Euripides 

(484 BCE - 406 BCE)

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Alcestis is the earliest surviving play by Euripides. Alcestis, the devoted wife of King Admetus, has agreed to die in his place, and at the beginning of the play she is close to death. In the first scene, Apollo argues with Thanatos (Death), asking to prolong Alcestis' life, but Thanatos refuses. Apollo leaves, but suggests that a man will come to Pherae who will save Alcestis. Euripides' play is perhaps the most unusual Greek drama ever written: a tragedy that is not a tragedy.

Cast:
Admetus: Todd
Alcestis/Chorus: Elizabeth Klett
Pheres: Bruce Pirie
Little Boy: Lyn Silva
Manservant: Bala
Handmaid: Arielle Lipshaw
Heracles: mb
Apollo: Libby Gohn
Thanatos: Engineerdst
Chorus Leader: Caprisha Page
Narrator: David Lawrence

Alcestis, queen of Pherae, is one of the noblest heroines in all of Greek drama. Her husband Admetus is the supposedly virtuous king of Pherae who wins the friendship of the god Apollo. Apollo tricks the Eumenides into an agreement that when the time comes for Admetus to die, a willing substitute will be accepted in his place, allowing his friend to go on living. Admetus selfishly tries to persuade anyone to agree to be his substitute, even his own parents, but no one is willing to make that sacrifice; this disappointment and its tragic consequences embitter him, leading him ultimately to disown his father and mother. Finally his wife Alcestis nobly agrees to die for him, unwilling to leave her children without a father. When the play opens, the moment for the death of Alcestis is at hand and an unexpected guest is at the door.

“Alcestis,” first produced at the City Dionysia festival in 438 BCE, has always been hard to categorize. Its ambiguous, tragicomic tone—which may be "cheerfully romantic" or "bitterly ironic"—has earned it the label of a "problem play." "Alcestis" is, possibly excepting the "Rhesus," the oldest surviving work by Euripides, although at the time of its first performance he had been producing plays for 17 years.

Andromache is a Classical Greek verse tragedy written by Euripides in the 5th century BCE. When Troy was taken by the Greeks, Andromache, wife of that Hector whom Achilles slew ere himself was slain by the arrow which Apollo guided, was given in the dividing of the spoils to Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son. So he took her oversea to the land of Thessaly, and loved her, and entreated her kindly, and she bare him a son in her captivity. But after ten years! Neoptolemus took to wife a princess of Sparta, Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen. But to these was no child born, and the soul of Hermione grew bitter with jealousy against Andromache. Now Neoptolemus, in his indignation for his father’s death, had upbraided Apollo therewith: wherefore he now journeyed to Delphi, vainly hoping by prayer and sacrifice to assuage the wrath of the God. But so soon as he was gone, Hermione sought to avenge herself on Andromache ; and Menelaus came thither also, and these twain went about to slay the captive and her child, Wherefore Andromache hid her son, and took sanctuary at the altar of the Goddess Thetis, expecting till Peleus, her lord’s grandsire, should come to save her. And herein are set forth her sore peril and deliverance : also it is told how Neoptolemus found death at Delphi, and how he that contrived his death took his wife.

Cast List
Andromache: Wendy Katz Hiller
Handmaid: Agnes Robert Behr
Hermione: Rita Boutros
Menelaus: Algy Pug
Molossus: Inkell
Peleus: Beeswaxcandle
Nurse: Sonia
Orestes: Greg Giordano
Messenger: Larry Wilson
Thetis: dc
Chorus: Alan Mapstone
Stage Directions: James R Hedrick

Odysseus and his men are herded into a cave where the Cyclops begins to eat the crew. With the help of the satyrs, Odysseus hatches a plot to blind the Cyclops and escape. After getting Polyphemus drunk, Odysseus successfully blinds him with a giant poker - the satyrs actually prove to be of little help - and escapes.
Silenus: Jim Locke
Odysseus: Adrian Stephens
The Cyclops: Alan Mapstone
First Half Chorus of Satyrs: ToddHW
Second Half Chorus of Satyrs: Jenn Brodal

The tragedy is based on the mythological story of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agavë, and their punishment by the god Dionysus (who is Pentheus' cousin) for refusing to worship him.

