Media/Medea Sets New Standard for OC Theater

12/15/00

Last Saturday, I saw Jessie Marshall’s senior honors project Media/Medea. The audience’s response was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve witnessed on this campus. Hall Auditorium, which seats around five hundred, was sold out, which is a feat in itself for whoever is directing. The fact that Marshall, a student in charge of a production she wrote herself, filled Hall to capacity made me think about what kinds of performances students on this campus really want to see. What did the atmosphere of Media/Medea most remind me of? Think of a particularly rambunctious rock concert crowd and commingle that with the audience at “Sex at 7:30” freshman year. 
The audience was electrified by what they saw onstage. The jokes were hip and fast, and the emotion broad and passionate. This was a production tailor-made for college kids. From the MTV spoofs to the devastating send-up of infomercials, the audience was getting right back in its face all the crap that it had grown up watching on snow days and sick days home from school. 
The major question begs asking: why aren’t we seeing more reactions like this on the campus? It’s certainly not lack of ambition. One need only look at February when at least five productions will be mounted. In fact, I believe over-ambition kills much of Oberlin theater. Countless are the times that I sit watching an Oberlin production, not quite understanding why the director has chosen such an overly ambitious script. “Here’s to noble failures,” I tell myself, yet nothing is particularly noble, but rather a bit half-baked. 
To my mind, Media/Medea was one of the noblest failures I have seen in ages, professional or otherwise. In fact, along with the rest of the audience, I jumped out of my seat to give a standing ovation to this noble failure. Much of the piece was deeply flawed and could have been excised. But the moments of brilliance were unforgettable. 
Particularly memorable was the killing of the offspring scene, in which Medea’s two children scampered upstage, their heads represented by papier-mâché masks, and sat with their backs to the audience, watching a giant television screen. Slowly, and with focused movement more out of Japanese theatrical convention than any Western one, a figure swept past twirling a tall pole. At the very moment the pole twirled by the masks, their heads fell off of their necks and onto the ground, with a light crunch that was anything but gruesome — rather, ethereal. It was an astonishing moment, and one that will live in my head for a very, very long time. There were other moments of theatrical beauty as well, many having to do with video feeds and the mixing of live voices with prerecorded ones. 
Moments like these could be felt radiating through the rapt Saturday night audience and surely made believers out of those who say theater is dead. We will be seeing a lot from Marshall in the future. Give her five years and maybe Disney should talk to this Obie grad. 
There are too many productions on this campus. Very often, it occurs to me that maybe the talents and resources we have are stretched to the breaking point; quantity increases while quality goes down. As the quality of the work declines, more and more the reactions of audiences become lukewarm and polite — two adjectives I couldn’t use to describe Saturday’s performance. 

Media/Medea had a long gestation process; ideas were worked out and staging shakily tested since before Fall Break. If time and focus are what it takes to achieve more audience reactions like the one that Marshall garnered, I’m all for waiting.