Arts Independent

The How: What We Do, part of the 3B Development Series, currently running at IRT Theatre 154 Christopher St. NYC #3B (third floor), is a daring and engrossing movement piece developed by the artists in the rehearsal process and explored through improvisation.

What We Do runs the gamut of attention, attraction, separation, and oneness. It is a fluid
kinetic representation of what it means to part of a whole or wholly apart.  Joshua Crone reviewed it in OuterStage saying it is was compelling, organically choreographed and deeply moving.

The mesmerizing experience runs through this week, closing on August 2nd before the next performance piece moves in. Directed by Polina Ionina; William Hand, Shay Wisniewski, André Vauthey, and Rosalee DeHuff are featured.

André Vauthey, a doctor turned actor, had a truly unique story to tell. 

“I am a young Swiss doctor-turned-actor who moved to the states about two and half years ago. My parents are polish and I was born and grew up in the French part of Switzerland before moving to the German part to study med school. After graduating and working as a doctor, I realized that even though I was doing a very meaningful work, I wasn’t living in harmony with myself, mostly due to the amount of administrative work in comparison to the actual patient’s time. I decided to quit the hospital to take time to myself and make sure I was where I wanted to be and it wasn’t just a consequence of my past decisions. As I wandered in my inner self, I remembered that as a kid I used to love acting and would even force my older brother to perform in front of our parents. So I decided to give it a try. I went to the pinewood studios in London for an acting workshop and loved it. Back in Switzerland I started acting in some films but felt like I need more guidance and decided to move to NYC to study at the Lee Strasberg’s Theater and Film Institute. When I first moved here, I thought it would be just to complete a one year program at my acting school and go back to Europe to work as an actor. But I fell in love with both the city and the school and decided to complete their entire two year conservatory program and stay here. I would say I learned as much about the craft of acting as I have learned about myself. This has been an incredible journey and my state of mind has changed forever. By knowing myself better, I am now so much more expressive and open to this world and to the art. It is a wonderful feeling. 

That is an amazing story! What made you want to come to America and thus, New York? 

Well there are different reasons. First of all, I lived in NYC with my parents when I was 1 year old for a year and always saw those pictures without remembering any of it. So something in me was attracted by it. Secondly, I was/am always attracted by the energy and the chaos of this city. I felt like something truthful, expressive, raw must exist there. I remembered when I first moved here, I was quite disappointed. Everything seemed too normal. But slowly and gently, the spirit of NYC and Brooklyn came to me and I love it. Finally, the opportunities here are different than in Switzerland. I love Europe and want to do projects there too, but it’s a very different way of seeing the work. Both are great, just different.

Tell us about this presentation, how does movement in it tell the story? 

This presentation and this ensemble is another blessing that just came to me. As I started studying acting I realized that I was what I was convinced I wasn’t: quite intellectual. It took me a whole year to realize that. During the second year, I gently and slowly started to drop from my head to my body and my acting changed a lot. One thing that helped me a lot with that was movement exploration. I started to go to Butoh, Gaga, 5 rhythms, ecstatic dance and that changed my acting and my life. I became way more expressive and in touch with my body and as all this was happening and found on backstage an audition for a movement piece and felt like everything was aligned. I performed with the ensemble for the first time about three months ago and again now. For me, movement and body language is the key of truthfulness. The body doesn’t and can’t lie. There aren’t any words to support you, to support you at moments you don’t feel it. There aren’t any escapes. It’s just you, your feelings, and your body to express it. No lies, no deviations, no intellectualization, pure truthful emotions and the journey told this way is incredible. The audience response to it is wonderful. It talks to people straight to the core. And everyone feels it in their own truth which is the best answer any artist can get. A friend of mine was so touched by our piece, she felt moved but as well felt compelled to put that energy in motion and start her own journey. It’s wonderful when the audience is not only entertained during the show but when something in them shifts and brings them to change things afterwards. More pragmatically, this presentation explores the self in regard to oneself, to others, the self alone, the self in group, the self-facing itself, and the self being part of the whole. We had the opportunity to bring our personal movements in it as well as explore the movement of others and explore the creation of common movements. It is so interesting and thrilling to be able to explore so much with our body and soul. Working as an actor presents many challenges. Working in another country far from friends and family presents challenges as well. Working as an actor in another country… well you get it. I feel very lucky and humble because I am actually performing quite often and doing beautiful work with wonderful people. 

