How relevant can a play that was first staged in 458 BC and won a goat as a prize in the Festival of Dionysius be to our lives now?
I was cynical. Damn it, the hole burnt by the 75 USD I wasted on that completely puerile, award-winning musical on Broadway with a far shorter history still smoked in my purse.
But it was a beautiful day outside – sunny and warm after 10 days of gloomy, cold, and wet weather. The play was happening practically next door and was priced at an affordable 14 USD. I’d never watched a Greek tragedy in my life and I had promised Geetha that I would come back and bore him with it.
So off I went to watch what I thought was an ambitious presentation of the entire trilogy of Oresteia by Aeschylus by the Bradley University Theater group.
Of course I had my reservations: I wondered how were they going to make me care about a story so bloody and unrelatable – hell, the plot outline sounded like a handbook on “How to kill your family and come up with convincing excuses.” It had a body count that would put Rambo to shame – Agamemnon, hero of the Trojan war, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia, to appease goddess Artemis; Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, murders him and his war-spoil Cassandra as a revenge; and so, Orestes, their son, plots with his sister Electra, and murders his own mother and her paramour. And this is just one generation – the events leading up to this miserable family are far too complicated to even get into.
Sure, I expected an experimental, new age, postmodern deconstructive treatment. Devices such as audio-visual insertions and Muppets have become so de-rigueur that they are conspicuous only by their absence nowadays. Modern language peppered with the “f” word – oh blah, that old chestnut has been around from the days of West Side Story. Graphic homo/hetero erotic scenes – yawn!
But this theater group had a greater activist agenda. To them, this play was “…not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” The play was merely a framework to contextualize modern day problems and their complex dichotomies; a platform to present the idea that justice is above a personal code of right and wrong; and a forum to hope that there is goodness in human beings that could raise them above violence and atrocities.
This they did not by dressing up Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in suits and pumps (thank God) and make their stories contemporary, but by the clever use of the chorus of the Greek tragedies.
The chorus here was made up of students playing students, sitting in the audience, interrupting the play often, and getting into spirited discussions about the plot, its implications and symbolisms.
“Was the Trojan War justified?”
“Hell, is the Iraq War?”
“The terrorists had it coming!”
“Tell that to the 95,000 Iraqi civilians who died!”
“Why is Agamemnon grunting?”
“Well, this is a post-modern play and we believe that war reduces men to animals.”
“Clytemnestra is a crazy bitch! She deserves to die!”
“Oh, because she is a woman, she is insane and her rage is unjustified? You men are threatened by women who can take care of themselves and will not take shit from you!”
“Who is Cassandra?”
“A victim of war, just like the millions of women who have been victims throughout our history.”
“Electra makes me cry!”
“Why?”
“Because she reminds me of me—when my parents separated, I blamed myself for it and I felt so lonely! I feel she is going through the same thing!”
“Is ‘an eye for an eye, blood for blood’ the correct way to go?”
“My friend was killed in a drive-by shooting, and instead of solving the crime, the police accused me because I’m black and hence by default a gang member. There is no justice in this world! Revenge is the only way to go!”
“So when does the blood letting stop?”
“Looks like it doesn’t—watch CNN!”
“What do we do then?”
“We have, over the last couple of millenniums, evolved a system of universal laws. We need to abide by them. We need to actively participate in the process of dispensation of justice. We should not tolerate injustice.”
“Is Orestes guilty of his crime? Should he be punished?”
“Jeez, he killed his mother! Of course he should be punished!”
“So, is punishing the only way to put an end to violence? Can punishment end the genocides in Darfur and Rwanda? Or is there another perspective to the problem—that it is a result of post colonialism, germ of which was planted by the western world for selfish reasons?”
“You mean?”
“That we human beings have a great capability to be good and we need to give that goodness a chance.”
“So how does this play end?”
“Is it important?”
(I am paraphrasing, of course.)
Idealistic? Hell yeah! Irrelevant? God, no!
Anyway, after today, I don’t want to be cynical about idealism. True, it is a small group, catering to an ultra-conservative small audience, but bless those twenty-nothings, they’ve shown that the torch of national debate has been passed on to able hands. And yes, I am feeling hopeful – unabashedly so!
