Dear director and cast of this production of Hippolytus, As we begin our process, here is some background and food for thought on how we should proceed to develop our version of this play. The play was written by the Greek tragedian Euripides and was first performed in 428 BC in Athens as one-third of a winning tragic trilogy in a dramatic competition that year. The interactions between gods and mortals was a popular and dramatic basis for many greek plays and myths with a strong foundation in popular religious beliefs. The story is manipulated by the gods like a chess game, playing with their human pawns to exact the outcome that they desire. Meanwhile, the mortals involved struggle to follow their internal ethical compasses. They react to their circumstances as they are able with their limited knowledge and power. Each mortal character has multiple attributes that address major issues that are necessary to discuss in order to develop our modern version of this play.
Phaedra, the wife of Theseus, is in a continuous struggle for agency. As a woman, a number of expectations and stigmas are forced upon her. More pressing, however, is that Aphrodite has struck her with desire so powerful that it drives her to act against her will. Still, through almost the entire first half of the play, she resists her desire and fights to act in the manner that she knows to be proper. Finally, to combat the force of Aphrodite’s power, Phaedra kills herself. How does our modern audience, particularly the women among them, relate to this battle for agency and freedom? Phaedra also falsely accuses Hippolytus of rape. How do we put this story in conversation with the Me Too era? What are we trying to say by putting this up?
Hippolytus may have refused Phaedra, but this does not make him a hero. He speaks of women as Hesiod does in his telling of the story of Pandora, that they are evil and toxic, they devour man’s resources, provide nothing in return, and that men would be better off to be free of them. This language at some points is even mirrored in Phaedra’s own speeches. This shows how hate can affect and scar its victims in a dramatic way. Despite being a raging misogynist towards mortal women, Hippolytus is still a devout worshipper of the maiden goddess Artemis. How can we use Hippolytus to embody modern-day misogyny? How can we avoid portraying him as the perfect, pure hero that he claims to be? Furthermore, how can we keep in conversation Hippolytus’s blanket accusations towards women of sexual promiscuity and immorality without minimizing the impact of the false accusation of rape by Phaedra?
Even the king of Athens himself, Theseus, finds himself completely at the mercy of the plan of the gods. Theseus is the most powerful character in the play apart from the gods and is also the dispenser of justice in the mortal realm. However, he is so struck by emotion at the death of his wife that he denies his own son a trial and instead banishes him and sentences him to death with no process of justice. How do the judicial and the emotional connect? Where do we see the benefits? Where lie the flaws within justice based on emotion? What is the role of compassion? Finally, who is pulling the strings? Where must characters accept blame and face their actions, and where is the intervention of the gods simply too great?
A tale of grief, loss, deception, and suicide, Hippolytus is a story without a hero. It is full of disturbing and heart-wrenching struggle for all of the characters as they are tossed about at the mercy of the gods that they worship. How do we choose to embody each of these characters? What questions do we want to leave our audience with? I know that we are only at the beginning of our process, but as we continue on, let us keep all of these questions close and continue to revisit them. Let us forge bravely into this process together.