Cast:
Dionysus:MB
Cadmus: Bruce Pirie
Pentheus: Algy Pug
Agave: Roseanne Schmidt
Teiresias: Matthew Reece
Soldier: John Fricker
Messenger: Dale Burgess
Chorus/Narrator: Elizabeth Klet

Euripides' Bacchae tells of Dionysus, the God, come to the city of Thebes, there to drive mad those who refuse participation in his ecstatic rites, sing and dance on the mountainside and worship him as God. A family tale as well as a sacrificial rite, in it Dionysus drives his own aunts mad and lures his cousin, Pentheus, cross-dressed as a woman, to a humiliating death at his own mother's hands. An extraordinarily beautiful, utterly terrifying tale.

Euripides' Bacchae is based on the Greek myth of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agave and their punishment by the god Dionysus who proclaims that he has come to Thebes to avenge the slander that he is not the son of Zeus. He intends to introduce Dionysian rites into the city and to demonstrate to Pentheus that he was indeed born a god. At the end of the play Pentheus is torn apart by the women of Thebes and Agave bears his head on a pike to her father Cadmus. Bacchae is distinctive from most other Greek tragedies in that the chorus is an integral part of the plot and the God is not a distant presence but the main protagonist.

This translation by Henry Hart Milman, former Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, is in the form of a dramatic poem rather than a play.

Cast List:
Dionysus: Greg Giordano
Pentheus: Paul
Tiresias: ToddHW
Cadmus: Jonathan Jones
Officer: David Purdy
Messenger: Anna Maria
Agave: Jenn Broda
Chorus of Bacchanals: Alan Mapstone

Electra (the Unmated One) is eaten up with hatred of her mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for their murder of her father Agamemnon. Married platonically to a good-hearted but poverty-stricken old peasant, she longs for the return of her brother Orestes to help her wreak vengeance. Orestes finally returns and together they carry out their fated work, but find the result to be as tragically meaningless as the lust for vengeance had been poisonous. Strikingly different from Sophocles, who wrote his “Electra” with full sympathy for the divine ordinance of revenge, Euripides squarely blames the God Apollo for putting an evil commandment on the shoulders of the siblings. He also shows the tragic ambiguity of the entire situation, pleading a strong, emotional case for Clytemnestra and showing her vulnerable motherliness at the moment of her death. Deeper, more human psychologically than Sophocles or Aeschylus, Euripides is compared with good reason in the translator’s introduction to modern playwrights such as Browning or Ibsen.

Like Euripides' Trojan Women, this play takes place after the sack of Troy. Hecuba, widow of King Priam, suffers the loss of her daughter Polyxena and her son Polydore, and is hungry for revenge on those who have wronged her.

Cast of Characters:
Ghost of Polydore: Rob Board
Hecuba: Elizabeth Klett
Chorus: Rapunzelina
Polyxena: Kristin Gjerløw
Ulysses: Alan Mapstone
Talthybius: Todd
Attendant: Mary Kay
Agamemnon: Larry Wilson
Polymestor: davidpr
Narrator: MaryAnn

Eurpides' tragedy tells of Theseus' chaste son Hippolytus, who refuses to worship Aphrodite in favor of Artemis. Aphrodite gets revenge by causing Hippolytus' stepmother Phaedra to fall in love with him, unleashing a chain of tragic events.

