Everyone remembers reading Oedipus in 10th grade English. How many of us go on to study Aeschylus and Sophocles in their original language? Professors Leonard Muellner and Eirene Visvardi (CLAS) lead our fellow students in the study of these works every day.JustArts: I understand this production of Hecuba comes out of a class project where the students translated the play from the original text. Why did you choose Hecuba?

Leonard Muellner: Actually, the production is an initiative of Prof. Eric Hill of the Theater Arts Department for the Theater Arts and the Classical Studies department to collaborate and produce a Greek tragedy every three years. Greek students and I worked with him and students in the Theater department for the first time in 2005-2006. Greek students and I produced a translation of Euripides' Bacchae that he then adapted and produced (with exceptional success). The fall 2005 class that worked on the translation also met with the fall 2005 Suzuki acting class to discuss what we know about the production of tragedies in ancient Athens, and to learn about the Suzuki method ... . This year, two professors and four students (Lee Marmor '10, Jack Bouchard '10, Zach Margulies '10 and Emrys Bell-Schlatter '09) worked on the translation of Euripides' Hecuba, and our class observed the Suzuki acting class twice. ... The choice of which play to produce was also made jointly by the three professors: Visvardi, Hill and [myself]. We all had our reasons for converging on this choice, and here are a few of them: Eric Hill took part in performances of this play when he was part of Tadashi Suzuki's theater company in Japan, and it suits his directing style; Eirene Visvardi has been working on the interpretation of this play and Euripides' Trojan Women in her research, and she has a special fondness for Hecuba as a relatively neglected but powerful play about war and its consequences; I last read it in graduate school in 1965, during the Vietnam War, when it also had a lot of resonance with current political and moral circumstances.

JA: How would you say the collective effort of the class affected the final version of the text?

LM: What the class produced last time (in 2005-2006) and what we have tried to do again this time is a line-by-line translation that is as faithful to the Greek original as we can make it. ... [as it is] a point of departure for the director, Eric Hill, and for Eirene Visvardi to use to produce a play that works within the conventions of modern American drama. Since we haven't seen the final version of the adaptation yet, I can only speculate on the basis of what happened before.

JA: Theater is an area of classical studies that almost all students are familiar with, as plays like the Oedipus trilogy and Medea are taught frequently in high schools. Do you think this production of Hecuba will seem familiar to students, or will play-goers find something altogether different from what they expect?

Eirene Visvardi: Certain elements will probably sound familiar from other plays that people have read before, for instance the myth of the Trojan war and some of the characters in the play. But the play itself tends to be less often read and not very often staged-even though there has been more interest in producing it since American troops were sent to Iraq. So as far as the plot goes, I think it may be less familiar than the more canonical plays. As for the production itself, I for sure expect it to be unusual and powerful because of the different forces that are coming together for it. I am talking about Eric Hill's adaptation of our translation from the original; his influences from Suzuki theater and his use of Suzuki training; the music that David Rakowski composed for the show; and a very talented cast of actors, to mention only a few things.

-Andrea Fineman

Editor's Note: Lee Marmor is a layout staff member for the Justice.