Sheer Shooting Passion: Greek Tragedy Comes to Beijing

What a month for theatre, my fellow Beijingers! I for one am pleased with the offerings that the drama gods are bestowing on us lately. Case in point: Euripides’ Medea is coming to the capital. With two performances on slated for this Thursday and Friday, Y-Y Team is bringing a novel take on this Greek tragedy to the stage of 77 Theatre, the multi-purpose arts space and venue tucked inside Meishuguan Houjie's Meridian Space, inside C&C Culture Park.

The script for this particular adaption is in Chinese, but worry not HSK strugglers, for English subtitles accompany the performance.

The immortal myth of Jason and Medea may have survived two and a half millennia, but that doesn't mean a quick refresher course isn't in order. In 431 BC, Euripides staged at Dionysia Festival the wrathful actions of Medea, wife of Jason and a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis. When Jason leaves her for Corinthian princess Glauce, Medea’s position in the Greek world is threatened. She exacts revenge on Jason by murdering Glauce as well as two of her own sons, Mermerus and Pheres. Eventually, she flees to Athens to start a new life.

Playwrights worldwide have explored and interpreted Euripides' play across the centuries to offer different original readings of Medea, integrating a wealth of elements, from psychoanalysis to feminism.  But Y-Y Team is going a step further with none other than a spiritual sequel to the tragedy. Sounds exciting, right? I got to talk to scriptwriter Donnie Fan, who is co-directing the play with Yang Yang. Check the conversation between the three of us below.

Hello to the both of you! How would you define your Medea?
Donnie Fan: Good question! Medea is a modern reimagining of what happens in the aftermath of the original tragedy. This two-character, single-act play is meant to explore the motives and consequences of Medea’s crime, as well as the roots of the tragedy itself, stemming from a breakdown of communication.

Sounds like an interesting angle to come from. Tell me, what’s your understanding of women in classic Greek plays?
Yang Yang: The way we see it, there is a notable gap in terms of female insight in classic Greek drama. Despite their involvement in dramatic and religious ceremonies, Athenian women during the Fifth Century BC did not get to perform in public, nor were they present in the audience. This is funny, given that tragic female heroines dominate the plays of this period, with female tragic choruses outnumbering those of males by far. The silence forced on actual Greek women is overlaid by their vivid, complex dramatic presence in the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Homer’s verse and Euripides himself. Likewise, they also continued to inform and stimulate contemporary cultural theory and dramatic performance.

Would you say this was a patriarchal construction to suppress women?
YY: Conventional critics would certainly support such a reading! However, it can also be explored as a complex intersection of many other cultural elements.

Back to Medea, though, why did you all feel this need to revisit such a colossal classic?
YY: We wanted to challenge the notion that Medea is “only a woman”, weak in will, intellect, or physique. Medea effectively refused to be bound by the roles of civic subject, wife, daughter, and most notably mother, and yet her grief still feels eminently feminine. Medea has been victimized and criminalized, but there’s much more to her figure. Our sequel will address the way the original play ranged widely in terms of its mythical content. Through Medea, we want to remind our audience that we should cast an attentive and aesthetic gaze upon our daily life, therefore causing the ordinary to shift towards the extraordinary.

Medea is scripted by Donnie Fan and co-directed by Yang Yang, with a cast featuring Apple Yang and Peter Peng. It will be staged by Y-Y Team on Jan 20 and 21 at 77 Theatre (77 Meishuguan Houjie. Dongcheng District). Tickets are marked at RMB 250 and RMB 200 (use discount code THEATER100 for RMB100 off). Scan the code in the poster above to RSVP.

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Images: redeveloper.ru, courtesy of Y-Y Team