The Women of Troy
Writer
Euripides, in a version by Don Taylor
Director
Gemma Fairlie
Venue
Online
Dates
Wednesday 10 March at 7:30pm
About the show
“The old life is gone, old gods, old hearth
And home, destroyed.”
The city of Troy is in ruins. Ravaged by an army of Greeks who swept through unseen, hidden by the night. Only the women survive.
Shut away behind the thick prison walls, the women of Troy are powerless to save the ones they love or themselves.
Trapped in their cells, and isolated from the world, they rage against their fates. Left alone with their grief, they can only mourn for the lives they once knew, and fear for what the future holds for them.
In a LAMDA first, this filmed production of The Women of Troy was performed and recorded in the actors’ homes. This innovative film will be digitally screened on 10 March.
Don Taylor was a playwright and poet, and a director of theatre, television and radio plays.
After leaving Oxford, he worked as drama director at the BBC, and between 1960 and 1990, he directed nearly a 100 television plays, the first works by David Mercer and Hugh Whitemore, as well as 17 of his own original TV plays, and a number of large-scale classical productions of Shakespeare, Granville Barker, Arthur Miller, Sheridan, Bulgakov and Edward Bond.
He translated and directed for BBC Television and Theban plays of Sophocles - Oedipus the King, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus. He followed this with translations of three Euripides war plays – Iphigenia at Aulis (directed by Katie Mitchell, initially at the Abbey Theatre in 2001 and at the National Theatre in 2004), The Women of Troy and Helen.
He continued working in the theatre, directing Sir Anthony Quayle in his last King Lear and also in Gogol's The Government Inspector for Compass Theatre, of which he was co-director at the time.
In 1996 he and Ellen Dryden set up First Writes Radio, an independent drama company. Don Taylor's many stage plays include The Roses of Eyam, The Exorcism, Daughters of Venice, Brotherhood, When the Actors Come, Retreat from Moscow, When the Barbarians Came and The Road to the Sea.
He died in 2003.
Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BCE and grew up during the years of Athenian recovery after the Persian Wars.
His first play was presented in 455 BCE and he wrote some hundred altogether. Nineteen survive – a greater number than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined – including Alkestis, Medea, Bacchae, Hippolytos, Ion and Iphigenia at Aulis.
His later plays are marked by a sense of disillusion at the futility of human aspiration which amounts on occasion to a philosophy of absurdism.
A year or two before his death he left Athens to live at the court of the king of Macedon, dying there in 406 BCE.
Booking
Tickets are restricted to industry only. Please contact the box office if you are interested.
Creative team
Director
Gemma Fairlie
Assistant Director
Tom Bostock
Designer
Sara Perks
Movement Director
Maggie Ann Bain
Set/Costume
Designer
Sara Perks
Lighting Designer
Joshua Pharo
Sound Designer
Elena Peña
Costume
Supervisor
Georgia Rose
Vocal Coach
Stevie Rickard
Editor
Joseph Lynn
Cast
Chorus
Zoë Armer
Chorus
Matilda Bailes
Menelaus
Kené Chelo Ortiz
Athene/Chorus
Emma Cooney
Andromache
Sarah Farrell
Cassandra
Lanihuli Gilbert
Chorus
Lucy Gray
Chorus
Lucy Havard
Helen
Ciana Howlin
Chorus
Marie Kizonzolo-Fruchart
Talthybius
Andrew Krueger
Hecuba
Mathilde Majnoni
Poseidon
Elliot Nolan
Chorus
Clara Rozzi
Chorus
Lilly Walker
Production team
Set/Costume
Designer
Sara Perks
Lighting Designer
Joshua Pharo
Sound Designer
Elena Peña
Costume
Supervisor
Georgia Rose
Vocal Coach
Stevie Rickard
Production Coordinator
Gusta Matthews
Head of Technical
Training
Rob Young
Stage Management
Tutor
Elizabeth Morgan
Ellie Williams
Sunita Hinduja
1st Assistant Director
Maria Dedio
Script Supervisor
Waverly Moran
2nd Assistant Director
Josette Shipp
Sophia Markou
Assistant Lighting
Designer
Ben Garcia
Chief LX
Anna Eagle
Deputy LX
Vadim Wilkie
Senior Lighting
Tutor
Paul Rowland
Lighting Tutor
Jake Mawhinney
Assistant Sound
Designer
Sebek Sturgeon
Sound Assistants
Murong Li
Marcus Grove
Production Sound
Engineer
Kirsty Robson
Sound Tutor
Chris Drohan
Aeron Donnelly-Jackson
Production
Carpenter
Harry Masters
Construction Tutor
Chris Robinson