The Children of Herakles opens tomorrow! Produced by the UH Center for Creative Work, this rarely staged Euripides drama features a new translation and poetic setting by John Harvey, Richard Armstrong, original music by Richard Power, and choreography/direction by Katelyn Halpern. I play Iolaos, aged guardian of Herakles’ exiled children. We seek refuge in Athens, hoping their idealism and piety will move them to defend us from Herakles’ nemesis, Eurystheus. It’s an unusual Greek play in that the typical tragic mechanisms, hamartia, hubris, fate, are mostly absent. Instead, the Athenian ideals are at stake – piety, hospitality, democracy, protections for the weak, due process. A war with pragmatic Mycenae, who equate justice with strength, raises the so-familiar question: how do we deal with brutes without becoming brutes ourselves?
Most chilling – both for its ambiguity and its uncanny understatement – is the ending. A last-minute oracular revelation reverses everything we understand about who is good and who is not.
No tickets remain.
The now-annual Around Hear concert in Mandell Park is this Saturday, April 18 at 2pm. I’m playing and singing three Beatles songs I’ve re-written. Last year was great – a real family neighborhood picnic feel, kids dancing to crazy modern music, awesome. In the Houston area? Come join us!
Children of Herakles, Around Hear
April 14, 2009Two upcoming events:
The Children of Herakles opens tomorrow! Produced by the UH Center for Creative Work, this rarely staged Euripides drama features a new translation and poetic setting by John Harvey, Richard Armstrong, original music by Richard Power, and choreography/direction by Katelyn Halpern. I play Iolaos, aged guardian of Herakles’ exiled children. We seek refuge in Athens, hoping their idealism and piety will move them to defend us from Herakles’ nemesis, Eurystheus. It’s an unusual Greek play in that the typical tragic mechanisms, hamartia, hubris, fate, are mostly absent. Instead, the Athenian ideals are at stake – piety, hospitality, democracy, protections for the weak, due process. A war with pragmatic Mycenae, who equate justice with strength, raises the so-familiar question: how do we deal with brutes without becoming brutes ourselves?
Most chilling – both for its ambiguity and its uncanny understatement – is the ending. A last-minute oracular revelation reverses everything we understand about who is good and who is not.
No tickets remain.
The now-annual Around Hear concert in Mandell Park is this Saturday, April 18 at 2pm. I’m playing and singing three Beatles songs I’ve re-written. Last year was great – a real family neighborhood picnic feel, kids dancing to crazy modern music, awesome. In the Houston area? Come join us!