"Tell us a story, mother..."

When the script for Medea and Jason: Rubicon Waltz was still taking its final shape in early rehearsals back in early 2009 down in Iowa, I was sitting in on a production meeting and suddenly realized that I hadn't set up the story properly.

It's one of those cases where the playwright's been living with the play too long, so everything seems obvious to him. The designers were sitting around trying to figure out who these characters were who were telling the story of Medea and Jason.

They couldn't just be generic storytellers. They had to have a life and story of their own. They had to have a reason for telling this story.

"Maybe students are visiting an ancient ruin and unearth the spirits of mythological people and creatures from another time. The spirits take over the bodies of the students and channel the story through them. So I guess that means they need backpacks, and I guess we stage those opening moments as..."

It was all I could do not to say, "What?! No. That's not... No. What are you talking about?"

In moments like this, I thank God for the freedom of rewrites.

Sure, *I* knew it was Medea's story, that she was the one telling it, that she was conjuring everyone else in the ensemble to tell the tale, but I obviously hadn't made that clear for anyone just picking up the script for the first time. Or the actors. Or the production team.

We couldn't just launch into the story. Like any good story, you needed a framework.

Once upon a time...

Who are these people? Why are we watching them? Why does this story matter to them so much? Why should we listen?

So, OK, Medea is literally telling the story. But to who?

Well, who do you normally tell stories to?

Children.

Wait a minute. Medea has children. Or rather, had children. Depends on which version of the legend you're listening to...



So Medea is telling the story to her children - who may or may not be dead.

When you get freaky inspiration like that, you have to run with it.  

"Tell us a story, mother." 
"Tell us a story."

"What story? What story shall I tell you?"  

"That story." 
"The only story."

"The story of the Golden Fleece."

Refrains that resurface time and again include:

"This is the story of how your mother met your father."

It occurs to me that I don't know the story of how my mother met my father. I should ask.

For these kids, it's a doozy of a story. A romance with a frighteningly high body count.  How the young adventurer Jason met the young princess Medea.

It also also the story of how Medea betrayed her own father.
How Medea charmed a dragon.
It is also the story of how Medea killed her own brother, Apsyrtus.
It is also the story of how Medea killed a giant.
It is also the story of how Medea killed a king.
Killed two kings.
And a princess.
It is also the story of how Medea killed her own children.

"It begins with a woman turned away by the man she loved because he loved another."
"It begins with children in danger."
"It begins with the death of a child."

 We do our first run through with costumes tonight.  Tech begins tomorrow night.

The show opens this weekend.

The Flowershop Project's production of Medea and Jason: Rubicon Waltz runs Saturdays and Sundays at 7pm, the first three weekends in October (10/1, 10/2, 10/8, 10/9, 10/15 and 10/16) at the Bryant Lake Bowl (810 West Lake Street in Minneapolis).  Doors at 6pm.

Interregnum 2011-2012 - Blog of the Time Between - Rubicon Waltz

The Flowershop Project produced the regional premiere of my dark romantic comedy Medea & Jason: Rubicon Waltz in October 2011.  And naturally, I wrote a little something for the occasion on the blog...

9/27/2011 - A Mother Tells A Story To Her Children, Who May or May Not Be Dead
Twin Cities Daily Planet version

Auditions for the tale of Medea and Jason, as a dark romantic comedy

The Flowershop Project is doing my Medea & Jason play, so I'm spreading the word about auditions where I can. If you're free for rehearsals starting at the end of August, for a production in October, send them an email as outlined below and sign yourself up for a slot.

Here's the notice...

The Flower Shop Project will be holding auditions for “Medea and Jason: Rubicon Waltz” by Matthew Everett and directed by Brenna Jones, on

June 13th and 14th, 7-9 pm

at Epworth Methodist Church (3207 37th Avenue South).

If necessary, callbacks will be held June 15th, same time and place.

To schedule an audition please email David Schlosser at

david@theflowershopproject.com

with your name, preferred audition time and phone number. You will get an email shortly confirming your audition time. There is a $100 stipend for each actor.

