EVula's Blog

About Medea

Meaker VI had asked what Medea was about, but I never got around to explaining it.

Medea is a classical Greek tragedy, documenting a bit of the life of Jason (of "Jason and the Argonauts") and Medea, his wife. To sum it up, Jason ditches Medea for some kings daughter (bad idea, dude), and Medea is sent into exile along with their two sons. Over the course of the day, Medea gets fairly brutal and viscious revenge on Jason. Hint: It's called a tragedy for a reason. ;)

It was performed in masks, which is how classical Greek theatre was done back when it was modern Greek theatre. It was a fairly small cast; Medea (played by my friend Trish), a three-person chorus, the two kids, and one actor (my friend Erik) that played the 5 remaining characters in the show (including Jason). I was in charge of helping Erik in and out of his five different costumes and masks. He had a standard toga under everything, and then he had different overlays on top of that. Each had a different style: one was purple, for the king; one was green, for another rule that was friends with Medea; the slave was a simple rag-like piece of cloth worn around the neck; and the Nurse had a giant plain wrap that made Erik look like an old woman. Jason's costume was fairly unique; he wore a fairly cool but plain black leather wrap, covering his chest, shoulders (not his arms), and halfway down his legs; the bottom of his toga was tucked into his shorts so that it didn't go extend below the wrap, and his toga "sleeves" were hidden under the wrap, while his black t-shirt underneath had it's sleeves rolled out to match the wrap.

We performed it outside at the Parthenon (the picture on that page is the side of the building we performed on) on the steps. Artistically, it doesn't get much better; performing Greek tragedy at a recreation of an ancient Greek building is wonderful. From a technical standpoint, however, it was a nightmare. We had to strike the lights and props every single night, which meant that we had to set them up the next day. The weather could cancel us whenever it damn well felt like it (it never did, though it did start raining not more than five minutes after our first show wrapped up). And the noise... ugh. The next time I hear a loud booming car with it's speakers on full blast will be too soon.

All in all, it was a fun show, though I'l admit that my heart wasn't in it. Thankfully all the cool people involved made it worth it. :)

Posted by Eric at April 20, 2005 02:03 PM