Medea

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens and one of the few whose plays have survived, Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but according to the Suda it was 92 at most. Of these, 18 or 19 have survived more or less complete. He is credited with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. He was also considered "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unheard of. He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". However, he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

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A Student Edition of Euripides' play, which accessibly unpacks Greek tragedy in its social context, issues of translation and adaptation, and performance approaches over the centuries.

Euripides' play Medea was first produced in 431BC and continues to be produced globally to this day. Its power and timeless appeal for audiences rests in its portrait of a woman driven to murder the new wife of the man who abandoned her and to murder her own children. In more recent times, Medea's actions have been taken as a symbol of female power in an otherwise male-dominated society.

Will Shüler's commentary in this Student Edition looks at the violence of the play - both onstage and off; the original performance conditions; staging challenges, both then and now (including Medea's exit on a dragon); the notion of myth and how Greek tragedians were telling old stories to get new meanings; and how the play has evolved through translation.

It considers a range of productions up to the present day, including the 2014 National Theatre production directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Helen McCrory; Sophie Okonedo as Medea at the Soho Theatre, London, in 2023; and the 2000 Australian version, Black Medea, which interpreted Medea as an indigenous woman brought to a city by her ambitious husband.

One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, Medea centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea. Having married Medea and fathered her two children, Jason abandons her for a more favorable match, never suspecting the terrible revenge she will take. Euripides' masterly portrayal of the motives fiercely driving Medea's pursuit of vengeance for her husband's insult and betrayal has held theater audiences spellbound for more than twenty centuries. Rex Warner's authoritative translation brings this great classic of world literature vividly to life.

Chronology

Contexts (ritual; myth as storytelling; multiple plays performed at one time; audience and performer experience including collective spectacle; didactic)

Themes (gender; motherhood; feminism, including contemporary perspectives; political power; family)

Play in Performance (Aristotle's Poetics; dramatic structure; space of a Greek tragic theatre; acoustics; violence onstage and offstage; theatre design)

Text, Transmission, and Translation (How did this text survive until now? What are approaches to translation? What does this translation emphasise? What are the potentials for "translating" the play from page to stage?)

Play in performance (how various playwrights and theatre-makers have adapted the material including the 2014 NT production directed by Carrie Cracknell; the 2023 production at the Soho Theatre, London; the 2000 production in Australia, Black Medea; and Cherrie Moraga's 1995 adaptation The Hungry Woman, which was a queer re-telling of the play.)

PLAY TEXT

Notes