Readings will be from the script. Sides and the script are available at http://www.matthewaeverett.com/plays/scenes.php?playID=52, as well as http://www.theflowershopproject.com.

"Medea’s sons want her to tell them a story. So Medea tells the tale of an epic love story gone horribly wrong – the story of how the young adventurer Jason met the princess Medea, the story of how the boys’ mother met their father. Medea conjures the other players in the tale, unfolding the origin of the Golden Fleece, and the quest of Jason and the Argonauts. But truth is a slippery thing – depending on the person telling the story, and the reasons they’re telling it. The messier the story gets, the more variations appear. Throughout, the goddesses and gods of legend meddle in affairs of the human heart. Medea betrayed her father and her country in order to help Jason obtain the Golden Fleece. She helped murder her own brother to aid their escape. Before it was all over, a giant, two kings, and a princess, among others, were dead. And depending on which version you believe, Medea’s sons die as well. But who kills them, and why? Medea & Jason: Rubicon Waltz explores the stories and lies we tell others, and ourselves.”

(If you're unable to make the audition dates but would still like to audition, we're more than happy to make alternate arrangements! You can email David Schlosser at david@theflowershopproject.com or call Brenna at 612.280.2860.)

Rehearsals will begin at Epworth on August 29th and run through September; either Monday-Thursday (7-10pm) and Saturday afternoon, or Mon-Fri.There will be no rehearsal on the night of the Ivey’s.

Performances will be at the Bryant Lake Bowl, opening October 1st and running the rest of the Saturdays of the month.

“Medea and Jason: Rubicon Waltz” has 9 roles and is designed to be performed by an ensemble of actors both male and female. At some point, nearly all of them will play across gender lines. The only place where specific gender is vital is in the 2 central characters. Since this is in part a play about the inequity of gender roles in societies both ancient and not so ancient, it is important that Medea be played by a female actor, and that Jason be played by a male actor. The other 7 roles can be played by either gender.

Roles:

MEDEA - female, 20’s to 50’s

JASON - male, 20’s to 50’s

ACTOR 3 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - Oracle at Delphi, Apsyrtus #1, lead on Golden Fleece story, lead on Island of Dawn/Talus stories, Daughter #5

ACTOR 4 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - Cupid, Warrior #1, Apsyrtus #2, Daughter #4, lead on the Hera/Argo story, King Creon

ACTOR 5 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - Aphrodite, Apsyrtus #3, lead on the First Meet story, Daughter #3, Glauke

ACTOR 6 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - Hera, Warrior #3, Apsyrtus #4, lead on daughters story

ACTOR 7 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - King Pelias, Warrior #2, Alexander the Great

ACTOR 8 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - Fred, Talus, Daughter #2, lead on the Pelias story, lead on Apsyrtus story

ACTOR 9 (male or female, 20s to 50s) - King Aeetes, Daughter #1, King Aegeus

Interregnum 2008-2009 - Blog of the Time Between - Medea & Jason

Another new play I wrote, produced across the border...

1/3/09 - Incubator - Medea, part 1
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version

1/6/09 - Incubator - Medea, part 2 - Homework
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version

1/7/09 - Incubator - Medea, part 3 - Crossbreeding Scripts
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version

1/9/09 - Incubator - Medea, part 4 - Spreading the wealth
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version

1/12/09 - Incubator - Medea, part 5 - Blood and semen, semen and blood
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version

4/16/09 - Local press on Medea & Jason - a fresh take on love gone wrong
matthewaeverett.com version

4/23/09 - Review - Centerstage - IWCC's Medea & Jason is an actor's delight
matthewaeverett.com version

Incubator - Medea - Blood and Semen, Semen and Blood

Inevitably, when you’re rewriting a script, some losses cut deeper than others. Some stuff is easy to cut out. Some stuff you just hate to let go of.

In one of my misbegotten earlier drafts of this Medea project, where I was still trying to wedge a modern day plotline and characters in alongside those of the Ancient Greeks, there was a happy accident that sticks with me. Rewriting that sequence of overlap the other day, I finally had to strike it out and move on.

Jason and Medea are meeting for the first time.

