Monday, October 24, 2011

What I Saw This Weekend - Trojan Women & Leah

 Leah, at the Atlantic Theater Company.

The stage is seven stories below ground.  (Or maybe only four.  It was a long way.)

She and some of her classmates performed "Trojan Women" by Euripides.

A Greek tragedy, it has a large part for the Chorus.  There were five Trojan Women as the Chorus.  The director assigned most of the Chorus lines to specific Trojan Women.  This allowed them to differentiate themselves.  It worked amazingly well.  One of them, for example, also played Athena, so when she was also a Trojan Woman, the audience realized she was really Athena in disguise.  Very mythic.  Leah's Trojan Woman was obviously the youngest, most defiant of the women who were to be claimed as prizes for the Greek officers.

The play itself is very sober.  It deals with the effects of the Trojan War (and indeed any war) on the women who are left behind on the losing side when the war is over.  It asks questions about the place of fidelity of a woman to her husband, before and after death.  It strongly deals with the actions, or inaction, of The Gods.  And if it's well-acted, as this production was, it is an emotionally draining experience.

I am so proud of Leah, and so happy for her that she and her classmates are up to the challenge of such a piece of art.

[But other than the time she was on stage, she spent pretty much every other moment we saw her with a smiler on her face.  So did we.  Kids will do that to you, y'know.]


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