Notes from the first Sunday Series event, by Julia Loving.

The Persians and History

Over 80 people gathered in the Main Stage theatre on Sunday afternoon, October 5th to hear a discussion on the background of current production of The Persians—how the play frames history and how history frames the play. Rosaria Munson, Chair of the Department of Classics and Lee Devin, dramaturg, resident company member, and author led an informative and engaging discussion. Dr. Munson, who has written two books and several articles on Herodotus first gave a presentation on the historical context of the play. She said that McLaughlin’s adaptation was very much in the spirit of what the Greek tragedians were doing when they adapted myths to the stage. However, what is unusual about The Persians is that it is based on an actual event—The Battle of Salamis—that happened only eight years prior to the presentation of Aeschylus’ play in 472 BC. Only two other ancient Greek plays that we know of deal with historic subjects. In all three cases, the plays have to do with the confrontation of a Greek city state with foreign invaders.

In 490 BC, the Persian king Darius and his army suffered a terrible defeat at Marathon at the hands of the Athenians. Ten years later, his son Xerxes again sent an army to defeat Athens with the goal of conquering all of Greece and making it part of the Persian Empire. This expedition lasted two years, from 481-479 BC. The Greeks’ astounding victory at the Battle of Salamis was the turning point of the war and the beginning of the ascendancy of Athenian democracy and Western civilization.

Aeschylus and his brother had fought in the Battle of Marathon where his brother died. What is so unusual about the play The Persians is that it is told from the perspective of the defeated Persians, not the victorious Athenians. What would the reaction of the Athenian audience have been to this. Most scholars believe that Aeschylus’ Persians allowed the Athenians to empathize with the defeated Persians. Dr. Munson pointed out that this was very much the tact that Ellen McLaughlin had taken in her adaptation. Her version is not triumphalist but full of compassion.

Dr. Munson said that there is also a much more cynical and less charitable view of how to understand The Persians. It is Edward Said (died 2003), Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, who called The Persians the first “orientalist” document produced by the West. The Greeks, once they had overcome their surprise at their victory over the Persians, reflected on this achievement and came up with several explanations. They theorized that the Persians were punished by the Gods for their hubris.

But, from this viewpoint, there was also another reason for the Persians’ defeat—the Greeks were superior because they were free men, constitutionally governed, relatively poor and therefore hardy, unlike the rich, soft, pampered Persians. Aeschylus’ Persians thus portrayed a polarity between East and West, which would have obliterated any sympathy the Greeks might have felt for the Persians. This is embodied in the play by the example of the two horses in Queen Atossa’s dream—in Aeschylus’ original, they are two women—representing this polarity. Asia is submissive while Europe struggles against the constraints of the bridle. There are also many references to the luxury of the Persians’ lifestyle and to their subservience to their rulers.

Dr. Munson believes that the play speaks to a combination of these aspects. She does not find it jingoistic and instead very nuanced. She said that its subtlety and portrayal of East/West polarity makes modern rewritings of the play particularly interesting.

McLaughlin’s adaptation was commissioned in 2003 just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq by Tony Randall, National Actors Theatre artistic director. Says Munson, “It completely confuses the polarity between East and West.” American viewers who would more readily identify themselves with the Greek ideals of democracy and freedom, instead “find themselves identified in no uncertain terms with an oppressive and Orientalist East.” She added that she found it extremely disturbing that we are “almost denied permission” to identify with the Athenians.

But for Aeschylus’ play to work at all with his Athenian audience, the Athenians had to feel that they were on the right side, that even while they empathized with the suffering of the Persians, the Gods and Justice were on their side.

Lee Devin pointed out that it was a testament to McLaughlin’s fine writing. Instead of offering a “simplistic, moralistic, and contemporarily fashionable” viewpoint, she “simply opens the door” to this really interesting and complex set of ideas. We can’t clearly differentiate between “us” and “them.” The play is about choices made and consequences suffered expressed in language. In other words, “it is going to be the use of language to do stuff.” Having the play situated in Susa where the Persians who were left behind await word of their army—their husbands, fathers, and sons—waging war in distant Greece. Aeschylus and McLaughlin in her adaptation let us experience the Persians’ personal suffering and psychic anguish.

One audience member said that he found it hard to accept that one goal of the play was to make the Greeks empathize with the Persians. Instead, he felt that the play would make the Athenian audience feel great pride in the suffering that their victory had caused to their enemy. He pointed out that war was part of life and not seen as a terrible thing. It was a way to acquire wealth, expand empire, and ensure security. The Athenians went on to create their own empire and were in their own way “casually brutal to those they conquered.”

