Theater | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: The program for off the WALL's production of Not Medea features a handful of quotes about motherhood, but they're not exactly cross-stitch material. Most notably, there's this gem from Katharine Hepburn: "Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it. It didn't interest me, so I didn't do it. Anyway, I would have been a terrible parent. The first time my child didn't do what I wanted, I would have killed him."
4 comments:
This show sounds intriguing and I would love to see how it plays out. It reminds me of a show I worked on in high school called Antonio Lorenzo Vanozzo's Pinocchio which is about a traveling theatre that employs two of the audience members to play Pinocchio and Geppeto. In Pinocchio, the "audience members" playing the duo struggle with their ideas of morality as well as differentiating between the similarities between their personal lives and the show which they are supposed to be acting for. At the end of the show, the two are overwhelmed by the dark plotline and rescue the physical representation of Pinnochio (the puppet itself) as they run out of the theater. A main purpose of the show is to demonstrate the power of theatre and the depth to which it can relate to your life as an audience member and watching a show play with this idea is something I'm rather interested in. Also having worked on Medea and being interested in mythology the plotline of Not Medea sounds right up my alley.
From that little summary alone, the show sounds very interesting and maybe a little controversial. I can't imagine how people will respond the hearing the character Woman say that she would kill her child, especially parents. It's an interesting topic. I'm sure in casual conversation, among a group of friends who knows you well enough to know that you wouldn't actually go to that extreme with your child, that statement can go over as a joke. However, with everything going on in the world today, you have to tread very lightly with the words "kill," "gun," and that word that starts with b and ends with b and has an 'om' in the middle (yes, I am that afraid to type it, out of fear that someone is watching). You cannot throw those words around lightly, especially to the wrong person. To a certain extent, I understand why. Even with Medea, you never know who may leave that show "inspired" or with new ideas as to how to handle their situation. Some of these things can really get into, and stay into, the wrong minds so we have to be very careful. With that being said, I'm sure almost every mother has had a moment where there thought or said those words, just to express the severity of things or even as a joke. I am not familiar with Not Medea so I don't know if that is something that the character would actually do, as Medea did. If that's the case, I'm sure the play is much more controversial than I thought...
This sounds so cool. I personally am a big fan of the Medea story. I remember reading it in Colloquium last year and enjoying it then. I love the idea of the nurse as ‘Not Medea’ as well. My mom is a nurse so knowing how much work and pressure is on her translates well to Medea. Though hopefully not fully as I would like to not be killed by my mom. Besides the point, this production looks great. I am fan of some controversial theatre and glad this story is still surviving today after thousands of years. I think part of what makes it so controversial, even today is maybe the way Jason and the Chorus react to Medea killing her children. They condemn her and make her seem inhuman. Medea, however, argues against this and claims she had no choice because of Jason and how the rest of the world has treated her. Then the Chorus is right on her side! Overall, I hope to see a production of Medea soon; I would love to see a character fly out on a dragon!
This show certainly sounds like it offers some food for thought. Despite some antiquated ideals at play in larger society having children in this modern context is not something that weighs lightly on my mind at least and the ancient story of Medea somehow has an interesting voice in modern context. First off I think that the idea that Medea kills her own children to inflict revenge on Jason is a huge over simplification of the plot that devalues the integrity of the work itself, there is a much greater struggle occurring which plays into ideas of protection and the future that awaits her children under the circumstances. I think the value of the original story as well as this new rendition is that parenting is complicated and the amount of factors that are at play with any decision are more than any outside party can understand. Obviously the quote they choose to extract about motherhood is quite striking and falls into a sort of brutal honesty which is rare in discussing children. I would be interested to get some more details on the greater context of the discussion that is going on here. I mean if it is just someone defending the character Medea that is not particularly interesting but if it contextualizes some greater discussion of modern issues of parenting that might be a compelling show, I also think it has the potential to be pretty funny as well.
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