Meanwhile, on stage at the same time, a modern day character is working a shift on an AIDS Hotline.

Medea is helping Jason outwit her own father so that Jason can claim the Golden Fleece. One of the strategies is to use an ointment which will make him invincible for a day. The ointment is extracted from a plant which sprung up in the ground where the blood of Prometheus fell. Prometheus, who brought the secret of fire to humankind, was punished by the gods for it by being chained to a rock. There, a hungry eagle pecked away at his innards. His innards continually regenerated, making it an unending sequence of torture. You’ve got to hand it to the gods, they don’t think small.

But just as no good deed goes unpunished, out of the bad must come some good. Where Prometheus’ blood fell to the ground, a plant is born. The plant provides temporary invincibility for humans to achieve supernatural tasks. While it won’t do Prometheus much good, it came in mighty handy for Jason, thanks to Medea.

Of course the audience knows, at least a little, what’s coming down the pike. Jason and Medea meeting and pledging their love to one another isn’t going to come to a pretty end. There will be betrayal, there will be death. There’s a lot of blood on the ground by the time they’re finished with each other.

Meanwhile, our AIDS Hotline friend is resting between calls, pondering methods of transmissibility. He says aloud, to no one but himself, 

“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”

Even if disease weren’t a factor, no sex is safe.

Fun, sure. Intense, if you’re lucky. Safe, not a chance.

Divorcing sex from emotion was never something I was particularly good at doing. If there’s no emotion involved, it’s just exercise.

Don’t get me wrong. I like exercise.

But that’s what I got a gym membership for.

There’s a Warren Zevon song that I keep thinking about in relation to these two mythological lovers. Of course, it’s a big old anachronism in many ways, but Warren always had a way of cutting through to the heart of the matter. Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s not...

“You can screw everybody I’ve ever known
But I still won’t talk to you on the phone
It’s a hopeless cause
There’s no use crying
And I can die
You can die
We can die trying
Thanks anyway
There’s no use hanging around
While you try to put the finishing touches on me”

Juxtaposition. Point of view. Foreshadowing.

Two people meet. Their lives are never the same.

“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”

Incubator - Medea, part 4 - Spreading the Wealth

Normally, I’m trying to figure out how to present a story with as few characters as possible. Or rather, as few actors as possible. There’s a reason one and two-person shows are so popular with producing theaters around the country - they’re cheaper to do. Because you have less people to pay. I also imagine it’s less of a headache. Fewer people means fewer schedules to coordinate to try and pull together rehearsals. If I want a play produced, getting the number of people down is a way to make it easier for theaters to do so.

But necessity really is, in this case, the mother of invention. Having to constantly keep the number of actors foremost in mind has made me a better writer. I don’t add random characters at will, just to say a couple of lines here or there. Giving each character a lot of thought before bringing them into being hopefully insures that they have a singular purpose as part of the story. With luck, it means the actor will have a role worthy of their time and talent to invest in the piece. The last thing I ever want to do is cause an actor to feel like I’m wasting their time. They should always have something important and/or fun to do.

With this Medea project, however, I was faced with the opposite problem. I kept asking how many actors do I have, thinking the number would be low. Instead, they kept bumping it up. Most of the other college productions I’d worked on in the past, a half dozen actors at most would be available. With a sprawling legend like this one, it was clear, no matter how many bodies were on hand, they’d all be playing multiple roles. Honestly, you get the right actor and you can do pretty much any story with one. Get the right pair of actors and two is no problem either. Challenging, but still doable. I kept getting the response, “As many as you need” which is sort of like telling someone they have to write a paper for English class and they can write about anything they want. With all the subjects in the world laid out before you, the mind goes blank and you can’t think of a thing to write about. There’s such a thing as too much freedom of choice.

So you turn the question around and ask the college, “How many do *you* want to use?” Something clicked over in my head - remembering that sometimes, with a shorter season with fewer productions, sometimes the object is to get as many people on stage as humanly possible. And when you’re doing the Greeks, just like doing Shakespeare or Chekhov or Shaw, there’s normally a large ensemble required. After all, in college, everyone’s doing it for the experience, and you don’t have to pay them. This time, maybe I’m thinking too small. So, how many actors? What’s the magic number?

