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| Kate Burton, David Strathairn, Kathryn Walker in Anne Carson's Hecuba |
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| Tickets/Registration: 212.415.5500 |
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| Media Contact: Jennifer Dorr, 212.415.5455, email |
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| ANNE CARSON'S TRANSLATION OF EURIPIDES' HEKABE (HECUBA) |
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| WITH KATE BURTON, JAMES GALE, MARY BETH HURT, MAEVE KINKEAD, LARRY PINE, MADUKA STEADY, DAVID STRATHAIRN & KATHRYN WALKER |
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DIRECTED BY KATHRYN WALKER
INTRODUCED BY ANNE CARSON |
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The World Premiere of a New Work Created Expressly for the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre
with original music by Robert Black and Paul Guerguerian
"I was doing my hair
I was binding my hair,
Staring down into the bottomless lake of my mirror,
before I should fall into bed—
a scream cut the town
a roar swept the street. . . .
I saw my husband killed
They drove me down
to the salt sea"
—Chorus of Trojan Women, from Anne Carson's HEKABE
Monday, March 29, 8 pm, $16
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| New York, NY, March, 2, 2004—She was once queen of Troy, wife of King Priam, mother of the hero Hector. Now she is "caught like an animal," a prisoner of war, a slave to the Greeks, a parent who has experienced the slaughter of all but two of her children. Now she is queen only to a tattered band of Trojan women. Now she must face the ultimate injustice, and wield what little power she can from the tent of a slave. Her plight is timeless. She is Hecuba, or "Hekabe," as poet Anne Carson has called her in a searing new translation of Euripides' great play about sorrows of war and wrongs done for the sake of politics. |
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| On Monday, March 29, at 8pm, the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre (a series of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center) presents the world premiere of Anne Carson's Hekabe, with a cast that includes Kathryn Walker, David Strathairn, Kate Burton, Mary Beth Hurt, James Gale, Larry Pine, Maduka Steady, and Maeve Kinkead. Anne Carson introduces the evening. Robert Black and Paul (River) Guerguerian perform original music they created for the production. This performance is presented in association with Diane Wondisford of Music-Theatre Group. |
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Anne Carson is a Canadian poet and classicist who became the first woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2002. Though her subject matter is about as far from pop-culture as it gets, Carson's poems and translations have a cult following and have been widely embraced — such that her book Eros the Bittersweet recently turned up in an episode of Showtime's "The L Word." |
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Carson embarked on this new translation of Hekabe at the suggestion of director Kathryn Walker. The two women have long and intertwined histories with the 92nd Street Y. Walker has directed four verse dramas for the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre over the years, among them Anne Carson's translation of Sophokles' Elektra, which premiered at the 92nd Street Y in 2002. Carson created Elektra while she was poet-in-residence at the 92nd Street Y in 1987. Carson and Walker met for the first time in Great Barrington, MA, where Walker was directing a second production of Elektra with Music/Theatre Group. There, Walker asked Carson if she would consider doing a translation of Hekabe for the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre. At first, Carson thought Euripides' play was "too bleak" to interest audiences, but Walker convinced her that a play about the horrors and humiliations of war would resonate. |
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Scholars date Euripides' Hekabe to the mid 420s BC, around the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Walker says, "I wanted to present Hekabe this year because in it Euripides is speaking to his contemporary audience at a moment when Athens was facing questions about excess and brutality in the political 'necessity' of making war: the destruction of civilizations; the treatment visited on captive and displaced populations; the suffering of non-combatants, women, children, old people; the civic implications of moral compromise and the rationalizations of victors." Over the years, many classicists have viewed Hekabe as a broken, irrational creature, but Walker does not see her this way. She says, "With transcendent clarity, Hekabe describes the abuse of political power and the appalling suffering it engenders." |
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Walker was more than satisfied with the translation Carson produced. She says, "Anne's language fuses intelligence and erudition with a compelling personal voice that is at once tough, lyrical, daring, unpredictable, hip, witty and sometimes astonishingly beautiful. The language seems to move through the arteries of Hekabe, and breathe warm, familiar life into her ancient predicament." |
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This 92nd Street Y Poet's Theatre production will be a staged reading. (There will be movement, costumes, and an original score. The actors will have script in hand.) Kathryn Walker takes the title role; Kate Burton plays Hekabe's surviving daughter, Polyxena; David Strathairn plays Talthybios, the messenger; James Gale plays Polymestor, the local Thracian king; Maduka Steady plays the ghost of Hekabe's son, Polydoros; Larry Pine plays Oydsseus; Maeve Kinkead plays the servant of Hekabe; Mary Beth Hurt plays the Chorus of Trojan Women. One cast member is yet to be announced. |
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| ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR AND DIRECTOR |
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Anne Carson, Translator
A professor of classics, comparative literature, and English at the University of Michigan and the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, Anne Carson is a widely respected classical scholar and poet. Carson has been praised for her original vision and intellectual rigor since the publication of her first book, Eros the Bittersweet (1986). She is the author of numerous works of poetry and prose, including Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1995); Glass, Irony and God (1995); Autobiography of Red (1998); Economy of the Unlost (1999); and Men in the Off Hours (2000). In 2002, she became the first woman to win the T.S. Eliot prize for her book-length poem, The Beauty of the Husband. Her translations include Sophokles' Elektra (2001), If Not, Winter: fragments of Sappho translated with commentary (2002), and the not-yet-published Euripides' Hekabe and Euripides' Hippolytos. She wrote the libretto for the opera Decreation, and her book Decreation: Opera, Essays, Poetry is forthcoming from Knopf in 2005. She has a MA in classics from The University of Toronto, a diploma in classics from the University of St. Andrew, and a PhD in Classics from the University of Toronto. Her many honors include the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry (1996), the Pushcart Prize for Poetry (1997), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1998-9), and the Los Angeles Times Book Critics Award (2002). |