What are/were some difficulties in working here?

At the beginning the hardest part was to get a balance in life. As an actor, you are your own boss and make your own schedule, so it’s easy to procrastinate or to feel overwhelmed. But you learn and grow. Now I feel like I have a nice balance between work from home, work on projects and nature and friends. The hardest part now I guess is for me to get people to see my work, to get an agent, I guess to “break through” as people say it. There are so many actors, so many plays being performed, that it is hard to get an agent or manager’s attention, which is understandable. But I am very positive and feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be and things will come along when they do. 

What’s in store for us from you here?

Well I just came back from an international tour as the lead and am now in this show. As soon as we close, I start rehearsing for two other plays: Cocaine and Dreams and Nightmares. As well as for a short [film] that is being shot in two weeks. I am myself writing and exploring a play about what it means to be an artist and so, to some extent, to be a human being.

FOR FURTHER INFO: http://irttheater.org/3b-development-series/what-we-do/

Independent theater has many heroes but even more unsung ones. The splintered nature of the independent theater scene makes it difficult to truly celebrate some of its more prolific artists. The myriad theaters, companies, and even festivals, make knowing who is making a difference very difficult. You could be seeing a show on a block in Manhattan and still not be aware of all the others shows on that block. Even festivals. Go see a show with a friend in it and look in the playbill – how many people do you know in the same festival but never knew they were there!

Laurie Rae Waugh has been a  power-players in NYC for near 40 years, but her humble nature and desire to simply do good work has made her one of New York’s best kept secrets.

Well, not everywhere. She is a repertory director at a theater that has been around as long as she has: the American Theatre of Actors. Representing the works of many playwrights including Jame Crafford, Irving Greenfield, Shirley Beth Newbery, and the late Steve Silver, Laurie’s signature soft-touch has given their plays a sensitivity that is  engaging yet organic.

Whether it was out of humility or desire to not age herself, Ms. Waugh – in interview – “accidentally” left out the dates of her first works, but her entrance was easy to figure as she stage-managed a moment in history. Before Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, she ran the show at The Ballroom in 1987 for STAMP OUT AIDS – dedicated to Michael Bennett.   

Share with us your firsts.

There have been several firsts on the acting front.  My first time in an acting role in NYC came about when the late playwright, Steve Silver expanded his one-act play “The Watchtower” and turned it into a full length play. Steve wrote a character specifically for me to play.  The character was his wife’s older sister, Molly McCann. I reprised the role of Molly in the film version he developed and that was also a first for me on film.  Steve later wrote a one act play called “The Tiger of Greenwich Village” and he asked me to play the leading role.  Steve said that he had complete faith in me to pull it off and with the help of Ken Coughlin as the director I was able to do just that.

I first got into directing through the TSI/Playtime Series where I directed 3 one-act plays.  One of the plays “Rage, Inc.” by Le Wilhelm happened to be part of a group of plays that I went to see some friends in.  I mentioned to the man sitting next to me that I would have to leave the theatre before the play started because I didn’t want to see how someone else staged it as I was currently in rehearsal for my vision of the same play.  The funny thing was that I got to meet Mr. Wilhelm that evening and we discussed his play in depth.  My next first was working with EndTime Productions for 2 years on their Vignettes for the  Apocalypse and Naked Holidays NYC Series.  This was a different concept for me for several reasons.  We sat thru a day of auditions and then a day of call backs.  We put our cast list together and had to hope that you got the cast you wanted because other directors wanted the same actors. My next first was responding to an advertisement in Backstage for directors.  The ad was placed by Mr. James Jennings of the American Theatre of Actors.  I had a meeting with Mr. Jennings and was given the opportunity to read many one-act plays until I found the one that I liked.  The play was called “Trailer Trash Deluxe” by Laurie Allen. 