“I’d prefer nine. I really don’t want to go higher than 12.”

Wow. I *was* thinking small.

“Let’s say I write it for nine, and if you feel compelled at auditions to expand the ensemble to 12, we can adjust.”

So those were my marching orders. Still plenty of story, still plenty of characters, still a lot of ground to cover. But, nine people, that’s a luxury. It also means keeping about twice as many people in mind as I normally do, when thinking about making sure that everyone gets a balanced menu of things to do.

Greek chorus style, all nine actors enter at the start, all from different places, and converge together. There’s probably some kind of ritual, live music created by the actors - vocals, percussion, low tech but something to let the audience know what kind of world they’re entering. One male actor and one female actor stand apart. We may not know it yet, but they’ll be tackling Jason and Medea.

The male actor asks, “So, did she kill her kids or didn’t she?”

The female actor responds, “See, that’s not the point. It’s basically a love story.”

“Gimme a break.”

“No, really. You think anyone starts out like that?”

A third actor (who I realize later will become an Oracle), takes the lead on the first of the stories...

“It starts with the Golden Fleece.”

A fourth actor (who I realize later will become, appropriately enough, Cupid) chimes in...

“Because without the Golden Fleece, they never would have met.”

Actor 5 introduces, “Jason.”

Actor 6 clarifies, “Of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ fame.”

Actor 7, “And Medea.”

Actor 8, “Of ‘mother killing her own children’ fame.”


“Hey!” says the actor who will later be Medea.

Actor 8 - “That’s the first thing people think of when they hear her name, that’s all I’m saying.”

Actor 9, getting everybody back on task, “It starts with The Golden Fleece.”

and we’re off.

A page and a half, everybody has spoken aloud, everybody has taken the reins of the story. Some are starting to inform their lines with the personalities they’ll be creating later.

But there is no one narrator. There is no ponderous speaking in unison. The thing is going to live and breathe and fight and change hands over the course of the evening. There will be differences of opinion, there will be different points of view, there will be different versions of the same key moments. A story passed down through so many people over so many centuries is bound to have some rough edges and loose ends.

So far, about 14 pages into the thing where I sit, the role of lead narrator (the task of driving a particular chunk of the story forward) has changed hands three times. Particular actors have assumed the roles of Jason’s primary royal nemeses, King Pelias, and King Aeetes (Medea’s father). An Oracle, and Cupid have also made appearances in other hands. And a couple of actors will get to play Hera, queen of the gods, and Aprhodite, goddess of love and beauty (and mother to Cupid), one of Zeus’ many bastard children by women other than his wife, Hera. And that’s keeping it simple.

There’s a page with a list, Actors 1 through 9, and as I go through the script on one side of my computer screen, I add to the different actors’ tallies of characters as the script moves forward. Keeping it balanced, so no one feels left out, and no one feels exhausted, and the story keeps barreling forward, ever forward. I get the feeling no matter how this shakes out, everyone is going to end up getting a workout by the time the final curtain falls.

Incubator - Medea, part 3 - Crossbreeding Scripts

So the process I’m in the middle of right now, is putting my two previous versions of the Medea play together, and trimming the fat out of it, to get the purest form of the story I can manage.

Still a work in progress at the moment.

At first as I was working on it, I was thinking of creating it all again from scratch, and just referencing the two existing scripts as I worked my way through it. Then I realized that the essential structure of the thing - the beginning, middle and end of it, the characters - was sound. I should probably build on what was there. Altering it, of course, making it better. But not re-inventing the wheel.

So I created a file that had the two scripts - the older and the newer version - lined up back to back in the same document. And I’d start writing the latest version up in front of them both, at the beginning of the document - cutting and pasting as needed. Slowly, the document would shrink down in size to just the brand new script that emerged from fusing the two older plays together.

But as I started putting the brand new script together, I realized I was wasting a lot of time picking a scene out of the oldest script, then scrolling all the way down in the document and finding the analogous scene in the newer script, and pulling that out. Moving it all up front a chunk at a time, then rewriting and polishing.

