In The Lenfest Center's 'The Trojan Women,' American Insurrection Breaks Out On The Mediterranean Shore

Upper West Side NY

14 October, 2021

4:17 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY SOPHIE CRAIG OCTOBER 12, 2021 There is cellophane on the balconies and fire-retardant tarps on the walls. Rembrandt's stolen seascape hangs above a pool of loose paper—internal documents literally leaked onto the floor. The time, projected on an iPhone lock-screen, reads 2:17 p.m., January 6, 2021. As emergency notifications light up the set, the audience suddenly finds itself barricaded inside the U.S. Capitol. From Oct. 7 to 9, the Lenfest Center for the Arts premiered "The Trojan Women," a brand-new adaptation of Euripides's tragedy for chamber opera, directed by Rebecca Miller Kratzer, SoA '21, and composed by Sarah Taylor Ellis. The vivid, shimmery poetry of the libretto, written by playwright and Barnard professor Ellen McLaughlin, stretches across millennia. In Kratzer's interpretation, there are two sieges underway: While the Greeks break down city walls, American insurrectionists surround the Senate floor. Without altering McLaughlin's text, Kratzer creates another world of meaning through meticulous set and costume design. Poseidon dons a Capitol police uniform; the Trojan women wear pantsuits in muted colors; Hecuba even reenacts Nancy Pelosi's Internet-famous clap. The masked, four-piece orchestra is made up entirely of strings—the piano, cello, violin, and bandura. Kratzer described the special timbre and historical context of this Ukrainian instrument: "That's my favorite instrument," Kratzer said. "It sort of sits in my ear, somewhere between a sitar and a lute… in this intersection between the east and the west in terms of its sound. It's also an instrument that's traditionally played by men." For an audience member wary of political pageantry and propaganda, Cassandra's aria is perhaps the most sinister. Famous for her clairvoyance, she glares at the lighting booth, swinging her stiff body like a marionette. Accompanied by the low, raspy voice of the cello and an occasional, dissonant jab on the piano, she predicts her enslavement—eyes fixed on the bed of her capturer, envisioned somewhere above our heads. All of a sudden, her panic warps into a frenzied excitement. In a dazzling half-second, Cassandra stacks the scattered boxes, straightens her shoulders, and folds her hands—now standing at a makeshift podium. The lighting team makes quick work of a spotlight, ushering us into a White House press conference. "The poor Greeks! Our conquerors!" she cries. "Homesick and tired, eternally squabbling, mending their armor, stealing from each other, squinting out from our beaches across the water over which they came so long ago, and for what?" The other women look on in horror, some turning their backs, as Cassandra asks the audience for their pity—not for herself, nor for her fallen compatriots, but for the invaders. Trojan horses lurk everywhere, cropping up like the symbolic offspring of that giant, wooden party gift. They represent deceit, betrayal, a lack of control over our lives and each other. Perhaps most cruelly, they represent the end of trust. In terms of our American present, the Trojan horse's political analog is a kind of false security—such as the premature celebrations that followed the 2020 election. Reenacting their own festivities, the women pull yards of white fabric from the office boxes, lifting it over their heads in a procession. The fabric is heavy with symbolic meaning, from suffragette white and surrender to funeral shrouds and foreshadowed blood-stains. Andromache's baby son, swaddled and mute, forms the emotional center of both the opening and closing scenes. At first, the women take turns rocking his carrier. Huddled like the mothers sketched by Henry Moore, sheltering from air-raids in the London Underground, the opening sequence takes on a distinctly maternal iconography of war. In spite of the terror and violence, their shelter becomes a home. The only male cast member—a Greek soldier—halts as he crosses the threshold, as if to confirm the femininity of the space. The women vest all of their hope in the child. By the show's end, he is the stand-in for an entire generation—even for the future itself. His procedural and gruesome death is a massacre, because with him, an entire generation is thrown into the sea. Kratzer described the decision behind the graphic depiction of his corpse. "It was absolutely horrifying," Kratzer said, "and then what would happen is because I did not want to look at it, I would look at the women. So it drew me personally closer to the story of the women because it really steadied my gaze and my focus." This is the "storm"—the catastrophic threat invoked by the Trump administration—materialized in the form of soot snow and ancient shrapnel as the Trojan walls finally come down. The combination of the Trojan and American timelines is rich and fascinating, but it's not a clean analogy. Among other discontinuities, the U.S. Capitol did not burn to the ground. Rather, Kratzer's analogy carves new space for discussion by supplying each historical event with an alternate ending. As they exit the stage, the Trojan women are neither entering slavery nor emerging from an emergency lockdown. Rather, they leave us in the ritualized movement of procession—still in command of their bodies. "I see the show as a battle-cry against depression," Kratzer said. "I see the show as resiliency. I don't know that I see it as hopeful. I think that I long for the day when it becomes irrelevant to perform 'The Trojan Women.'" Deputy A&E Editor Sophie Craig can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.