About the author: Jacob Caines is director of the Dalhousie Wind Ensemble as well as a faculty member and musicianship coordinator in the Fountain School of Performing Arts.
The name may be long and the characters thousands of years old, but Euripidaristophanize is as modern and relatable a tale as they come. To fans of Greek tragedy, the show includes household names like Euripides and Aristophanes and explores how we make art in a world coming apart at the seams.
Written by Dalhousie Fountain School alum Sophie Jacome, the audience follows real-world (although ancient) Greek playwrights through the arduous process of creating during war and strife. Speaking from the past, the characters ask us in the here and now to keep going when everything around us feels like it is coming to an end.
Despite being full of big questions, the show isn’t heavy or morose. Far from it, there is hope and humour. Like ourselves, the characters don’t stop creating in the face of terror or war. They find beauty and levity to carry them through.
Euripidaristophanize runs March 26-28 at 7:30 p.m. and March 30 at both 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the Sir James Dunn Theatre at the Dal Arts Centre.
Visit the Dal Arts Centre box office for tickets
Joy amid doubt
Bringing Euripides and Aristophanes to life, the show features beautiful hand-made masks, stunning costumes, and even a rotating stage all created by Dal’s design, costume, and technical theatre students.
Tess Kotsibie, a third-year student and mask creator, relishes the chance to form caricatures and deepen the storytelling through clay, paint, and even feathers. For Tess, the intensity of the story is softened and brightened for the audience through the details in the designs.
“I love that I get to work with the actors wearing my masks to help create a character,” says Tess. “We get to work together and decide who this person is. How we want them to look and sound on stage.”
Finding real-world relatability in larger-than-life characters is something that actor Hal Rotman finds not only possible, but inevitable. Like his character Euripides, Hal ponders how to find worth and joy in creation amid doubt and criticism.
“I suppose all of us ask the same things that Euripides does. Is my work good? Am I doing what I want to do? How do I find satisfaction in what I’m doing?” they ask.
Fourth-year acting student Tip Finless, who plays Aristophanes, reminds us that “relationships and art transcend time. I think everyone throughout history has thought those things! The circumstances always change, but we are all human and are faced with the same problems. But we all find ways through.”
Setting the stage
Following the set designs of Lucas Arab, a fourth-year stage design and technical theatre student, the other students bring these complicated and complex feelings onto the stage and help the audience feel the emotions of the characters.
For head stage carpenter, Cal Anderson, the feeling of turmoil, anxiety, and like you never have both feet firmly planted on the ground is embodied in a pneumatic rotating stage.
Paired with many tiers and levels for the actors to use, stage design and technical theatre students also built floating columns and fragments of Greek ruins that give the audience a feeling of living within an ancient Greek play.
For Cal, set building and design is their way of making art.
“I love theatre and opera. I have always wanted to work in performance, but I also love working with my hands. Actually making things. It’s the best of both world for me,” they say.
This story of doubt and attempting to find joy in our own work is relatable to everyone. The combined efforts of the Dal acting, theatre studies, costume studies, stage design and technical theatre students have brought humour and light to these big questions in a way that leaves the audience full of hope and enthusiasm.
Visit the Dal Arts Centre box office for tickets.
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