The Gustavus community is set to be dazzled by another ambitious undertaking of the Gustavus Theatre Department. Beginning Nov. 5 through Nov. 8 students and faculty present the result of their hard work in the fall play, Argonautika: The Voyage of Jason and the Argonauts.
The play is based on the Greek epic poem Argonautica written by Polonius. It tells the story of Jason who has been given the impossible task of retrieving the Golden Fleece in hopes of inheriting the kingdom of Iolcus. He gathers a crew to help him, the Argonauts, many of these individuals are well-known Greek figures like Hercules and Athena, who acts as a goddess guide.
From here, Jason and the Argonauts set out on a magnificent and, in the spirit of Greek epics, tragic adventure filled with humor, romance, danger, and courage.
The story has been modernized and adapted for the theatre by MacArthur Fellow Mary Zimmerman. Director Henry MacCarthy explains his excitement about the department’s choice for the fall play.
“The play has the spirit of the original poem and it has a great deal of humor, but what I really enjoy about Zimmerman’s plays is that she writes things that are almost unstageable, so they’re very challenging and it’s exciting to work with. She picks these epic tales that are just huge and she makes them very accessible,” MacCarthy said.
Aforementioned unstageable things include a sea monster, a dragon, a giant that kills people with his bare hands, a goddess flying off in a shower of gold, and much more.
“The very nature of the show is that it has to have all these amazing, fantastic moments. Our director has solved those issues in an extremely interesting way,” Junior Philosophy Major Nick Sweetland said.
Another exciting challenge of the play is the fact that the original script includes more than forty characters, which had to be made possible by twelve Gustavus student actors. Therefore, nearly all of the actors are at least double cast, meaning they play more than one character. For example, Sweetland plays Hercules in the first half of the play and changes character to Aetes in the second half.
Some decisions for who and how to double cast were based on necessity or opportunities for certain actors, but more interestingly, whenever possible they were chosen to create deliberate contrasts and ironies.
“My hope is that the audience is going to recognize that it’s the same actor, even though they’re wearing something different, they’re playing a different character, but somehow they can see some link there,” MacCarthy said.
Argonautika is Senior Theatre Honors Major Laura Herbers honors project. She is one of the only actors who is not double cast. Herbers plays an essential role throughout the entire play as Athena, one of the Goddesses who guides Jason and the Argonauts. However, she and the other gods and goddesses aren’t stereotypically represented.
“The gods and goddesses aren’t portrayed as these high-up what you would think of a goddess, like I don’t wear the beautiful goddess robes, though I would like to,” Herbers said. “We are humanizing the gods and goddesses as much as we can without actually making them human, so there’s still this separation between the Gods and demi-gods and the humans; however, especially shown through our costumes, we’re playing representative of the gods are among us.”
On top of this theme, the play contains many depths and interesting themes beyond a typical epic adventure story.
“Throughout the entire play, you have all these strange threatening moments of parents effectively killing their children in the weirdest ways possible. I think it’s really cool the way Mary Zimmerman has that running motif throughout the show but doesn’t hammer you over the head with it,” Sweetland said.
MacCarthy contends that the play can also shed light on some issues the world, and even our own community here at Gustavus, are currently facing.
“I think the piece is very relevant in terms of how we perceive the other, especially with all the migration issues that are going on right now and the refugee crises, this play talks a little bit about that in the sense of how people from different lands approach each other and what happens when xenophobia is your MO. It deals with issues of colonialism and imperialism, masked as a Greek tragedy,” MacCarthy said.
The Theatre Department faculty along with students throughout a wide range of majors have come together to make a complete and unique work possible. All the music in the play is original music composed by Senior Music Major Aaron Bogen and it’s all played live, the cast plays music and they sing. Also, all of the costumes are designed by Senior Theatre Major Natalicia Zumberge.
“It’s going to be a very fun and dynamic show. This show is constantly going, everything is extremely physical, everyone is running around constantly, the pulse doesn’t really drop,” Sweetland said.