Trojan Women: A play about women, human relationships, loyalty and the foolishness of war
PUBLISHED September 2nd, 2013 02:26 am | UPDATED January 20th, 2016 04:10 pm
For its Graduation Show this year, the SRT Young Company has chosen Trojan Women, an adaptation of a play by Euripides, one of the great playwrights of classical Athens.
In the wake of their devastating defeat, the women of Troy, all now widows and prisoners of war, await their fate in a POW camp below the ravaged city. They will be claimed by their Greek conquerors as slaves and concubines. Though the war is over, exile and degradation lie ahead and their fates are still in the balance. The imprisoned women include Queen Hecuba, her daughter Cassandra, the doomed, mad prophetess, and her daughter-in-law Andromache, widow of the great Hector. Also present is Helen, the woman whose beauty started it all.
The captive Trojan women dread the future. All they know for certain is that ships will carry them across the sea to a strange country, a different culture, unfamiliar faces, and a degrading way of life. There will be no family members to comfort them, no pay for the work they do. Bereft of all hope, the women ask themselves: Is life as a slave or a concubine preferable to death? Should you be nice to your new master? Do the gods matter? Andromache says she would be better off dead. But Hecuba says that where there is life there is hope for a better tomorrow. Having lived long enough to know that situations change, she says, ‘Fortune, like a madman in her moods, springs towards this man, then towards that; and none ever experiences the same unchanging luck.’
The drama in Trojan Women takes place directly after the fall of the city of Troy to the Greek army after a decade of fighting. The wily Greeks smuggled themselves into the city, in the belly of a giant wooden horse. It was the only way to penetrate and capture the fortified city. Trojan prince Paris’ kidnapping of the beautiful Spartan queen, Helen, wife of King Menelaus, prompted the war.
Trojan Women is really an anti-war play – it shows war not in its glory but its foolishness. It is a play about women, human relationships and loyalty. The classical mythology does play a small part but focus of the play is the group of women who are left behind to confront the aftermath after Troy has fallen.
This adaptation of Euripides’ play is by actress and playwright, Ellen McLaughlin, best known for the role of ‘Angel’ in Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels in America’ and her plays ‘Iphigenia and Other Daughters’. McLaughlin has been quoted saying that Trojan Women ‘Is perhaps the greatest anti-war play ever written, certainly one of the oldest, and contains some of the most extraordinary roles for women in theatrical literature.’
The play will force the audience, leading comfortable, safe lives in Singapore, to pay attention to the plight of women caught up in the post-war nightmare. Just as Euripides wrote his drama to express his feelings of revulsion at his country’s aggressive 416 B.C. campaign against the neutral island state of Melos, McLaughlin originally penned hers in the mid-1990s in response to the plight of refugees displaced by the Balkan conflict. Other writers and playwrights have used it to depict different post-war scenarios – the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Vietnam. An adaptation by French writer Sartre used it as a comment on Frances’s colonial war in Algeria.
This adaptation by the Young Company aims to be universal. The play is set in a timeless, nameless place that could be Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or any conflict zone. This approach underscores a truism about the nature of wars – how they wreak havoc on civilizations, no matter when or where they occur, but specifically on the women.
The Young Co. is a two-year educational platform for 16 to 25 year-olds, and Singapore Repertory Theatre’s investment in future stage talent. The Young Co.’s model of training aims to help students build vital theatre skills, enabling them to establish themselves in the local theatre scene having received thorough, holistic training from dynamic theatre educators. Part of the training includes the opportunity to meet and work with celebrated international stage veterans such as Sir Ian McKellen, Ethan Hawke, Steven Dexter, Kit Chan, Lea Salonga and Olivier award-winning writers George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.
