‘Medea’ Opens Five Week Run Sept. 24—

TheatreWorks New Milford Will Present

Three Discounted Performances For Students

NEW MILFORD — TheatreWorks New Milford has added three Thursday performances to the run of Medea for area students. The student nights are Thursdays, October 7, 14 and 21, at 8 pm. Tickets for students on these nights will be $10.

“Greek tragedy is not staged all that often,” said TheatreWorks president Richard Pettibone. “These special Thursday performances are a chance for students to see the full passion of the text in its true form – on stage.”

The tragic story of a woman scorned, Euripides Medea, in an acclaimed translation by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael, will open on September 24 at TheatreWorks for a five week run.

The world’s most passionate and tragic story of betrayal is brought to breathtaking life in a spellbinding drama where the suffering of injured love culminates in ultimate revenge. Telling the well-known Greek myth of Jason and his wife Medea, the play begins after Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece when he decides to marry King Creon’s daughter.

Medea, having betrayed her family and country for Jason, finds herself an alien and an outcast in a strange land. As Jason discards her this other woman, Medea is consumed by betrayal and rage and plots a revenge that will bring his house and lineage crashing down around him.

 “Medea’s revenge is so horrific and savage that it still has the power to shock after 20 centuries,” said director Jane Farnol. “The challenge in Medea is that we end up having sympathy for a murderess, and while disconcerting, this very morality is what Euripides sought to put into question.”

TheatreWorks will present a new translation of the timeless 2000-year-old tragedy, which spurred highly acclaimed recent productions in New York and London with Fiona Shaw in the title role.

“Many people perceive Medea as this mad, monstrous creature, but in fact she is a passionate and intelligent woman who has been pushed to her crisis point,” said Mr Pettibone. “Full of passion and vicious emotion, this Medea resonates with a potency and topicality that could easily have been ripped from today’s headlines.”

Medea will run weekends, September 24 to October 23, with Friday and Saturday evening curtains at 8 pm. There is one Sunday matinee, on October 10, at 2 pm.

Tickets for all shows are $15 for general admission.

In addition to the special student performances, TheatreWorks will offer its regular preview performance for senior citizens and its Pay-What-You-Want night for this production. Area senior citizens are invited to a free dress rehearsal on Thursday, September 23, at 8 pm, and the Pay-What-You-Want night will be the following Thursday – September 30 – also at 8 pm.

Reservations can be made online at www.TheatreWorks.us, or by calling the box office at 860-350-6863.

TheatreWorks is an award-winning, regional theatre company located at 5 Brookside Avenue, just off Route 202 (next to M&B’s IGA) in New Milford.