My first taste of producing happened when I started a Theatre Company with two partners called Legacy Stage Ensemble.  LSE was dedicated to bridging the artistic and cultural gap between experiences, training and concerns of different generations.  Its productions, both original and revival, tackled topics about personal crisis and social bias. Our two productions were “The Acting Lesson” by Wesley St. John and “The Gray List” by Allan Provost. We lasted for two seasons before my two partners careers went in other directions.

When I moved to NYC in 1980 I got my first Stage Managing job for the show “Notes from The Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I staged managed 21 shows in my first 7 years.  The most notable one was STAMP OUT AIDS a one-night only show at The Ballroom on 7/4/87 dedicated to Michael Bennett.  This was before Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids.

Waugh (center) is flanked by old buddies: The last Steve Silver (left) and character actor, Thomas J. Kane. All winners of the Jean Dalrymple Award – off-off Broadway’s first honor.

Family is an importation factor to Ms. Waugh. Thus, she aims her director’s baton at works with a family foundation. She has mastered stage conversation so her family plays look like real families chatting. 

What kind of plays are you drawn to?

I select plays that call to me.  It might be the subject matter, the way in which it is written or just the dialogue that has me see a vision in my mind’s eye.  Most of the plays I direct are dramas.  The themes are mostly about family conflict.  I have worked with a couple of playwrights on multiple projects and have gotten insights from them about why they wrote the play in the first place.  The great thing is that they continue to hand me meaningful scripts to direct.

It’s that same light touch that has allowed her to take a strong place in the line-up of directors ion NYC. What was once a male-dominated industry, she stood her ground and kept getting the world to listen.

What’s it like being a woman in the arts in the (now) 21^st century….and how have things changed?

When I first started doing theatre in NYC back in 1980 almost all the director’s I worked were men. I believe I only worked with one woman director. As a woman, it takes time, perseverance and the right play to stand out in a crowded indie theatre scene.  It takes the help of social media, word of mouth, and publicity to put your project on top and to make you stand out from the rest.  For me personally, I hired a publicist several years ago and he has been able to get my projects in the press, mostly online, and recently I participated on podcasts.

Entering the world of film, she teamed with Steve Silver some years ago to create “The Watchtower” an award-winning independent film that has since seen great acclaim and distribution. As she took many thespian-friends of the stage with her, the transition was relativity smooth.

Waugh is joined by Jessica Jennings, daughter of the American Theatre of Actors founder, James Jennings.

Film or theatre……differences?  If you had a choice?

The first part is an easy answer, theatre.  Theatre is live, has a pulse, and anything can happen on stage. From forgetting lines to missing cues to enter or exit the stage.  Props not being set in the right place, and having an actor bring props onto the stage for the next scene.  With film, you get to have several takes until the final product looks the way you want it to look.  You also have the benefit of utilizing different camera angles and lighting to forever capture the right moment.  Theatre will always be my first love.  I love to learn new things and improve upon the skills I possess.  For this reason I have a desire to learn more about film production. 

Laurie Waugh on stage in a Steve Silver play

Stanislavsky-styled, she creates a cohesive situation among her casts/crews so that they feel respected and the process-fluid. One might say she creates a family to play a family. 

What is your creative process?

My creative process evolves and changes from project to project and from cast to cast.  I usually allow the actors freedom to explore their characters through the dialogue and movement around the stage.  With my current project, we are spending time on some of the stage direction that the playwright has written into the script.  Sometimes we have to stop and start a section a few times to make it feel fluid and realistic.  I also share parts of my life with the actors so they can see a human side of how I see the character and my vision for the play.

There are about four or so spaces in New York left from the great indie theater movement that started in the late 50s. LaMama stands at the forefront with The Medicine Show still thriving, but – standing like a beacon in midtown – is the American Theatre of Actors. This is Laurie’s “home.” 

Why ATA?

Easy question as well.   Mr. James Jennings has encouraged me from the beginning to be my best.  He allows me to pick my own projects and he has seen every play I have directed. The environment Mr. Jennings created at ATA is very welcoming and nurturing and provides you with the ability to hone your craft.  ATA is conveniently located at 314 W 54^th St. in Manhattan.  The ATA building contains three theatres and ample rehearsal space that we are able to utilize for everything from auditions to rehearsals and on to opening night of the show.  I also get to work with very committed and talented people.