Another audience member said that he was very moved by the fact that the Persians admitted their part in the tragedy, that it was their hubris that had brought them down. This could serve as a warning to the Athenians that they should not feel too much pride because they too could suffer defeat.

Dr. Munson emphasized that the play is a representation of the Greek imagination of how the Persians responded to their defeat in the Battle of Salamis. This is Greek discourse placed in the mouth of actors. Like the other great Greek tragedies, Aeschylus’ play speaks to us across 2,500 years with startling immediacy. Greek literature has sustained its power. The Greeks were articulate, aware, and analytical. “Everything is expressed,” said Munson. These qualities are not lost in McLaughlin’s remarkable adaptation.

A successful College Night!

This past Thursday was "College Night" at the theatre. We invited college students and professors to see The Persians, and held a talk-back after the show, followed by a small reception for everyone who stayed. For those of you who don't know, a talk-back is where the audience is invited to stay after the performance, and the actors come back out onto the stage to answer questions. It's entertaining and informative, and we get a lot of great questions. The student audience was no different, and below you'll find a summary of some of the questions that were asked.

• Elizabeth Pool (Resident Dramaturg and host of the talk-back): Tell us what you will talk about on the ride home tonight. What moments, images, costumes stuck with you?
  
  Audience member: The way the play resonated with our times. The hubris can be compared to the United States, both now and in Vietnam.


• Audience member: Were there really women counselors?
  
  Actor 1: Yes! No. I’ve been waiting for someone to ask that question! There was one woman warrior that Heroditus mentions. She disguised herself as a Greek and took down one of their ships. He said “My women act like men and my men act like women”
  
  Actor 2: Persian women ran businesses, owned land, and had money that was separate from their husbands. They were pretty liberated.

• Audience member: This play portrays Darius as very sympathetic.
  
  Actor 1: Darius was pretty enlightened. He didn’t try to take away the belief systems of the countries he conquered.
  
  Actor 2: It started with Cyrus. He was conquering other lands, but he would let them stay multi-ethnic, multi cultural. Different nations under Persia. It was like that until Xerxes.

• Audience Member: Is the play more about the Persian Tragedy or the Athenian triumph?
  
  Actors: Aeschylus fought in two major battles and his brother died in the first. What’s amazing to me is that just a few years later he turned around and wrote this play. And he wrote it just when Athens was thinking about becoming more like Persia. It was a cautionary tale.

• Audience member: Can you talk about the deconstruction and interaction of the chorus? And you were all so descriptive with your bodies.
  
  Actor 1: Part of the acting challenge was the heightened language. Our director didn’t want us to talk out to the audience in classical Greek style automatically. Maybe ten days into the rehearsal, she turned down the lights to get us to just talk to each other. So it’s not GREEK TRAGEDY. So we would communicate as much as possible.
  
  Actor 2: Aeschylus wrote this as a chorus, and so did Ellen MacLaughlin. The first director divided it into chambers of the cabinet.
  

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After the talk-back, we invited everyone into the lower lobby for refreshments, and the actors came out to mingle with the crowd.

In this picture, you can see (from left to right): Miriam Hyman (The Herald), Nancy Shaw (Director of Education at PLTC), Mark Hairston (Xerxes), and the back of Kevin Bergen (The Chairman). The entire cast made an appearance, and it was interesting to watch them continue the talk-back in the form of one-on-one conversations with the audience members.

Fun Cinderella Facts, by Sara Waxman

Design sketch of a Flapper costume for our production of Cinderella: A Musical Panto,
by costume designer Rosemarie McKelvey.

About the Production
This year’s Panto, Cinderella, is set in the Roaring Twenties, which is remembered for its vibrant social scene. Party-goers had their own language and Vaudeville (a broadly comic style of theatre divided into sketches and dance acts) was a popular form of entertainment. Flappers were party girls who wore fringed dresses and spoke their own language, calling “Hey-ho, Daddy-o” to each other and dancing the Charleston at every opportunity. In our production of Cinderella, Ella’s stepsisters are wannabe Flappers. To learn more about the 1920s party scene, Flappers, and the Charleston, visit YouTube.com and search for “Dancin’ the Charleston” (make sure to put your search topic in quotes). Check out “The Charleston” with music by the Green Hill Instrumental.

