“I don’t want to give this one away,” said acting professor Barbara Smith, director of the U theatre department’s upcoming production of Euripides’ Helen.
“Unlike a lot of Greek scripts, this one’s really plot-driven,” she said.
Based on Helen of Troy and with a translation by Kenneth McLeish, Euripides’ Helen elaborates on a tale suggested by the lyric poet Stesichorus.
“He wrote a four-line poem that Helen never went to Troy; that she went to Egypt instead,” Smith said.
In this play, Euripides explains Helen’s presence in Troy was merely that of a phantom replica sent in her place while she was under the care of the pharaoh.
“It’s got twists and turns, mistaken identities, costume changes — it’s really quite action-packed,” Smith said.
Helen is part of the U theatre department’s annual Classical Greek Theatre Festival, in which a classic Greek drama kicks off the season of productions held in the Babcock Theatre and the Performing Arts Building Studio 115. However, the Greek show begins the season by breaking the rules to follow tradition.
With more than 37 years of performances, the annual Greek show used to commence at 6:00 a.m., in true Greek drama fashion. The starting time has since been updated to 9:00 a.m., but still pays homage to the outdoor amphitheatre style of Greek venues.
Rather than take place in one of the theater department’s production spaces, Helen will be performed outside, to the north of the Performing Arts Building and west of the Campus Bookstore.
Though novel, an outdoor performance exacts different tolls on those involved.
“The demand on the actors is a lot greater — vocally and physically,” said Smith, adding that they must cope with performing in a large outdoor venue without microphones.
While audience members get a few hours of extra sleep thanks to the updated start time, the actors — who have been rehearsing the play since August 13 — are required to arrive on campus at 6 a.m. to begin the necessary set-up for the performance.
“They do everything,” said Smith.
The Greek theatre festival also claims novelty among the theatre department’s season of plays as the only performance that offers a paying contract to actors, as the performance will tour Westminster College, Weber State and BYU this fall.
Other productions offered by the department of rheatre will feature works by international playwrights in coordination with President Young’s declaration of the ’07-’08 school year as the “Year of Internationalization.”
The Babcock Theatre will host a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, which will take the stage in late September, giving theater-goers more insight into Frank’s uncensored thoughts.
“They put more of her diary back in,” said Tillie Wilber, head of marketing and communication within the theater department.
Thinking it would be offensive, earlier versions of the play omitted Frank’s diary entries that talked of her feelings about her own sexuality, said Wilber. “It gives a much better sense of the real person,” she said of the new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman.
Next in line for Babcock’s season is Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, which will be performed throughout November and boasts the unusual combination of jealousy, banishment and royalty-raised-by-poverty resulting in a happy ending.
Babcock will christen the new year with a contemporary love-triangle play titled Tristan and Yseult, to be performed in late February through early March.
A work by English playwrights Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy, this production was originally directed by Emma Rice at the London National Theatre for Kneehigh Theatre, a company known for its cutting-edge and innovative approach to dramatic art.
Closing the season of Babcock performances will be Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, a fiery portrayal of a true story of feuding families in rural Spain, infused with love, passion, pride and death.
Studio 115 productions will consist of anticipated regulars, such as the entirely student-produced collection of new plays, Experiments in Ink, in the fall followed by the Student Advisory Committee show in the spring — a production that is determined by popular vote among theatre majors.
Additions to the season include the musical Happy End in October, written by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Elisabeth Hauptmann (aka Dorothy Lane). Set in Chicago in 1919, this play weaves mobsters and criminal reform with unexpected love.
Taking audiences to the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland this November is the dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan by playwright Martin McDonagh. This story centers on a Hollywood film crew’s documentary of the islands, which ends up featuring a crippled orphan.
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls celebrates famous women in history for Women’s History Month in March as Studio 115 brings this British feminist play to campus.
Concluding the department’s season, as well as the school year, is a new play, Treasure, by faculty member and award-winning playwright Tim Slover. The play examines 18th century politics and manipulation of power brokers through the story of first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and his affair with Maria Reynolds.
For exact dates of all performances, including ticket and location details, please visit www.theatre.utah.edu, www.kingtix.com or call 801-581-7100.