The Young Company showcases new talent in this graduation show which is directed by Daniel Jenkins, a veteran of the Singapore stage. Daniel gave us his perspective on Trojan Women:
Why as ‘Trojan Women’ chosen by the Young Company this year as its graduation show
When choosing a play for young student actors I believe our first consideration is that we choose a good script with strong characters. And it is important that the students are challenged. As a young actor in training, now is the time when they should be stretched and play roles that really allow them to exercise their acting muscles within a safe and encouraging environment. With this year of graduating students, we had predominantly women so I was searching for a powerful play with great women parts and the Greek tragedies are full of strong women’s roles. I also wanted the play to be accessible to them and not a dated period piece.
Trojan Women is said to be a play that can have one foot in the Classics and the other in modernity. Do you agree?
Absolutely. Unfortunately the story of women’s struggles is timeless and Ellen Mclaughlan’s adaptation was originally written in response to the Bosnian and Serbian war and was performed by women who had suffered during this conflict. In this adaptation the language is beautifully lyrical, yet modern, making it accessible and yet maintaining the beauty of classical Greek poetry. We were also inspired by the situations occurring in Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan and in particular the way women are treated when a country is at war or civilization has broken down. We are far more aware of the casualties and atrocities that happen to soldiers fighting a war, but we often forget or are kept in the dark about the unseen victims, the women that are left behind when a country loses.
The synopsis mentions this will be a modern adaptation. Would you be able to share a little about the adaptation?
We have set our production in the present. The soldiers carry guns and the women are stripped of both their dignity and their own clothes. They are forced to dress as prisoners and are confined within the metal fences of POW camp. We have steered clear of approaching the play from a particular religious viewpoint, exact country, or period preferring rather to examine the fate of all women regardless of race or religion or time. Even today in the 21st century women are still suffering throughout the world and Trojan Women is unfortunately a story that is all too common.
What are the greatest challenges for you, as the Director of this play?
When most people think of Greek Tragedies they think of togas and boring stuffy plays that are long and uninteresting. The challenge has been to try and break this perception. We have worked really hard at making the plight of these women as real as possible and hopefully make an audience understand the terrible situation the characters find themselves in and be able to relate and empathize with their plight.
Do you think that the audience will be able to relate to the play and the mythology it’s based on?
The play does deal with mythology to a certain degree although the backstory for this play is less complicated than most. What we have tried to do is concentrate on the human/emotional story and to portray the characters as real people who are going through an immensely difficult time. I hope that the audience can follow the story of the characters as women, regardless of the Greek Tragedy perception, and that they will be moved by the brutality and horror these women endure. The lives the characters live, the terror, the violence and degradation they endure is happening to women throughout the world every day. This isn’t just a period piece that has no relevance to on our lives today.
How are you helping the actors from the Young Company prepare for their roles? And what are their challenges?
The play deals with massive themes and as a young actor it is not easy to fully understand the depth of feeling and emotion needed to comprehend what the women are going through, however, the actors have risen to the challenge and thrown themselves headfirst into the play and dug deep to find emotionally charged performances. We have spent a long time researching women in conflict and the actors uncovered many stories about women prisoners and civilians who are left to deal with the aftermath of war once the fighting has finished, both inspiring and incredibly moving. But what all these women and their stories had in common was an inner strength and the ability to carry on when all seems lost. We have worked hard to try to help the actors who all come from a safe and privileged background to understand what it would be like if their lives were suddenly turned upside down, their country invaded, their fathers, husbands and children killed and they were left to the mercy of the conquering army. What would that be like?
What can the audience look forward to?
We hope the audience will be moved by the women’s journey as they fight to maintain their dignity, keep their family together and ultimately leave to face their fate with strength and their heads held high. It is a story about struggle and the senselessness of war, but it is also about dignity and ultimately, hope.
Trojan Women is a play that you will not forget in a hurry. Help support the up and coming actors of SRT’s Young Company by attending their graduation show!
Trojan Women runs from 20 to 21 September 2013 at the DBS Arts Centre – Home of SRT. Thursday to Saturday at 8pm, Saturday matinee at 4pm. For information on tickets, please go to Sistic
