Theatre of the People is at it again with another theatre bargain, a challenging two-fer, Euripides' Medea and The Trojan Women. And once more they're not satisfied with the standard text.
Cofounder David Nosko is directing Medea.
"We respect the original. We first very carefully studied the text, looking for the key point the structure and the turns in the drama."
"But then we left the text to explore the characters and the story through improvisation and role playing before coming back to a Euripides brought from 2500 years ago to the present."
Hannah Moss is the other cofounder and for this project she plays Medea.
"I studied the role by myself reading the poetry of the translations. I had the luxury of the time to think about the emotions expressed and then to see how I would act if I felt those feelings."
Sabrina Lloyd co-directs The Trojan Women.
She's a graduate student in the Indiana University Department of Theatre and Drama, but it was an independent staging of a piece by Edna Saint Vincent Millay that convinced Nosko and Moss that she shared some of their vision.
She says that, "The Trojan Women is such a powerful piece. It's sadly powerful because it dramatizes things that are still going on in the mistreatment of women in war torn areas."
The Theater of the People's production of the Euripides Revival: Medea and The Trojan Woman plays in the Rose Firebay, April 24-25 and April 30-May 2, 2009.
Listen to WFIU's George Walker's review of "The Euripides Revival: Beauty Betrayed."