Flapper/1920s Lingo
“Speak easy” – an illegal bar, usually in the basement of an establishment or private residence, during the time of Prohibition (The speak easy in our Panto happens to be in the basement of the Mayor’s mansion).
“Applesauce” –in our production is used to refer to alcohol
“Dusting the Mug” – Putting on powdered make-up
“Greaser” – eye brow pencil
“Painting the kisser” – Putting on lipstick
“The Bees Knees” – refers to a person, place, or thing that is extraordinary or cool
(Source: http://local.aaca.org/bntc/slang/slang.htm)

Variations on the story of Cinderella
Cinderella has come down to us in many versions. Some tellings include mice, a pumpkin, a glass slipper, while others include Pharaohs, slaves, an eagle, and meddling gods. Although the elements of the stories differ, they all follow the same path—a downtrodden heroine magically escapes her situation (usually shoes play a role in the action) and ends up with a prince. Here are some of the very first versions of the story. (When you see the play, look for elements from these versions that resurface in Kathryn Petersen’s Cinderella.)

Aesop
In Aesop’s fable “The Girl with the Rose Red Slippers,” a young Greek girl, Rhodopis, is stolen by pirates and sold into slavery. She is bought by a merchant who showers her with gifts and a pair of Rose Red Slippers. One day while she is bathing in the river, an eagle swoops down and steals one of her slippers. The eagle flies to Egypt and drops the slipper at the Pharaoh’s feet, who believes the slipper is a sign from the Gods. He sends his men to find Rhodopis and, when she is found, makes her his queen. (Source: http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythslippers.htm)

Brothers Grimm
In the Grimm tale version, Cinderella is befriended by the birds that live in the hazel tree at the foot of her mother’s grave. On the night of the Prince’s ball Cinderella goes to the hazel tree and says: “Shiver and quiver, little tree, silver and gold throw down over me." The tree supplies her finery. At the ball, Cinderella loses a shoe in her haste to get home before her Stepmother and Stepsisters. When the Prince arrives at Cinderella’s house in search of the shoe’s owner, the stepsisters try to trick him into believing the shoe fits them by cutting off parts of their feet. But the birds sing to the Prince, alerting him to the Stepsisters’ trick. He tries the shoe on Cinderella, it fits, and he takes her for his bride.
(Source: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/21cinderella.html)

Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault’s is perhaps the most well-known version of Cinderella. A French government official, Perrault was the first to include the elements familiar to us: the Fairy Godmother, the glass slipper, a pumpkin turned a coach, and the transformation of Cinderella’s animal friends into footmen, horses, and coachmen. Perrault’s innovative contribution to literature was to transform folktales into the first fairy tales by including enchantments, magical creatures, and intricate turns of events. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella)

Recent Adaptations
In 1804, the Drury Lane and Adelphi Theatres in London produced Cinderella in the pantomime form. The traditional English pantomime, which the People’s Light production is inspired by, contains specific elements such as mistaken identity, comedy, political satire, and a Dame (a man dressed as a woman). Other panto traditions are audience participation, a messy fight (past years at People’s Light have included fights in jello and ice cream), singing, dancing, and candy!

Contemporary versions of the tale include Disney’s animated movie and TV versions of the book and lyrics by Rodgers and Hammerstein (starring Lesley Ann Warren in 1965 and Brandy in 1997). Cinderella has also found her way into pop culture via songs like Fairy Tale by Sara Bareilles, Cinderella Stay Awhile by Michael Jackson, Cinderfells by Snoop Dogg, Cinderella by Britney Spears, and I Can Love You Like That by John Michael Montgomery and All-4-One.

Slapstick in the Panto, by Nancy Shaw.

The English Pantomime tradition (very different from the French mime tradition) is a popular form of theatre, performed especially around the holidays in England. It includes singing, dancing, comedy, and references to the events of the day - all gathered up in the outlines of a familiar folk tale or traditional story. The form of the Pantomime grew out of the Italian Commedia Dell-Arte. Like its Italian ancestor, the British Panto incorporates lots of physical humor, sight gags, and slapstick.

The word slapstick comes from a literal stick or paddle. In Commedia, an actor would carry with him a paddle made of wood that had a hinged flap. When the actor wanted to pretend to slap someone, he flicked the paddle and the wooden flap hit against the rest of the paddle to create a loud slapping sound. This sound effect increased the comic moment of the slap. A common "slapstick" routine most of us are familiar with is the pie in the face. As soon as we see a large meringue pie on stage or film, we can guess what’s going to happen.

In Pantos, it's traditional to include an extended messy slapstick fight or catastrophe. At the end of the scene, everyone is covered with whatever the messy substance is. At People's Light, our messy slapstick scenes in previous Pantos have used flour, soapy water with dishes spitting out of a deranged dishwasher, and ice cream (represented by shaving cream). Keep your eye out for what we use to make a mess in Cinderella!