Cast
Aphrodite: Caprisha Page
Theseus: Bruce Pirie
Phaedra: Elizabeth Klett
Hippolytus: mb
Nurse: April Gonzales
Henchman: Bob Gonzalez
Artemis: Arielle Lipshaw
Chorus leader: Naomi Park
Chorus 1: Amanda Friday
Chorus 2: Elizabeth Klett
Chorus 3: Amy Gramour
Old Huntsman: Delmar H. Dolbier
Narrator: Leni

Iphigenia in Aulis is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. The Greek fleet is waiting at Aulis, Boeotia, with its ships ready to sail for Troy, but it is unable to depart due to a strange lack of wind. After consulting the seer Calchas, the Greek leaders learn that this is no mere meteorological abnormality but rather the will of the goddess Artemis, who is withholding the winds because Agamemnon has caused her offense. Calchas informs the general that in order to appease the goddess, he must sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. Agamemnon, in spite of his horror, must consider this seriously because his assembled troops, who have been waiting on the beach and are increasingly restless, may rebel if their bloodlust is not satisfied. He sends a message to his wife, Clytemnestra, telling her to send Iphigenia to Aulis on the pretext that the girl is to be married to the Greek warrior Achilles before he sets off to fight.

Cast:
Agamemnon: Bob Neufeld
Old Man: Todd
Menelaus: Algy Pug
Chorus/Messenger: Elizabeth Klett
Clytemnestra: Libby Gohn
Iphigenia: Amanda Friday
Achilles: Denny Sayers
Narrator: Charlotte Duckett


Iphigenia in Aulis is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after the Oresteia, and 406 BC, the year of Euripides' death, the play was first produced the following year in a trilogy with The Bacchae and Alcmaeon in Corinth by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger, and won the first place at the Athenian city Dionysia. The play revolves around Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek coalition before and during the Trojan War, and his decision to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis and allow his troops to set sail to preserve their honour in battle against Troy. The conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles over the fate of the young woman presages a similar conflict between the two at the beginning of the Iliad. In his depiction of the experiences of the main characters, Euripides frequently uses tragic irony for dramatic effect. This verse translation is by Arthur Sanders Way, a classical scholar, translator and headmaster of Wesley College, Melbourne, Australia.

Orestes, coming into Tauri in Scythia, in company with Pylades, had been commanded to bear away the image of Diana, after which he was to meet with a respite from the avenging Erinnyes of his mother. His sister Iphigenia, who had been carried away by Diana from Aulis, when on the point of being sacrificed by her father, chances to be expiating a dream that led her to suppose Orestes dead, when a herdsman announces to her the arrival and detection of two strangers, whom she is bound by her office to sacrifice to Diana. On meeting, a mutual discovery takes place, and they plot their escape.

Cast List:
Iphigenia: Elizabeth Klett
Orestes: TenorBoy
Pylades: Rob Board
Herdsman: Jeffrey Church
Thoas: alanmapstone
Messenger: Beth Thomas
Minerva: Lydia
Chorus: Kristin Gjerløw
Narrator: Availle

The apparent sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis by her own father Agamemnon was forestalled by the godness Artemis, who by an adroit sleight of hand that fooled all participants, substituted a deer for the daughter. Wafted magically away to the “Friendless Shores” of savage Tauris and installed as chief priestess presiding over the human sacrifice of all luckless foreigners, Iphigenia broods over her “murder” by her parents and longs for some Greeks to be shipwrecked on her shores so she can wreak a vicarious vengeance on them. Little does she expect her own little brother Orestes to be one of those Greeks brought to her altar.

Possibly the most beautiful of the plays of Euripides, the Iphigenia in Tauris relates the final resolution of the dark tragedy of the House of Atreides. Filled with radiant imagery of sunlight and sea-foam and bird-flight (reproduced beautifully by the learned Oxford scholar Gilbert Murray), this is not a tragedy but a story with a happy ending, in which all the innocent are freed and equilibrium is restored. Despite the happy ending, this is no light romance; throughout the play the plangent tones of human sadness, homesickness, and exile remind the reader that happiness is the ephemeral thing, while sadness takes so many eternal forms.

Euripides' tragedy focuses on the disintegration of the relationship between Jason, the hero who captured the Golden Fleece, and Medea, the sorceress who returned with him to Corinth and had two sons with him. As the play opens, Jason plans to marry the daughter of King Creon, and the lovesick Medea plots how to take her revenge.

