Hecuba

Hecuba, by Marina Carr

Directed by Lisa Channer

May 15-22, 2021

Troy has fallen. It’s the end of war and the beginning of something else. Something worse. As the cries die down after the final battle, there are reckonings to be made. Humiliated by her defeat and imprisoned by the charismatic victor Agamemnon, the great queen Hecuba must wash the blood of her buried sons from her hands and lead her daughters forward into a world they no longer recognize. Agamemnon has slaughtered his own daughter to win this war. But now another sacrifice is demanded…

Rehearsed and filmed during a global pandemic in a year of multiple uprisings for justice, this production makes the case for the power of testimony, self reflection and accountability. 

Premiering May 15, 2021 at 7:30pm CST through May 22, 2021

Presented on UMTAD Vimeo. ACCESS THE SHOW at vimeo.com/549473038.

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FEATURING 

    Maje Adams    Agamemnon
    Marguerite Arbogast    Servant
    Cora Casper    Polyxena
    Amber Frederick    Polymestor
    Vivian Kampschroer    Servant
    Ethan Lizotte    Polydorus
    David Meis    Soldier
    Owen Radke    Soldier
    Kyra Rahn    Cassandra
    Cole Seager    Odysseus
    Joel F Wilshire    Neoptolemus
    Genevieve Wisdom    Hecuba
    Rosie Melendez    Polymestor’s child
    Harris Arsham    Polymestor’s child
    Vivi Garcia    Ipheginia, Daughter of Agamemnon
    Hamony X. Garcia    Daughter of Agamemnon
        

CREATIVE TEAM

    Lisa Channer    Director / Directing Mentor
    Shannon Garwood    Assistant Director/ Lead Director for scene 2.1
    Mac Scheldt    Assistant Director/ Lead Director for scene 5
    KT Schearer    Assistant Director / Lead Director for scene 4
    Anna Meyer    Stage Manager
    Talvin Wilks    Dramaturgical Support
    Kimber Lawler    Scenic Designer
    Jon Brophy    Lighting Designer
    Micah Kopecky    Sound Designer
    Dakota Hall    Composer
    Matt LeFebvre    Costume Mentor
    Vivian Kampschroer    Costume Designer
    Deborah (Thea) Rudin    Assistant to Costume Designer
    David Meis    Assistant to Costume Designer
    Caitlin Hammel    Videographer and Lead Editor
    Jim Peitzman    Videographer
    Doug Scholz-Carlson    Intimacy Director
    Sonja Kuftinec    Faculty Peer
    Mac Scheldt, Kimber Lawler    Continuity
        

FILM CREW

    Micah Kopecky    Audio Recording Engineer and Editor
    Dustin Morache    Audio Advisor and Student Mentor
    Liza Hartshorn    Deck Electrician
    Deborah "Thea" Rudin    Boom Mic Operator
    Andrea Narveson    Stage Crew
    Melissa Franz    Sound editor
        

EDITING CREW 

    Caitlin Hammel
    Mac Scheldt
    KT Schearer

DIRECTOR'S NOTE 

"Men who win wars, win nothing" - Cassandra, Trojan Women 
"They will lie about what happened here" - Cassandra, Hecuba 

Euripides wrote Hecuba (424 BC) within ten years of his more famous play on the same story, Trojan Women (415 BC). He wrote both to call attention to the brutal activities being carried out in his name as an Athenian citizen during the contemporary Peloponnesian Wars. Sympathetic to the losers, both plays sparked war protests and calls for accountability from their Government by Athenenian citizens. 

Marina Carr has called Euripides the first feminist playwright. Carr has altered a central plot point toward furthering the plays feminist ends. In her adaptation, Hecuba does not kill the children of Polymestor out of revenge for the death of her own youngest son, an act that in the original Euripides turns her into a mythic wild dog - a male vision of an angry powerful woman. Rather the children are killed by random soldiers in the mundane senselessness of war. “Wrong place, wrong time”, like countless children throughout time. In Carr’s version, Hecuba helps the grieving Polymestor and blesses the dead babes. She is broken but she remains profoundly human and Cassandra the prophet-daughter is here to set that record straight. 

In both versions there is sympathy for Agamemnon. He is the brutal conqueror and destroyer of Troy, but he is also the father who was forced to kill his own daughter Iphigenia at the start of the war. The play Hecuba, taking place on the final day of that ten years war, finds him reckoning with that hideous sacrifice and the trauma that keeps reemerging in him. Like Hecuba, he attempts to regain his humanity amidst inhuman circumstances. War creates scorched nature, refugees, orphans and traumatized people - among them are those who do the “winning”. 

This production was rehearsed and filmed in a year of a global pandemic and during powerful uprisings for long overdue justice. This is the context. All actors were masked and had to remain several feet from each other at all times. We framed the production within the context of a war tribunal modeled on truth and reconciliation committees found the world over. This set of contexts produced unique creativity in the cast, designers, crews and directors. Our final product reflects that year of collective adaptation. Some places the vision is sketched in and some places it is fully fleshed out. This is as it should be in a theatre laboratory. 

In times of upheaval and crisis we must shift how the work is made. This year by necessity, we invented new ways to rehearse and collaborate that are not grounded in what we have always considered “standard” but rather respond to shifting realities as opportunities to adapt, communicate, re-envision and change. Thank you to the entire department and our guest film professionals for supporting this experiment. I’ve been honored to be part of Hecuba and proud to be a member of this community. May it serve as an honest record of this extraordinary year.

-Director, Lisa Channer

P.S. I’m happy to report we had not a single positive case of Covid 19 in our Hecuba family thanks to safety protocols and creativity.