Money-driven societies always have the renegades that simply want to “do the work.” 

WHY DO YOU DO IT?????

For the love of it of course.  I enjoy taking a play from the written word to a piece of entertainment.  Putting my spin on the production and hoping the playwright enjoys what they see.  I believe it’s all about being true to the words of the playwright.  I truly care about the writer’s opinion in my productions because without them I wouldn’t be directing.

And when you love it … you keep doing it.

What’s Next?

I have three more projects in the pipeline.  In November of 2019 I will be directing a one-act in a series of One Acts.  The play is called “Footprints of the Polar Bear” by Phil Paradis.  Early 2020, I plan to be acting in a play called “After the Lynching” by James Crafford. In spring 2020 I will be directing another play written by one of my favorite playwrights Mr. Irving Greenfield. The play is called “What do we do about Walter?”

LAURIE RAE WAUGH’S CURRENT PROJECT:

The wit of playwright Shirley Beth Newbery coupled with the steady hand of director Laurie Rae Waugh will make even the saddest occasion a joy in AFTER THE WAKE, running Wednesday – Sundays, August 7 – 18 at the Serene Sargent Theatre – part of the American Theatre of Actors complex of art-houses. Wednesday – Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and matinees on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Tickets $20 at the door. 

American Theatre of Actors is located at 314 W. 54th Street
New York City, 212.581.3044

Over at the last of the classy supper clubs, Feinstein’s/54 Below, a Dandelion is growing. This Dandelion will blossom for one night only bringing a new musical to the place where musicals grow best. August 14 at 9:30 p.m. a heartbreaking musical called DANDELION premieres.  

The soil behind Dandelion is the story of high school senior, Jane, and her mother, Delilah, and how the two are forced to confront guilt, responsibility, and sacrifice. Jane must decide between attending college or remain at home to fare for her mother who is withering under a desperate battle with mental illness and drug addiction. opioid addiction.

The female-driven Dandelion features music and lyrics by Colleen Francis and Bill Zeffiro, book and direction by Jessica Francis Fichter and Sean Riehm, and has been developed in collaboration with Hailee Beltzhoover. Musical Director, Nevada Lozano guides artists Hailee Beltzhoover, Lillie Ricciardi, Allison Siko, Brenden MacDonald, Brianne Wylie, and Miranda Luze.

Tickets and information are available at www.54Below.com. Tickets on the day of performance after 4:00 are only available by calling (646) 476-3551.

A thru-line of many of this months Five Star Arts articles centers on the creative process. So we grabbed the creatives on how they got that way.

Tell us about yourself.

Director Jessica Francis Fichter: I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina and was always a self proclaimed theatre nerd.  I think I feel in love during a school production of Really Rosie when I was five years old- I played a bluebird (and no that is not a real role).  After graduating from Winthrop University with a degree in theatre education, I taught theatre in both middle and high school public schools for 8 years in addition to acting as the artistic director of a theatre company in SC before moving to the city to pursue my MFA in directing. I am a mother of 2 small children, 8 years old and 4 years old, and have been navigating the NYC theatre world for 2 years.  I recently directed The Eleventh Hour at Townstages, and Assistant directed Shadows: A Dance Musical at the Connelly Theater.

Colleen Francis (Musics/Lyrics): I am a singer-songwriter based out of Dallas, TX. My main experience is with pop and country artists, however, when my sister brought the idea of the Dandelion to me, I jumped at it. I was always into musical theater growing up, and enjoy songs that can cross over to pop/rock charts, namely Rent, Spring Awakening, Dear Evan Hansen, Waitress. I am very excited to bring my experience writing in the pop world to musical theater. Tell us about this play … why did you choose to work on this?

Tell us about this play … your inspirations? Your “plan?”

