Theater Review | Student-original play sinks its teeth in Euripedes, Shakespeare

Michael Todd
Contributing Writer

This past Halloween weekend, VCU Theatre offered cast and audience members alike the opportunity to “sink their teeth” into something new with the world premiere of “[vampire] Medea,” an entirely original VCU production from script, to sound, to set, to stage.

Written and directed by graduate student Augustin Correro, “[vampire] Medea” is inspired by the original Euripides play with some “bloody” modifications that encapsulate everything from humor to affection to macabre severity, growing increasingly dark as the play progresses.

Building off the groundwork of the original play, the script is comprised almost entirely of text from Shakespearean tragedies appropriated and frankensteined together to fit the context of Medea’s equally tragic downfall.

The idea behind Medea was first conceived five years ago in a tragedy class where, as an exercise in staging, Correro had to solve the problem posed by the original play where Medea rides off the stage in a dragon chariot. As a solution, Correro decided that, “If Medea existed in a world of vampires, she could just (turn into a bat and) fly away herself.”

Since that time, the script has undergone numerous undergrad workshops and as many as five discernable drafts in its evolution from idea to final production. During these workshops, each participant rarely read the same role twice to ensure as much accessibility from actor to actor as possible.

Correro credits “at least 30 percent” of this process, which continued even into rehearsals, to the cast alone, some of whom were included in the editing process before ever auditioning for the show. Perhaps the greatest source of the pride for the director, beyond the conception of the idea itself, was the group of individuals who helped nourish it to its full potential.

One of the many alterations includes the change of the original character King Creon into Crea, Queen of Corinth. This makes Medea, according to Correro, “(a) singular woman against all men and all other women (to show the) competitive nature of
loyalty, power (and) job security.”

Furthermore, the rigorous editing process allowed Correro to bridge inherent gaps in the text that were not at first evident as he added, subtracted and tweaked as needed. This process also permitted cast members to dig deeper in their research of the text in order to gain a more solid understanding of their characters.

The show opens with a chorus of ghouls, viewed as extensions of Medea, humorously summarizing via a play within a play all the action preceding the rest of the show, which takes place in a single day.

“The chorus (members) are the heart and soul of the show,” graduate student Sharisse Saunders (Medea) commented fondly of cast members Joe Winters, Jared Elton, Aquirra Lundy and Brandon R. Butts. “They give you action, tell you where to look … Without them, (I) don’t know what this (show) would be.”

This lighthearted parody includes background information such as Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, his and Medea’s meeting, their return to Corinth where the show takes place and is followed swiftly by the dramatic spiral into Medea’s morbid trials.

As the play progresses and Medea unravels as a result of her circumstances, the audience is left to deal with and discern between three different facets of her character: the Medea who goes to the darker places Corinth tries to restrain her from, the Medea who is being restrained and to whom all these horrible things are happening and the Medea who is trying to hold everything in her world together – without much success.

“Medea’s unraveling … was something I struggled with personally during rehearsal (because) it’s so pivotal,” Saunders said. “All of the things that are happening to her over the course of this one day is enough to break her down completely. Almost all of (the characters) go to that place of raw expression. (It was) daunting knowing (I) would have to go there.”

Medea’s truly tragic flaw spawns from her inability to both step back and evaluate her circumstances and to listen to the counsel of those advising her, resulting in the unraveling of her sanity and the destruction of the world that surrounds her and all its inhabitants. Her rash decisions, which are completely justified to her, actually have a direct correlation to the collapse of everything around her that she values.

“What I hope we’ve done is given these (characters) depth and life that, even being undead, is riveting to watch because (these)are stories of real people,” Saunders expressed of her desire that VCU students use this new work as an opportunity to explore all that theatre has to offer.

“[vampire] Medea” represents a success by all VCU students involved to bring something new, even if out of the old, to the stage.

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Photos by Chris Conway