Multi-Media Production Revitalizes Chilling Myth

Vengeance in the Television Age: Sophomore Arielle Halpern plays a contemporary incarnation of the scorned, resolute Medea. (photo by Liz Fox)

The story of Medea, it might be argued, presents one of the more peculiar myths passed down from classical antiquity. Medea, having deceived her husband, chosen exile and finally killed her brother for the love of Jason (infamously of the Argonauts), finds herself rebuked by her lover for marriage to the daughter of the King of Corinth. She responds by killing the Princess, and ultimately her - and Jason's - two children, to keep them from the wrongs done to her. It is a powerful act and yet somehow difficult to approach - both revenge and self-sacrifice, rage and resignation.

In her contemporary reworking of the myth, Media/Medea is an act that senior writer-director Jessie Marshall - and the large body of artistic collaborators she has gathered - approaches with a deluge. The first thing that becomes apparent is the enormity of the undertaking seen in the production, taking in dance (choreographers senior Alexis McNab, junior Mary Moran and junior Juliana May), video montage and projection (sophomore Tei Blow and first-year Catherine Zondervan) and electronic music (composers senior Corey Dargel and junior Mark Williams), as well as a host of dancers, actors and production artists. It all comes together remarkably well, creating an immersive and provocative experience.

Act I rapidly sets up the narrative modulation and fragmentation which is the dominant mode of the play. An array of popular forms (soap opera, commercials, a Jerry Springer-like talk show, game shows, music videos) are employed as plot templates of a sort, exposing the dramatic and psychological motivations beneath the work. Sophomore Arielle Halpern creates a uniquely multi-faceted Medea, eloquently bringing off the emotional complexities which drive the production. Sophomore Seth Stewart's Jason, a rather shallow boy-band teenybopper in vinyl pants whose discourse is largely defined by off-the-shelf pop lyrics ("my love is like a river," "everything I do..." etc.), is ably portrayed. The costumes are extremely varied, from the lavish evening gowns and robes of Medea, through game-show kitch, to the costumes of her children - overalls with striped red shirts, combined with Noh-like masks, leaving no doubt (with their ape-like movements) as to their status as burdens.

The sensory impact of Media/Medea is at times overwhelming. Cameras and a central projector, as well as two screens bracketing the proscenium, are employed extensively, dislocating and remaking the space of the stage. Indeed, the production is awash in lenses (seen also in the incessant flashbulbs of the recurring paparazzi) as a sort of background static washing up against the narrative, at times threatening to subsume it. It is an unsettling experience, manifesting an anxious humor (particularly in the more theater-driven elements) and at times producing a diquieting beauty, as in Juliana Mays' haunting "Cell Phone Ballet" which concludes the first half of the show.

Act II gives rise to a paring-down or turning-inward of the action, as the pain in Medea's psyche comes into further focus through a series of restless monologues which make jarringly clear her instability and self-doubt. In the scene "Medea Tapes Herself" she sits stage center, a video camera in front of her projecting her face onto the three screens, while openly contemplating the bloodshed in which she will soon engage. Her voice is electronically manipulated to a distorted echoing, and remains so through the remainder of the play. The media seeps into Medea.

This is, perhaps, the secret heart of the play. The viewer is witness to, in essence, the undoing of an identity. Medea becomes a projection of herself, or Š a medium. It is this connection that ultimately holds the form and the content together, justifies the show's difficulties. And Media/Medea is not without difficulties - unavoidably so in a form of such sharp juxtapositions. But they are, in a sense, necessary difficulties, both reflections of and ruminations on popular culture and gender roles in contemporary culture. This is sensitive tissue, and Media/Medea delves deep.