Director Jessica Francis Fichter: This musical is a story that is close to my heart for many reasons.  At its core it’s a story of a young woman finding her own way- forging her own path despite obstacles far beyond what a seventeen year old should be faced with.  But as we all know, what should be and what is do not always align. This positive, high school female-driven story of strength is begging to be told and I am grateful to have the chance to tell it.  And on a personal note, this is a story of someone I know and love, and the truth of her struggle may be what another family needs to find their way through the labyrinth of mental health and drug addiction. It’s also a story of responsibility and family and what we owe ourselves versus what we owe those closest to us.  They are not questions that can be answered in 2 hours but they are certainly worth asking- and I honestly can’t tell you if everyone will agree with Jane’s decision in the end but maybe that is the point.

Colleen Francis (Musics/Lyrics): In college, I had my first brush with the correlation between mental health and drug addiction. Seeing a long-term friend of mine cross into a period of amphetamine-induced psychosis was very difficult to cope with. I was caught between the role of caretaker and instigator. At the time, I didn’t really understand how mental health and drug addiction can be so closely tied, or how they can have profound effects on close relationships. In our musical, we hope to touch on the difficulties of coping with family members who suffer from these conditions. 

What is your “creative process”?

Director Jessica Francis Fichter: Working with my sister who is a singer/songwriter in Dallas has been challenging, involving many trips back and forth and late night conversations but it has also been extremely fun to share our creative talents with each other.  We are excited to finally have actors in the room, because each individual brings their own perspective and thoughts to the piece and nothing can replace the creative energy of a room full of excited actors collaborating on your work!

Colleen Francis (Musics/Lyrics): I spent a lot of time putting myself back in that place – thinking about the pain and anxiety that it provoked in me – thinking about the struggles that my friend was going through. It honestly puts me in a very emotional place. Throughout the process, inspiration and recovery were two words that kept coming back. I wanted the music to touch on the darkness but maintain the aspect of hope. 

Who do you feel is your “audience?”

Colleen Francis (Musics/Lyrics): Anyone who has a friend or family member who has struggled with mental health or addiction… so everyone. The music is certainly more youthful, and younger audiences may connect with it more easily, because of the coming of age aspect. 

What’s next?

Director Jessica Francis Fichter: We are hoping to find a lead producer who is excited about the story we are telling and the right fit for the Dandelion team.  We are thrilled to follow this journey in whatever direction it takes us.  For me personally, I am working on a female driven devising piece called If Women Rose Rooted and finishing my MFA at the Actor’s Studio Drama School.

Colleen Francis (Musics/Lyrics): After this showcase, we’d love to get it on its feet. We need to workshop out the book and the overall flow. We’re taking each step as it comes. It’s a long process, and we want to do what’s best for the whole project.

For further info, visit www.dandelionmusical.com.

Bill Bowers-All Over the Map-Review by Jen Bush

Once upon a time, there was a mime.  That would be a great alternate title to Bill Bower’s show because he is, indeed, a storytelling mime.  Within moments of seeing his show though, it’s pretty evident that this artist’s talents go way beyond miming and storytelling.  Bill Bowers is a multitalented performer who can act and can ease in and out of male and female accents to accent-utate a story.

Out of the gate, the show was strong.  Bill Bowers jumped right into the first story.  There was no exchange of pleasantries and no exposition.  There was just narrative and good narrative at that.  Chairs were widely utilized as props and some audio-visual material served as enhancements to some of the stories.

If you are expecting to see 60 minutes of mime, you’ll be disappointed.  That’s not what this evening was about.  Your craving for mime, if you have one, will be satiated on a small but tender scale with a beautiful moonlight mime sequence that will tug at your heartstrings.

You’ll be regaled with tales of talented rabbits, nudists, the Amish, The Happy Hooker and more.  If you feel the tales are too outlandish to be true, the ending of the show will provide definitive proof that they are absolutely true and very outlandish.

We think of mimes as mysterious elusive people, but Bill Bowers was transparent, genuine and wore his heart on his sleeve.  Each story he told held consistent interest and had clever endings.  There was plenty of energy, humor, passion and exuberance to go around.  If you find yourself trapped in an invisible box, get out for one night to see this wonderful show.

Women’s Mysteries 

Review by S. A. Holland

When I first heard that William Considine was going to have a reading of his play, Women’s Mysteries I was more than a little intrigued.

