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| RACHEAL ALVSTAD/ Scroll Photo |
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The darkness fell over the audience. At the center of the stage the flicker of a flame illuminated the vale surrounding it. Melancholy flute music played in the background, setting the mood for the Greek tragedy, Medea.
BYU-Idaho theater department has been staging Medea since April 2 and will continue to perform in the Kirkham Arena April 11-15.
Valarie Best, a senior from Rexburg, plays Medea, a sorceress who is heartbroken and angry when her husband Jason leaves her to marry the daughter of the King of Corinth. Medea then plans and carries out her revenge on Jason.
All Greek tragedies remain applicable through history because they deal with universal truths, Best said.
“It’s a privilege to play such an important role,” Best said. “It’s a challenge, a struggle, to give an honest performance every night.”
Lanny Williams, a junior from Victor, Idaho, said the play is significant because history repeats itself.
“We have to learn from past mistakes and to try and become better,” Williams said.
Julia Smoot, a freshman from Brigham City, Utah, who played as a member of the chorus, said the role of the chorus was to be watchers and witnesses of the events and to try to involve the audience in witnessing the events too.
“It was really neat to be in the chorus because we were able to interact with the audience and bring them into the play,” Smoot said.
Randy Henderson, a junior from Rexburg, said he thought the message of the play remained applicable to modern times because of the relationships portrayed between people are the same today.
Medea is a play written by Euripides, 485-406 B.C., and it was adapted by Omar Hansen, the director of the play and theater department faculty at BYU-I. Hansen also wrote the music that the chorus sings.
Hansen adapted the play with three major intentions in mind as printed in the program. First, Hansen wanted to stay close to the language, plot and ideals of Euripides work. Second, he made an actable script that he thought would play well to modern audiences. Finally, Hansen replaced the pagan references with the corresponding Christian and American language idioms so the audience would see that Euripides’ world and our own are not so different.
The program also has a quote by President Brigham Young from a speech that he gave at the dedication of the New Theater in the Great Salt Lake City.
“The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a dread of its consequences.”