I was cynical. Damn it, the hole burnt by the 75 USD I wasted on that completely puerile, award-winning musical on Broadway with a far shorter history still smoked in my purse.
But it was a beautiful day outside – sunny and warm after 10 days of gloomy, cold, and wet weather. The play was happening practically next door and was priced at an affordable 14 USD. I’d never watched a Greek tragedy in my life and I had promised Geetha that I would come back and bore him with it.
So off I went to watch what I thought was an ambitious presentation of the entire trilogy of Oresteia by Aeschylus by the Bradley University Theater group.
Of course I had my reservations: I wondered how were they going to make me care about a story so bloody and unrelatable – hell, the plot outline sounded like a handbook on “How to kill your family and come up with convincing excuses.” It had a body count that would put Rambo to shame – Agamemnon, hero of the Trojan war, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia, to appease goddess Artemis; Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, murders him and his war-spoil Cassandra as a revenge; and so, Orestes, their son, plots with his sister Electra, and murders his own mother and her paramour. And this is just one generation – the events leading up to this miserable family are far too complicated to even get into.
Sure, I expected an experimental, new age, postmodern deconstructive treatment. Devices such as audio-visual insertions and Muppets have become so de-rigueur that they are conspicuous only by their absence nowadays. Modern language peppered with the “f” word – oh blah, that old chestnut has been around from the days of West Side Story. Graphic homo/hetero erotic scenes – yawn!
But this theater group had a greater activist agenda. To them, this play was “…not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” The play was merely a framework to contextualize modern day problems and their complex dichotomies; a platform to present the idea that justice is above a personal code of right and wrong; and a forum to hope that there is goodness in human beings that could raise them above violence and atrocities.
This they did not by dressing up Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in suits and pumps (thank God) and make their stories contemporary, but by the clever use of the chorus of the Greek tragedies.
The chorus here was made up of students playing students, sitting in the audience, interrupting the play often, and getting into spirited discussions about the plot, its implications and symbolisms.
“Was the Trojan War justified?”
“Hell, is the Iraq War?”
“The terrorists had it coming!”
“Tell that to the 95,000 Iraqi civilians who died!”
“Why is Agamemnon grunting?”
“Well, this is a post-modern play and we believe that war reduces men to animals.”
“Clytemnestra is a crazy bitch! She deserves to die!”
“Oh, because she is a woman, she is insane and her rage is unjustified? You men are threatened by women who can take care of themselves and will not take shit from you!”
“Who is Cassandra?”
“A victim of war, just like the millions of women who have been victims throughout our history.”
“Electra makes me cry!”
“Why?”
“Because she reminds me of me—when my parents separated, I blamed myself for it and I felt so lonely! I feel she is going through the same thing!”
“Is ‘an eye for an eye, blood for blood’ the correct way to go?”
“My friend was killed in a drive-by shooting, and instead of solving the crime, the police accused me because I’m black and hence by default a gang member. There is no justice in this world! Revenge is the only way to go!”
“So when does the blood letting stop?”
“Looks like it doesn’t—watch CNN!”
“What do we do then?”
“We have, over the last couple of millenniums, evolved a system of universal laws. We need to abide by them. We need to actively participate in the process of dispensation of justice. We should not tolerate injustice.”
“Is Orestes guilty of his crime? Should he be punished?”
“Jeez, he killed his mother! Of course he should be punished!”
“So, is punishing the only way to put an end to violence? Can punishment end the genocides in Darfur and Rwanda? Or is there another perspective to the problem—that it is a result of post colonialism, germ of which was planted by the western world for selfish reasons?”
“You mean?”
“That we human beings have a great capability to be good and we need to give that goodness a chance.”
“So how does this play end?”
“Is it important?”
(I am paraphrasing, of course.)
Idealistic? Hell yeah! Irrelevant? God, no!
Anyway, after today, I don’t want to be cynical about idealism. True, it is a small group, catering to an ultra-conservative small audience, but bless those twenty-nothings, they’ve shown that the torch of national debate has been passed on to able hands. And yes, I am feeling hopeful – unabashedly so!
Comments