I was essentially doing a lot of hopping around when all I was looking to do was line up the two versions, one scene at a time, side by side, or at least in the same general vicinity in the document, for easier juggling.

So why not just chop both versions apart and slam the corresponding scenes together right next to each other. That way I’m not going through the whole story start to finish three times, but only once.

That cutting and pasting project is now behind me. And now I’m working on crafting each scene out of the two versions of it which came before. Old scene one, newer scene one - meld them into a single unit and fix them up. Next, old scene two, newer scene two - meld and fix. And on through the story to the bitter, or not so bitter, end.

The main advantage I have this time around is - no modern day characters. I don’t have to find some reason to justify the fact that these people are telling this story. It doesn’t have to reflect, literally or thematically, off something that is happening in their lives. I don’t need a Greek mythology geek that rambles on about a bunch ancient fictional characters, while everyone else puts up with him and his mythological hard-on because he’s their friend, their family, they want to sleep with him, etc. (Thus avoiding bizarre plot structure misfires like the one draft where the modern day plot line was moving backward, but the mythological story was moving forward. If you took the script apart and put it together in chronological order from a modern day standpoint, those characters were actually telling the Medea story backward. Why anyone would tell, or want to listen to, a story in reverse like that - inside or outside the confines of the play, well, I have no excuse. I never recovered from reading Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” during my formative years, apparently. I am constantly messing with time in my plays. It’s just something I do. It would drive Aristotle crazy. But just because I *can* do something with a play’s structure, doesn’t mean I should. There needs to be more of a reason than, “because I thought it might be neat.” I do still get teased about that misbegotten draft by the way. Mercilessly. You know who you are. But let’s be honest, I deserve it.)

I need to release myself from the burning desire to make some direct one-to-one correlation with 21st century life in the hope of convincing everyone how “relevant” the story is. One could argue that yes, there are mothers killing their children all the time, literally and figuratively. And there are those that would affirm that we’re still surrounded by supernatural beings - angels, ghosts, horoscopes, what have you - which are influencing or even controlling our destinies.

But there really isn’t a modern correlative to Ancient Greek mythology. The world isn’t just one country or culture anymore (as if it ever was). There are no universally agreed upon gods and demons. There is no single set of stories that we all tell and share with each other, which we all have in common, even just within the United States of America (which is the audience I need to worry about first, specifically Iowa).

Trying to get modern day characters and their life experiences to have the same breadth and scope of mythology is a bit more of a stretch than I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around. Compared to the epic scale of Medea and Jason, our passions and adventures seem kind of tiny. They’re not, of course. Particularly not to the people living those lives from day to day. But it’s apples and oranges. Best not to muddy things up by comparing them.

Here, in this version, we have an ensemble, a Greek chorus if you will (if you must). Their sole purpose - to tell this story. They exist to be storytellers. They are the story. They become the characters. They want to present the tale to the people who gather to hear them speak.

Good old fashioned catharsis.

At least, that’s the hope.

The trick, of course, is to give everyone in the ensemble enough to do, so they all feel well-utilized, and challenged, by the production. So they bring their A-game.

First, I need to bring mine.

Incubator - Medea, part 2 - Homework

The blessing and curse of Greek mythology is that there’s always another layer.

It’s what piqued my interest in the Medea legend in the first place.

When I realized that Medea’s faithless husband Jason was the same Jason of Jason and the Argonauts fame, and the quest for the Golden Fleece, I was hooked.

But then you start pulling the whole thing apart and realize that there aren’t even six degrees of separation between any of these legends. There’s just one or two, tops.

So Medea and Jason touch on everything from Oedipus to Orpheus to Hercules to Phaedra to the Minotaur to Prometheus to the Amazons to Helen of Troy to the homicidal house of Atreus, and so on and so on and so on, spiraling out to infinity. And that’s just the humans and demigods. Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Cupid and Company up on Mount Olympus are in there mixing it up as well.


