Greek Drama/Black Lives

Amid the searing canon of Greek tragedies, Euripides’ Medea must be one of the most shocking. Medea is the foreigner who leaves everything behind her to follow a lover who then betrays her. She is the mother who decides that the best revenge is to kill her own children. And the gods do not punish her, they reward and rescue her.

By the time Seneca wrote his own version of Medea more than four centuries after Euripides, the story was so well established that when Medea said, “I shall become Medea,” everyone knew what that meant: The play would move forward to its inevitable, terrible end, and there would be two small bloody corpses on the stage.

Modern versions of Medea tend to play with the foreigner motif. They find new ways to portray Medea as an outsider and hence to explain or condemn her violent actions. We asked James Ijames to write an adaptation that put Black lives at the center of the story. We wondered if that would mean a story about otherness and race.

Nothing that predictable. Ijames’ take on the story is wholly original. At our first meeting he said, “I want to tell the story from the point of view of the children.” It is a breathtaking reversal of the narrative. And he has followed through. Ijames centers Black lives in the simple sense that this is a Black family—and in the complicated sense that this is an exceptional Black family, Black royalty, under constant scrutiny. That gives us our chorus of social media users, and our title Media/Medea. And it gives us our haunted sense of how terrible the stakes are, and how terrible the tensions swirling around these two children who just want to live their adolescent lives.

Three actors seated on a sectional sofa.

Media/Medea rehearsal in Goodhart Hall at Bryn Mawr College.

Three figures in a rehearsal space. Two are seated, one holding a script. The third person stands behind them.

Media/Medea rehearsal at Community College of Philadelphia.

Eight actors variously seated or standing behind a large table.

Media/Medea dress rehearsal. The Chorus, Devan, and Shel.

Three actors seated on a sectional sofa. One has their legs crossed and looks nervous as another actor speaks and gestures.

Media/Medea dress rehearsal. Devan, Shel, and Jason.

Two female actors stand closely facing each other. One wears a metalic mini dress and high heels, the other wears an orange maxi dress.

Media/Medea dress rehearsal. Shel and Medea.

Two actors face each other making excited gestures. One wears an orange maxi dress, the other wears a purple tuxedo and men's dress shoes.

Media/Medea dress rehearsal. Medea and Devan.

Original Cast & Production Team

Cast

Medea: Monet Debose

Jason: Akeem Davis

Devan: Jayson Brown

Shel: Génesis Woods

Circe: Maria Del Pilar Rodriguez & Bethany Wisdom

Glauce: Regan Riehl

Chorus Leader: Michael Jahlil

Chorus:

Elizabeth Brown
Minh Doan
Lulu Florea
Isiah Jessie
Bina Lee
Stirling Lewis
Zakkai Mares-Van Praag
Chrisantin Natisha
Ella Wu
IV Yim

Production Team

Producer: Catharine Slusar

Producer: Catherine Conybeare

Producer & Production Coordinator: Quinn Eli

Director: Raelle Myrick Hodges

Scenic & Costume Designer: Maiko Matsushima

Lighting Designer: Isabella Gill-Gomez

Sound Designer: Natali Merrill

Properties Designer & Coordinator: Saria Rosenhaj

Technical Director: Justin McDaniel (Bryn Mawr & Haverford Colleges)

Technical Director & Production Manager: Newton Buchanan (Community College of Philadelphia)

Instructor in Technical Theater: Jonathan Pappas (Community College of Philadelphia)

Production Manager: Amy Radbill (Bryn Mawr & Haverford Colleges)

Stage Manager: Anne Meyer

Assistant Stage Manager: Cricket Bradford

Assistant Scenic Designer: Kay Strine

Lead Electrician: Ella Namour

Sound Engineer: Ophelia Evans

Assistant to the Director: Wura Oni

Run Crew: Leo Anderman & Carolyn Schwartz

Production Assistant: Tova Just