Medea
April 11–28, 2024
Presented by La MaMa in association with CultureHub
Press
New York Theatre Wire
Medea is a borderless Tekhne Epic for live audiences in person and online conceived by La MaMa's Great Jones Repertory Company, CultureHub, and Zishan Ugurlu. The epic tells the story of Medea, a refugee whose reality is shattered when she learns of her and her children's looming exile, investigating parallels between the myth and the current refugee crisis by collaging real stories, ancient tongues, and hackable audiovisual systems.
A major part of the production is a reimagining of La MaMa’s Medea which was originally composed by the late Elizabeth Swados with direction by Andrei Serban for the company’s celebrated 1972 presentation. The work is experienced in three parts, and the stark, embodied performance is counterpoint to the rich media and technology landscape.
Presented in La MaMa’s recently-renovated 74A E. 4 St. building, Medea unfolded across 3 floors and leveraged the building-wide data network to break past the walls of the theatre. Using custom-built interactive technologies, an online audience affected audio, video, and lighting elements throughout the show. The in-person and online versions followed the same story, but distinctly different iterations, allowing audiences to attend both experiences for a deeper look into the world of the production.
Medea was developed within Experiments in Digital Storytelling and was presented as part of Great Jones Repertory Company’s HUMANISMO PROJECT: ANCIENT FUTURE SERIES, a series that examines our current era of uncertainty, isolation, and public unrest, looking to ancient stories to imagine alternative futures for humanity.
View the program.