My Mother Medea

MY MOTHER MEDEA TEACHER RESOURCE PACK MY MOTHER MEDEA FROM 31 JAN - 5 MAR 2017 FOR STUDENTS IN YEARS 9 - 13 By Holger Schober Translated by David Tushingham Directed by Justin Audibert WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO ADAPT WHEN WE’RE NOT WANTED IN THE FIRST PLACE? Born to megastar parents, teenagers Eriopis and Polyxenos have a lot to live up to – and a lot to feel angry about. Their father Jason betrayed their mother, they’ve had to leave Europe, they’re displaced, they’re alienated and now they’re on their own. But they’re fed up of being ‘the foreign kids’. They’ve had enough. They sit at the front of the class in their new school and spit out the story of who they really are to anyone who’ll listen. This punchy, modern play by Austrian playwright Holger Schober offers a completely new angle on the age-old Greek myth of Jason and Medea, retelling their story through their children’s eyes. The audience sit at school desks as the new kids take centre stage and their story unravels. Contains strong language. Page 2 TEACHER RESOURCES CONTENTS INTRODUCTION p.4 MAKING THE PLAY: INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR p.5 THE CAST p.8 DRAMA ACTIVITIES p.9 • Sequence One: The Chorus - Exile p10 • Sequence Two: Children of Heroes p.13 • Sequence Three: Jason and Medea p.15 • Resources p.19 onwards Page 3 TEACHER RESOURCES INTRODUCTION Welcome to the teacher resources for My Mother Medea by Holger Schober (with translation by David Tushingham). This contemporary new play, written specifically for young audiences and directed by Justin Audibert, looks at the classic Greek story of Jason and Medea from the perspective of their children, Eriopis and Polyxenos. Arriving at yet another new school, Eriopis and Polyxenos, children of this famous mother and father, stand at the front of the class ready to meet their peers. The play will frame the audience as students in the class where the teenagers have arrived. Angry and confrontational, Eriopis doesn’t appear to want to try to fit in: ‘We’re here, before we were somewhere else and eventually we’ll be somewhere different again. That’s how the world works. We’re not looking for anything in common, we’re not looking for friends… we don’t need any ‘let’s all be nice to the foreign kids’. We’re us, you’re you. End of.’ They have been asked to introduce themselves, but what should they say about who they are and why they are here? Homeless, migrants, always on the move, this is their seventh new school in three years. They have never really settled anywhere, always living their lives in the shadow of their parents who are caught up in their own drama. Their father is Jason, the hero who led the Argonauts in one of the most audacious adventures of all time, and their mother is Medea, who fell in love with Jason and betrayed her home and family for love. But that was many years ago. Jason and Medea have now separated and Jason has a new wife. As the play unfolds we find out more about the kind of parents they are; how their lives have dominated their children’s. My Mother Medea highlights the emotional cost to these two young people and the ways in which each of them processes and deals with their circumstances differently. My Mother Medea is a contemporary response to the great mythic story of a family tearing itself apart. The Drama activities in this pack are designed to be adaptable for use across Key Stages 3, 4 and 5. They could be used as a simple way in to investigate some of the key themes before and after your visit to enrich the experience of seeing the play. Or they could be developed as a whole scheme of work exploring the play’s form and content to support work in Key Stage 3, GCSE and A-Level Drama and Theatre Studies. The activities use Euripides’ Medea as a way of contextualising and developing responses to this new play, exploring the classic Greek Tragedy and its relevance to a contemporary young audience. There will be a free teacher CPD session at the Unicorn on Thu 29 Sep 2016 from 4.30 to 7pm, which will include the opportunity to meet the play’s director, Justin Audibert. To find out more about the CPD or book your place, [email protected] . Page 4 MY MOTHER MEDEA - RESOURCES INTERVIEW WITH JUSTIN AUDIBERT - DIRECTOR WHY DID YOU WANT TO DIRECT ‘MY MOTHER MEDEA’? The thing that I really loved about it was that it tells a story that we all know a little bit about, but from a perspective that none of us have any idea about. So people know about Jason and the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece and about Medea, the wife who helps him and that he abandons. And the part that people know about the children is that they are killed, but nobody ever sees the story from their perspective - what is it like to grow up when your mum and dad are mega famous, when you’ve got to live up to their heroism, their legacy and all that that entails? That’s what I was really interested in, living in the shadow of your parents, which we all do I suppose in a way. The female protagonist, Eriopis, is so strong and powerful, she’s the one who really drives the story, whereas the brother Polyxenos is much meeker and milder and on the surface his insecurities are much more present. What the play does brilliantly is show how if you present a really big and confident facade, underneath it you can still have all the doubts and fears that the play examines. I suppose what the play’s about is the difference between what we appear to be and what we actually are. That is pretty relatable for most people. WHAT ARE THE THEMES IN THE PLAY THAT YOU THINK WILL CONNECT WITH THE AUDIENCE? This is a familial play; it’s about being in a family and what that means. It’s about your relationship to your parents. And if your parents are seen to be great people, what it’s like to have to live up to their great standards. In the play it’s really clear that Jason doesn’t think Eriopis and Polyxenos are worthy to be his children and the reason he thinks this is because of the mistakes he’s made in his own life, the way he’s lived his life. They have to deal with the consequences of the displacement of his anger. The feeling you get quite strongly in the play is that Eriopis and Polyxenos don’t have any love from their parents. Even Medea, who was probably quite a good mother at the start, is now suffering from alcoholism. They are abandoned kids who have to deal with things for themselves and they do this in two completely different ways; one is an extrovert and the other is an introvert. But they are both really vulnerable; the play doesn’t show one way of dealing with it, it shows you two different ways that the young people deal with abandonment. Any young person can relate to the idea of being dropped in a situation where you don’t know anyone - there are two responses, one to try and hide and make yourself as small as possible, and the other one is to try and play the big cheese or the bully. We can all relate to that whatever our age; being made to meet people and being made to try and fit in, trying to find where you fit, trying to find your tribe and often you get it horribly wrong. They have been here before, this is the seventh school in six years, they’ve been kicked from pillar Page 5 MY MOTHER MEDEA - RESOURCES to post, they’ve been called names, abused, beaten up and their reputation seems to precede them wherever they go. Polyxenos has tried to avoid attention and hide from it, while Eriopis has gone, ‘well if the spotlight is going to be on me I might just stand there and bring it on’. I think their sense of deprivation is emotional not physical, not that they haven’t suffered physical hardship, I think they have, but overwhelmingly it’s an emotional hardship that they’ve suffered. There is that sense of rootlessness and what it means if you’ve never had a home? There are two big problems, the first one is trust; can you trust other people? They both have huge issues around trust or any kind of attachment. The other big issue with that rootlessness is not having a sense of security. Interestingly one thing they have is their family name, their family histories. But that’s a big negative; they hate their family name and history. It’s so relatable for a young audience, like lots of people in society, who have to grow up without what you would call a nuclear family. When the makeup of your family is unorthodox in some way, how you then define yourself in the world is a really big question. Do you take on the things that are your family or do you totally reject them and try to forge your own path? That is at the heart of the play. HOW DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT STAGE THE PIECE? I’m very interested in the idea that it is immersive by nature.

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