The child and I visited Schneebeck Concert Hall at University of Puget Sound this evening to watch The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon present The Trojan Women by Euripides. It was the child's first adult play. It was one filled with monologues and chorus, song and dance and mask work, violence and the threat of violence, mourning and lamentation, death and tragedy. The child took it all in, sitting patiently and quiet throughout the entire ninety-minute production.
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"They will drop you from a great height. Your neck will break and your breath will stop."
—Andromache to her son Astyanax, as the Greeks prepare to sacrifice him
"Me without a city, you without a breath in your body."
—Hecuba lamenting over the corpse of her grandson Astyanax
Toward the end of the play, when Astyanax, grandson of Hecuba, son of Hector and Andromache, has been sacrificed and his body returned to Hecuba and the Trojan women to be dressed and prepared for burial, I looked over to see the child weeping. I assured that crying was okay and was brushed aside out of embarrassment. I reassured that the play was very sad. "He's not really dead, right?" Since the city of Troy was being burned to the ground by the Greek soldiers at that moment, and since the child had pointed out the relationship between the name of the city and my own name earlier in the evening (along with some flagrant ego fueled by my own mortality being challenged by the play), I thought the child's tears were for me, the father. I was confused, however.
It was much deeper and poignant than that. The child was weeping for the child's own mortality, represented by the seven-year-old actor lying absolutely still upon Hector's shield on stage. There were two deaths in the theater this evening—the death of Astyanax and the death, in some sense, of the child's innocence.
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There were three standout performances for me—Vana O'Brien as Hecuba, ileana herrin as Hecuba's daughter Cassandra, and Jamie M. Rea as Hecuba's daughter-in-law Andromache. Each captured and portrayed the madness of war and the madness of her character in her own individual way. It was heart-wrenching watching some of the performances. I found myself on the verge of tears many times throughout the evening.
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We were seated in the second-to-last row on the aisle, in case we needed to leave early or take bathroom breaks. We did not. The child was so entranced that we sat through the entire performance. The child even watched some of the action through the binoculars I brought along, although they were really unnecessary. But it allowed the child to experience the play in even more depth, more saturation of color.
Sitting in the back by an exit also meant that actors kept running up and down the aisle by us. The child was on constant alert for the next soldier that ran past us with his spear before him. The violence of the depicted war kept spilling out into the aisle right next to us, even if only in passing.
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The masks designed by Sarah Gahagan were exquisite. They were worn on the backs of the heads of the Trojan women. Therefore, no matter where one of the women stood on stage, she was always "facing" the audience. This theatrical "trick" was utilized to great effect, especially during the songs of the chorus.
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The evening was one well spent, as both the child and I were entertained, challenged, threatened, and cajoled. We were awakened from our slumber, our numbness. We had to look deep within ourselves at who we are as individuals and who we are as a culture. We had to see the savagery of war, the spoils of war, the death and destruction of war up close and personal. And it was all imagined by a writer who lived 2400 years ago, among a people whose problems seem very much like our own.
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"Greece, your spears are sharper than your brains!"
—Hecuba as she mourns and laments
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