CW: Discussion of rape, filicide, matricide
My plans for writing a blog today went totally off the rails, so I'm now writing this on my phone in bed at 1 in the morning. I hope you will all forgive me for my late posting. I have a lot of things circling my mind tonight but I'll start with one that will be the most relevant to what I originally envisioned this blog to be. I have had something of a breakthrough in regards to my Greek adaptation play. Over the past couple weeks I have been reading (well, rereading in most cases) both classical Greek plays and modern adaptations. Originally going into this project, as early as two years ago, I thought I wanted to adapt the story of Phaedra, or Hippolytus if you're familiar with that telling. I think this was mostly because I was so awed by the raw storytelling I found in Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love that I thought to myself "that! That is what I want to be doing!" I still think Kane's play is earth shattering in a lot of ways, check out an original review here, but over the last week especially I've been thinking about what I want to do with my adaptation. I'm somewhat of the opinion that adaptation for adaptation's sake is just fanfiction, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I know it isn't what interests me right now. I kept thinking back to Portland Shakespeare Project's version of Pericles Wet by our own Ellen Margolis. And while I don't want to butter Ellen up too much, because I've definitely been guilty of that in the past, that play has stuck in my mind for almost three years now. In her adaptation of Pericles, a kind of nothing play by Shakespeare (Maybe? Check it out here), she explores the women characters from the original play and asks what their relationship with each other would be like. I knew I wanted a story that wasn't just about Greek men being manly and imposing their will on the world, and I wanted a story that was queer in a gentle and tender way instead of the oft reported "fight for dominance" who's-on-top-is-the-real-man bullshit that Greek men recorded centuries ago. A queer story about Greek women (and trans people if I'm lucky although these are hard to find since no one wrote them down.) I wanted a story that, like Margolis' Pericles Wet, dug deeper into characters who don't get to have much story in their original plays, and perhaps even exist as merely devices or stereotypes. I kept finding myself drawn to the stories of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra. (If you're unfamiliar, the wiki here will catch you up) But I was nervous that I felt drawn to this story because I recently watched The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is a loose adaptation of Iphigenia in Aulis. I didn't want to piggyback on anyone, like I had almost done with Kane's Phaedra's Love. So I took some time, again very late at night, and spent a lot of time brainstorming what interested me about the women in Agamemnon. Surprisingly what I found most interested me was the representation of Clytemnestra's relationship with Cassandra, the kidnapped princess of Troy that Agamemnon makes his sex slave. In all the versions of this story I could find Clytemnestra was jealous and hateful of Cassandra and this led to her (or her boyfriend) killing Cassandra as well as Agamemnon. That just didn't set well in my tummy you guys. Supposedly, Agamemnon leaves for the Trojan war after sacrificing Iphigenia, his and Clytemnestra's oldest daughter, he's at war for 10 years, kidnaps the very young princess and r*pes her, and then brings her home as his sex slave. Clytemnestra knows that she wants to kill her husband for sacrificing their daughter, and she knows that he's bad news for the kids and so she sends her other daughters away. Electra and Chrysothemis are literally not around when she kills him. But her plans are upended when he brings home his child sex slave that's born him twins. Clytemnestra has to be in at least her 40s by this time and Cassandra is the SAME AGE AS HER DAUGHTER WAS when she was killed. That's interesting. I don't want to give away too much more of the story I have figured out so far, but my mentor Charlene should be very proud of me that I have a full outline for literally the first time ever. In a little bit of personal news, I may be having my top surgery as soon as November and I am having a whirlwind of emotions about this. I want to start doing some research in post-op depression and finding out what kinds of rituals I can set around my home to help me with that. We're having Shabbat dinners at my house now, and we are doing weekly Tarot to help keep us centered with ourselves, and it feels amazing. See you all next week! Avery
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AuthorAvery Kester, enby Playwright, Artist, and Student. Archives
September 2020
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