Nancy Shaw
Director of Education

Chris Triebel on "The Elements of a Play", a class by Lou Lippa

Playwright in Residence, Lou Lippa, has been teaching a class here at People’s Light this summer called The Elements of a Play. Below is a response from one of the students, Chris Triebel:

This class has been a monumental help to me not just as a writer or an actor, but as an artist in general. The way he is able to dissect a play down to its basic format and illustrate it is incredible. I took this class originally to help me with some problems I was having as a writer. After the first class, I knew I was going to get a lot more than I thought. Some of the things we discussed were things I knew but were put in a way I had never thought before, some were brand new ideas, but all of it was useful. I definitely feel stronger as a writer and an actor after having taken this class.

Young Lady from Rwanda - Now Extended!

Good news, everyone! Young Lady from Rwanda has just been extended until June 29th. The additional dates and times are listed below.

ADDED DATES

Wednesday, June 25th at 7:30pm

Thursday, June 26th at 7:30pm

Friday, June 27th at 8:00pm

Saturday, June 28th at 2:00 & 8:00pm

Sunday, June 29th at 2:00pm

I'm also sticking in some quotes from the reviews we've received--and of course we couldn't be happier about all of the wonderful comments we've heard from people who've already seen the show!

"...a play you simply cannot miss."

Main Line Times

"an open, intimate and beautiful play."

City Paper

Young Lady from Rwanda Journal - Week 4, by Miriam Hyman

Week 4
Well, we are finally open and running until the 29th of June. It has been a tough but very rewarding experience thus far. After we open there aren't any more rehearsals, so with the support of our stage manager we are able to keep the show at a good pace and keep it alive. Our audiences have received the play well as far as I can tell. We, David and I, speak to the audience a lot so it is imperative that we build a genuine relationship with each participant from the beginning or at least with those who are willing, which have been most. It can be odd sometimes when you try to speak to an individual and they look down or away. Some are nervous, some are intrigued, some want to deal with the material, some don't. Nonetheless, my job is to tell Juliette's story and I'm going to do it. Her story, the genocide against the Tutsi Rwandan people, is worth an hour and a half of diligent listening. So I hope you attend and be open to the experience. Till next time.....

Young Lady from Rwanda Journal - Week 3, by Miriam Hyman

Week 3

To start this week off, Elizabeth Pool, our dramaturg for this show, set up a meeting for me to meet with a woman from The Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, an organization that assists foreigners from many different countries to become permanent PA residents. I was fortunate to have met with a woman from Sierra Leone. I won't share her story but I will say that she gave me much more insight as to what my character was feeling during her troubling times. I incorporated this insight and applied it to my character development. I'm off to learn lines and study blocking.

Young Lady from Rwanda Journal - Week 2, by Miriam Hyman

Week 2

We are up on our feet. This week the director David Bradley will begin to block myself and David Ingram, the other actor in the show. We will begin to understand the space and there is an example of the set sitting on the director's table. We start to form the beginning of the play and slowly work through all the scenes, figuring which blocking is interesting and/or a problem for sight lines. Again, another difficult part of the process because we are performing this piece in a three-quarter stage, meaning that the audience will be on three sides of the stage. So we have to engage all sides at all times.

Young Lady from Rwanda Journal - Week 1, by Miriam Hyman

Week 1

We begin the week of rehearsals by doing table work, reading through the play, discussing characters, and the play’s overall journey and purpose. It's difficult material because of a few reasons: it's based on true events, a horrible one at that, and inspired by real people. My goal for this week is to do a bunch of research about Rwanda itself, the people, their cultures, lifestyles and so on. At rehearsal, the dramaturg and director are kind enough to share several reading materials, such as What Is the What, Life Laid Bare, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, and Left to Tell, just to name a few. During this week I will also watch many films to give me precise images of the horrific disaster of genocide in Rwanda, such as Sometimes in April, Hotel Rwanda, Last King of Scotland and Ghosts of Rwanda. For me it is necessary to see what my character would have seen. I also observe these films to listen for dialect references and natural rhythms of speech. This is a busy week for me because, in addition to all this research, I must constantly learn lines, more lines, and more lines. Luckily, I began learning lines and doing research before I came to People’s Light to begin the rehearsal process for I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda. It is a tough process, but there is no place I would rather be and no other show that I would rather do than what’s in front of me. My mission is to do Juliette's (my character) story justice.