By Kelly Koepke

Shepard Sobel, Theater Director

Shepard Sobel, founding artistic director
of The Pearl Theatre in New York City and recent Albuquerque transplant, makes his Duke City directorial debut with “Medea ” at The Vortex Theatre.

We asked him about the challenges inherent in bringing an ancient play to the modern stage.

albuquerqueARTS: How did you choose Medea for your Albuquerque directorial debut?

I have a particular fondness for Greek tragedy, and David Jones of The Vortex liked that idea. Then the question became “Which one?” Naturally, “Medea” is a bigger name than some of the other plays. We wanted to be sure that it could attract audiences. It seemed a better way to sell a not-very-common product in Albuquerque.

albuquerqueARTS: What do you mean?

Albuquerque is remarkable for the amount of theater being done here. It must be way higher than other places. I did notice, and David corroborated, that classics – not just the Greeks – classics of the last 2,500 years, are less represented than more contemporary plays, especially those of the late to mid-20^th-century. A production of “Oedipus” and one of “Antigone” were done last season, but the Greeks are certainly a smaller percentage of what’s done. So the average theatergoer in Albuquerque hasn’t seen a Greek tragedy for some time.

albuquerqueARTS: So how do you think audiences will react?

Greek tragedy grabs contemporary audiences in an extraordinary way. I know lots of people from my own experience at The Pearl, who come to classical plays and are hooked. This is the oldest theater we have, and it’s talking to people in immediate and gripping terms. People have an experience they weren’t expecting to have. I’m a big believer in how Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles speak to us. We’re not dealing with issues that aren’t taken from today’s papers, or seen at holiday celebrations.

albuquerqueARTS: That’s true, but how do you deal with the Greeks’ fondness for deus ex machina? Medea’s got a dragon-powered chariot that whisks the main character away.

Indeed! There’s no good coming up with new ways to present the spectacle to wow crowds in an 80-seat theater. What we are really talking about is a woman who feels very wronged, a sacred oath has been transgressed. She takes revenge, interestingly, and gathers a chorus of women who find something simpatico [in] this taste for revenge. The deeper appeal is when we begin to realize what the ramifications of the story are.

albuquerqueARTS: And what are those ramifications?

We’re talking and speaking in very desperate terms to an Athens that was risking its glorious and high-minded principles, dealing with xenophobia, and with power-grabbing imperialism and protectionism. There are issues that go to our sense of racial and feminist justice and equality and our sense of what our home is and how that gets defined, what family means, what oaths and ethics mean. These are things you can read on the front page of the paper this morning.

Angela Littleton as Medea and Peter Diseth as Jason

“Medea”
February 12 – March 7
Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sun. at 6 p.m

at
The Vortex Theatre
2004-1/2 Central SE
Contact 505.247.8600

—Kelly Koepke is a contributing editor to albuquerqueARTS.