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| A note about Anne Carson and the 92nd Street Y: Carson did her translation of Sophokles' Elektra while she was poet-in-residence at the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in 1987, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Carson's Elektra was performed at the 92nd Street Y in April of 2002, with a cast that included Kathryn Walker, Zoe Caldwell, David Strathairn, Kate Burton, Larry Pine, Peter Reigert, Susanna Moore and Maeve Kinkead. Carson read her own poems at the 92nd Street Y with poet Jorie Graham in 1997 as part of The Tenth Muse, a series that pairs established poets with emerging poets. In 2003, she gave a lecture on the life of Sappho in the Y's Biographers and Brunch series. |
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Kathryn Walker, Director (and Hekabe)
Kathryn Walker's work on Broadway includes The Good Doctor, A Touch of the Poet, Private Lives and Wild Honey. She has worked extensively Off-Broadway and in televsion. She received an Emmy for her performance as Abigal Adams in PBS' The Adams Chronicles. With the late William Alfred, she co-founded The Athens Street Company. In 1997 she was Rothschild Artist in Residence at Radcliffe College where she directed a student production of Euripides' The Bacchae. Ms. Walker performed Robert Fagles' translation of The Odyssey with Jason Robards at Harvard, Princeton and the Unterberg Poetry Center in 1997 where the production was recorded by C-Span. Most recently at the Unterberg Poetry Center, she has directed and starred in four productions : Joel Agee's translation of Kleist's Penthesilea, C.K.William's The Bacchae of Euripides, Paul Schmidt's translation of Euripides' Medea and, in 2002, Anne Carson's translation of Sophokles' Elektra. In the summer of 2003, Medea and Electra were produced in conjunction with Music/Theatre Group at Simon's Rock College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Her six-part documentary series The Millennium Journal has been shown on the PBS cable channel, Metro Arts. She lives in New York City and Tesuque, New Mexico. |
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| 92ND STREET Y: ITS POETS' THEATRE & UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER |
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| Since Dylan Thomas' legendary reading of his play for voices, "Under Milk Wood," at the 92nd Street Y in 1953, the organization has presented verse dramas, plays, and theatrical adaptations of literary texts. Over the years, these performances have evolved into the 92ND STREET Y POETS' THEATRE, a series of dramatic productions that emphasize language and the aural experience of theater. Both actors and writers perform in the Poets' Theatre: Zoe Caldwell, Kathryn Walker, David Strathairn, Blair Brown, Jim Dale, Claire Bloom and Irene Worth are just a few of the luminaries who have performed at the Y in recent years. The productions range from dramatic readings to fully-staged performances. Past productions include Brian Friel's Faith Healer (2003), Glyn Maxwell's Wolfpit (2002), Ann Carson's translation of Sophocles' Electra (2002), Paul Schmidt's translation of Euripides' Medea (2001), C.K. Williams' The Bacchae of Euripides, (2000), Robert Lowell's Prometheus Bound (2000), Derek Walcott's The Odyssey (1993), and Robert Pinsky's The Inferno of Dante (1998). The series provides the public with access to great theater at $16 to $30 a ticket, and is produced by the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. |
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| For decades, the 92nd Street Y has served as a public literary salon and a place for writers to learn their craft. The legendary 92ND STREET Y UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER opened in 1939 with a reading by William Carlos Williams. Over the years, he was followed by virtually every great 20th century writer — Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges and Langston Hughes, to name but a few. The tradition continues in 2004: the Unterberg Poetry Center's 65th Season. Today, the center presents readings by poets, novelists and playwrights, and talks with critics, biographers and scholars. Through its Poets' Theatre, the center produces masterfully written dramas performed by accomplished actors. The center's extensive writing program gives working adults access to teachers who are practicing authors, a rarity outside M.F.A. programs. Community outreach programs offer high-school students access to world-famous authors, and new immigrants literacy-training through literature. Young writers find support at the center through annual readings that pair established writers with emerging writers; and The Discovery/The Nation poetry contest, for poets who have not yet published a book. The Unterberg Poetry Center is part of the 92ND STREET Y TISCH CENTER FOR THE ARTS, endowed through the generous support of the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch family. |
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| The 92ND STREET Y unites culture, education and community service in one multifaceted institution. Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the Y has grown into an organization guided by Jewish principles but serving people of all races and faiths. Its mission is to enrich the lives of the 300,000 people who visit its three facilities each year. People come to the 92nd Street Y to attend performances of classical and popular music, jazz, American standards and contemporary dance; to hear renowned novelists, poets and playwrights read from their work; to explore the richness of Judaism with eminent scholars; and to listen to world leaders, public figures and experts in every field discuss timely issues. A wide-ranging curriculum offers adults of all ages the chance to learn and grow, while developmental programs help children, teenagers and families reach their full potential. Committed to sharing its programs with all New Yorkers regardless of economic circumstance, the 92nd Street Y provides over $1 million in annual financial assistance as well as an outreach program that brings the arts into the lives of 8,000 economically disadvantaged schoolchildren. For more information, visit
www.92Y.org/content/PRESS_RESOURCES.asp. |
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© 2010 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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