As a classics aficionado, with a long-standing interest in ancient Greek religion, I wondered how he would be able to pull it off, given that, to this day, the Eleusinian Mysteries remain enveloped by an impenetrable shroud of secrecy that all initiates, ever, adhered to rigorously.  My other reaction was a minor twinge of jealousy, as the displacement of chthonic matriarchal goddesses,  has been a topic of active research for me for the past year or so.  However, eventually I found out that this project has been in gestation in the writer’s mind and on paper for almost  three decades.  William Considine also wrote The Furies, a trilogy of verse plays,   published by The Operating System, 2017, as well as the contemporary play about family dynamics, Moral Support, which was produced this year at the Medicine Show Theatre.

Prior to  attending the reading, given at Polaris North, I had been advised by William Considine to revisit Plutarch’s story of Solon, the Athenian lawgiver.  And indeed, that was how William Considine solves the problem of writing about the unknowable Eleusinian Mysteries – he focuses on an historical figure – Solon – who had contact with the cult initiates.   He does not pretend to reconstruct or confabulate the ceremonial rites for twenty-first  century eyes.  Instead, he ingeniously structures scenes around the Mysteries while incorporating only certain known elements: such as the sacrifice of pigs,  the execution of men who were foolish enough to stray into the sacred precincts, and the use of a barley and mint drink, the kykeon, which may or may not have included an hallucinogenic drug.   Rather than risk potentially inaccurate speculation about the Mysteries, he instead shows the female characters attempting to re-establish the rites after a twenty year hiatus.

Women’s Mysteries, was performed at a staged reading Thursday night, June 20^th, 2019, 7 pm, at Polaris North, 245 West 29^th Street, New York, N.Y.   The reading was expertly directed by Rose-Marie Brandwein, and the cast was composed of Polaris North members, most of whom took on multiple roles in the production.

Very little has come down to us about what actually occurred at these rites at Eleusis – the initiates, after days of purification and preparation, would make their way from Athens to the sanctuary building, or Telestarion, on foot, a 14 mile journey from Athens undertaken both in the spring (Lesser Mysteries) and the fall (Greater Mysteries).  The initiates, who came from all classes, (even slaves), were sworn to secrecy, and nothing of what was shown in the sacred precincts is known to us.  References to the experience were deemed both forbidden and unspeakable.  The participants in these profound spiritual experiences , which had two stages of initiation,  myesis and epopteia, seemed to have emerged from their experiences  with a profound sense of personal connection to the goddesses, and henceforth lacked a fear  of death.  The religious experience was transformational – eventually, men were allowed to take part in the Mysteries.  Socrates, Plato, and Augustus were all initiates.   Despite intensive efforts to reconstruct these rites, we  have only an outline and informed scholarly speculation.

As noted above, the focus of the play is on Solon. Solon lived in Archaic Greece around the time of Hesiod, a time, as the playwright puts it, which was  “prior to the classical period. It’s a poor, primitive world.” Not only was this world primitive, but there were temporary restraining ordinances: talk of war was verboten, punishable by penalty of death. And yet Solon, following the dictates of the oracle of Apollo, a comparatively “new” god whose oracle at Delphi he pledged to protect, yet simultaneously viewed with deep skepticism, managed to find a way around this restriction.  In the play, he risks death,  pretending to be mad so that he will not be penalized, and recites an incendiary poem entitled  Salamis,  designed to foment war between the Athenians and Megarions.

For those who are unfamiliar with Solon, or need a quick refresher, he was an Athenian statesman, lawgiver, and poet.  His life’s work prepared ancient Greece for democracy.  As portrayed in Women’s Mysteries, he is boundlessly curious, eager to make money, and wants to rectify disparities between the wealthy and the poor.  (Prior to his reforms, those who owed money could literally be taken off and  enslaved for their debts.)  He successfully restructured debt in Athenian society, and moreover was able to accomplish this in a way that  the economy of Athens did not crash and burn.

According to the director,  Rose-Marie Brandwein, the actors in the play all have backgrounds in  Shakespearean productions, which explains the ease and aplomb with which they handled this verse play. Many of them undertook several roles, although Eric Diamond (Pisistratus), John Payne (Solon), and Carla Torgrimson (Chorus) all had solo parts. Cam Kornman was extraordinarily enthusiastic and commanding in each of her roles, as Basilinna, Python, and the Chorus.