Cast:
Narrator/Second Child: Kristingj
Medea: Elizabeth Klett
Jason: MB
Creon: Algy Pug
Aegeus: T. K. Kirven
Nurse: Valerie Tan
Attendant: Robert Hoffman
Messenger: Bob Gonzalez
Chorus Leader/First Child: Amanda Friday
Chorus 1: Margaret Espaillat
Chorus 2: Rhonda Federman
Chorus 3: Availle

Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BCE. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a barbarian and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by killing Jason's new wife as well as her own children with him, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life. Considered shocking to the playwright's contemporaries, Medea and the suite of plays that it accompanied in the City Dionysia festival came last in the festival that year. Nonetheless the play remained part of the tragedic repertoire, and experienced renewed interest with the emergence of the feminist movement, because of its nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of Medea's struggle to take charge of her own life in a male-dominated world. The play has remained the most frequently performed Greek tragedy through the 20th century.

In accordance with the advice of the god Apollo, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father Agamemnon at her hands. Despite Apollo’s earlier prophecy, Orestes finds himself tormented by Erinyes or Furies to the blood guilt stemming from his matricide. The only person capable of calming Orestes down from his madness is his sister Electra. To complicate matters further, a leading political faction of Argos wants to put Orestes to death for the murder. Orestes’ only hope to save his life lies in his uncle Menelaus, who has returned with Helen after spending ten years in Troy and several more years amassing wealth in Egypt. In the chronology of events following Orestes, this play takes place after the events contained in plays such as Electra by Euripides or The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, and before events contained in plays like The Eumenides by Aeschylus and Andromache by Euripides. As Buckley's translation of the argument concludes, "The play is among the most celebrated on the stage, but infamous in its morals; for, with the exception of Pylades, all the characters are bad persons."

Cast List:
Electra: Elizabeth Klett
Helen: Beth Thomas
Hermione: Mary Kay
Chorus of Argive Women: Kristin Gjerløw
Orestes: Todd
Menelaus: Bruce Pirie
Tyndarus: Algy Pug
Pylades: Rob Board
Messenger: Availle
Phrygian/Semi-Chorus: April Walters
Apollo: Phil Schempf
Narrator: Lydia

Described by modern playwright Ellen McLaughlin as "perhaps the greatest antiwar play ever written," "The Trojan Women," also known as "Troades," is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced in 415 BC during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians earlier that year. 415 BC was also the year of the scandalous desecration of the hermai and the Athenians' second expedition to Sicily, events which may also have influenced the author. The Trojan Women was the third tragedy of a trilogy dealing with the Trojan War. The first tragedy, Alexandros, was about the recognition of the Trojan prince Paris who had been abandoned in infancy by his parents and rediscovered in adulthood. The second tragedy, Palamedes, dealt with Greek mistreatment of their fellow Greek Palamedes. This trilogy was presented at the Dionysia along with the comedic satyr play Sisyphos. The plots of this trilogy were not connected in the way that Aeschylus' Oresteia was connected. Euripides did not favor such connected trilogies. Euripides won second prize at the City Dionysia for his effort, losing to the obscure tragedian Xenocles. The four Trojan women of the play are the same who appear in the final book of the Iliad lamenting over the corpse of Hector.

Euripides' play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and as their remaining families are about to be taken away as slaves. However, it begins first with the gods Athena and Poseidon discussing ways to punish the Greek armies because they condoned Ajax the Lesser for dragging Cassandra away from Athena's temple. What follows shows how much the Trojan women have suffered as their grief is compounded when the Greeks dole out additional deaths and divide their shares of women. This translation by Gilbert Murray was published in 1915.

Cast:
Poseidon: Martin Geeson
Pallas Athena: Sweetlilbirdy
Hecuba: Ruth Golding
Chorus leader: Ransom
Chorus 2: Kelseigh
Chorus 3: Jessamy Gloor
Chorus 4: Leni
Chorus 5: Michele McNeal
Chorus 6: Elizabeth Klett
Talthybius: Don Stirno
Cassandra: Lucy Perry
Andromache: Elizabeth Klett
Menelaus: Bellona Times
Helen: Arielle Lipshaw
Narrator: David Lawrence