In the original stab I took at this whole thing some twenty years ago now, I laid it all out. The thing was so top-heavy with backstory and tangents that it’s a wonder the plot moved at all. In order to make the story just as captivating for an audience as it is to the writer, ya gotta start streamlining the thing so the main storyline pops out a bit more.

What to leave out, what to keep in?

The last time I took a stab at this, over twelve years ago, I took a great deal of the details for granted and just drew the adventure in really broad strokes. There were hints at the untold stories behind it all, but I essentially left all that for the actors and director and dramaturg to hash out for themselves when they started doing their own prep work.

Both of these versions were so old I had to dig out a hard copy and retype them, or at least, for now, all the pages having to do with Jason and Medea’s story. I’d set the idea aside so long ago (several computers back in the mists of time) that there weren’t up to date translatable electronic copies to be had.

Entering the words onto the screen again made it clear that the balance lay somewhere in between the two versions. Part of the fun is the weird interconnectedness of it all. But I just need to resist getting carried away. Or being too withholding of information.

The other thing it made clear is that I needed to tell this story, and only this story. All the times before, I’d tried to string a modern day plotline and characters through the thing, and it never worked. For one, Jason and Medea is one of the most heterosexual storylines you’re gonna find out there. And my young writer’s obsessions kept trying to find some homosexual angle to it all. Sure there were characters on the periphery, there always are. But trying to allow the gay sensibility of the modern day story to bleed into the mythological tale just never worked. Worse, I started doing ridiculous cross-gender stuff with no real rhyme or reason to it. Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. But I think scanning the old material from the modern day stories drove a stake through the heart of it all, finally.

Also, all that male-female switcheroo stuff, as effective and useful as it might be elsewhere, just muddies the waters here. Medea did what she did because she was backed into a corner. She had no options. Jason, and the other male figures in the story, held all the cards. This is a story about a culture where women and foreigners and people who are different (in this case, with magical powers and supernatural relatives), are treated as second-class citizens. They are praised when they are useful to the needs of the established order, but barely tolerated otherwise. Medea gave up her power and standing in her home country to aid Jason in his quest and follow him to a new land. He repaid her by betraying her on a number of levels. From a certain angle, the guy had it coming. I didn’t want to accidentally set up a situation where a director might think, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s have Medea played by a guy!”

No.

It is, on one level, about the victimization of women by men. Turning it around and making the man the victim and the woman the oppressor won’t fly. Plus, Medea is one of the few meaty, strong roles for women in the classical canon. I would rightly be strung up by my thumbs by any number of actresses I know if I took yet another role away from them and handed it off to a guy. Men have plenty to choose from - from Oedipus to Hamlet and beyond. Leave Medea alone.

Me, I keep trying to leave Medea alone. But she keeps coming back.

Incubator - Medea

“How quickly could you write a fun, up to date version of MEDEA? 1-1/2 hour tops?”

“A fun up to date version of MEDEA? Does she still kill her kids?”

“well, yes she kills her children. I would like some type of chorus, it can be ritualistic, yet attractive to a college audience - does that make sense?”

And thus began my latest project.

My friend Marty recently landed a faculty job in the theater department at Iowa Western Community College. He’d already directed something for them, but this next production would be the first thing he’s directed for them since coming on staff. Medea was already chosen to be part of their season, but he wanted to put his own spin on it. So he sends me an email.

Slowly it came back to us both that the reason the whole thing seemed familiar was that I’d been struggling with the Medea legend - the whole Medea legend, Jason and the Argonauts and the quest for the Golden Fleece, and everything that happened after the child killings - for a number of years. 2009 will make it year twenty. Which means I’d been kicking the thing around since, we were both in grad school together.

The first full draft I could find was dated August of 1989. The last serious stab I took at the thing was June of 1996, not long after my first production in Minneapolis, “Heaven and Home.”

Note to self at the time, Medea is not the best thing to be working on while dating. Learned that one the hard way.

And yet, now, during the latest Medea resurrection, is the time I chose to sign up with one of those online screening services. This should be interesting.

“What do you do?”
“I write plays.”
“Really? Wow. What are you working on right now?”
“Medea”
“Gee, look at the time...”