In staging the reading, the director incorporated certain understated elements that made it simple yet extremely effective: the men, the war-fomenters, wore dark clothing, and the women wore white or light clothing, to emphasize their purity and devotion to spirituality. No masks were used in the production, which is just as well, since the actors were reading from the scripts, and the costumes were limited to wreaths and scarves for the Oracle of Pythian Apollo and the female worshippers of the Double Goddess.

As Considine writes of Demeter,  goddess and mother in  mourning  for her daughter, Persephone,  brutally abducted by Hades:

“Only Hecate, stirrer of witches, heard

A startled cry from the girl pulled to hell…

Persephone, a child, was stranded

In eternal darkness, at the side of death.”

The poetry of the play is by turns beautiful, stark, and evocative, particularly in the scenes that depict the worshippers trying to revive the cult at Eleusis, and  it is in these scenes that William Considine manages to evoke the cadence and gravitas of ancient poetic funeral inscriptions found on steles at the sites of Eleusis and Delphi.   There are also moments of humor and absurdity, and at times the character of Solon displays a sort of meta-consciousness about his situation and that of his companions and/or detractors.  This made the reading absorbing to watch, especially in the moments when the language and acting attained a solemnity that allowed the audience an immersive experience in the ancient world of the play.

To my knowledge, there is no extant play, ancient or modern, that  depicts Solon.  An account of the Eleusinian Mysteries is recorded in a chapter of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, and there are numerous scholarly books that painstakingly aggregate and analyze what is known about the cult, from the literary fragments, relics, and archeological remains throughout the ancient world, such as Carl Kerenyi’s  Eleusis or the works of Walter Burkert.  This makes William Considine’s play a novel and interesting experiment that tries to convey a sense of what was a profound religious experience for many in the ancient world, one which endured for well over two thousand years.

This is not to say that there are no issues with the play in its current form.

While the attempts of the women to revive the Eleusinian Mysteries contains some of the most moving parts of the play, its focus is nonetheless on Solon, specifically his transformation from itinerant poet and trader to an Odysseus-like schemer who devises an elaborate ruse to make war on the Megarions in order to reclaim Salamis for Athens, despite the stringent prohibitions against war talk in Athens.   The transition from dreamy poet to war-monger needs somewhat more delineation, because we are never shown anything, other than Solon’s desire to follow the oracle of Apollo, that would impel him to risk his life to abet a war.  We lack an understanding of the elements of his personality which would  allow for the radical turnaround from ardent wandering poet to deceitful determined warrior.     Further exploration by the playwright would be beneficial.

Leaving aside the character development of Solon, the women in this play are portrayed as resolute, dedicated to serving the Double Goddess, diligently working to revive the cult of the Mysteries after the too-long hiatus brought on by the disruptions of an exhausting war. They are so focused on this mission, that they tend to be mostly archetypal.  The cult of the mother Goddess is disparaged by the men, as well as by the female Python, Oracle of Apollo:

“I won’t do the snake dance again.

I’m clean of the snake.  It’s a goddess rite,

As old as the women’s mysteries.

It’s a lie to people of clear mind.”

Despite the machinations and maneuvers of Solon,  the last word is given to a woman, in the  persona of the goddess Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Queen of the Underworld.  The ending is oracular and devastating. I would love to see a full scale production of this play – the verse flowed well from scene to scene, alternating smoothly between lyricism, discourse, and action and the subject matter is well-handled and inherently fascinating.

Guest reviewer, S. A. Holland lives in the Hudson Valley. She  studied ancient Greek language, literature and history while at Princeton. During her time there she was the producer of Euripides’ “The Bacchae,” in ancient Greek.  She worked in publishing for several years as an editor, and then began to work in the computer industry as a consultant and technical writer.  Currently she writes poetry in Filip Marinovich’s writing group “Motley College” at Page Poetry Parlor in Chelsea and regularly keeps up with scholarly works on ancient Greek religion, in addition to running her own business full-time.