). By the way, I remember going back to my room that night and telling my roommate about my ideas and both of us apologizing for never having read James Joyce's Ulysses. That's the kind of girls we were--seventeen, eighteen years old and feeling inadequate because we hadn't read Ulysses yet. I still haven't. But it was the inaugural entry on my "To Be Read" list--which now stretches three pages long.