Qtotally. epic. By Jay Ball Directed by Jed Allen Harris August 13-September 5, 2021 Quantum Theatre Presents We are Proud to Support QUANTUM THEATRE’S Premiere of An Odyssey AUG 13 - SEPT 5, 2021 DE ♦ DC ♦ KY ♦ MD ♦ NY ♦ PA ♦ VA Quantum Theatre Presents We are Proud to Support By Jay Ball QUANTUM THEATRE’S Directed by Jed Allen Harris Premiere of CAST in order of appearance Erika Strasburg*………................... Nausicaa Shammen McCune*….................... Actea, Gryllus, Siren An Odyssey Grace Vensel ………......................... Adraste, Polites, Anticlea Nancy McNulty*………................... Alcippe, Kratos, Tiresias, Siren AUG 13 - SEPT 5, 2021 Sam Turich*………........................ Odysseus Catherine Gowl*……….................. Penelope, Circe Sam Lothard………....................... Polyphemus, Hermes, King Alcinous Scenic Design: Narelle Sissons • Lighting Design: C. Todd Brown Costume Design: Mindy Eshelman • Sound Design: Joe Pino Director of Production: Michelle Engleman • Technical Director: Cubbie McCrory Fight Director: Randy Kovitz Installation Artists: Mindy Eshelman and ROY Production Stage Manager: Cory F. Goddard* ASM and Health and Safety Supervisor: Piper Clement Audio Engineer and Technical Specialist: Peter Brucker Wardrobe Supervisor: Miranda Boodheshwar Production Assistant: Noah Glaister Sound Design Assistant: Sebastian Gutierrez Lighting Design Assistant: Sasha Finley Fight Assistant: Michael R. Petyak *Appearing through an agreement between Quantum Theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. The work of the design and production artists is supported by the Philip Chosky Design and Production Fund. THE PERFORMANCE WILL LAST APPROXIMATELY 100 MINUTES DE ♦ DC ♦ KY ♦ MD ♦ NY ♦ PA ♦ VA WITH NO INTERMISSION. A lthough credited to a single author, Homer’s The Odyssey is a weave of tales emerging from centuries of oral tradition dating back to 8th-century BCE Greece. By the time of Periclean Athens (495 - 429 BCE), The Odyssey had achieved a somewhat fixed form. It served as text for rhapsodes (professional performers of epic poetry) and dramatists, who adapted it for their own Atragedies and satyr plays. The first English translation appeared in 1614, and 2021 finds over a dozen readable-to-respectable versions still in print. While creating this adaptation, I consulted the major translations — all of which happen to be written by well-educated white men like me. Their consensus seems to be that this ancient story’s central character — a serial liar, cheat, thief, and killer — serves as a master surrogate for the human condition. He is a hero, overcoming the challenges of life. In the summer of 2019, when Jed Allen Harris asked me to collaborate with him on this project, I wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t buying Odysseus. I said so, in no uncertain terms, to both Jed and Karla Boos, Quantum Theatre’s Artistic Director. I Karla suggested I read a brand-new translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson, starting with the premise that the text should be regarded as a problem for modern readers, not an answer. Wilson described her feeling of repeatedly translating Homeric misogyny and brutality toward ‘Others’ as one of “intimate alienation.” While Wilson’s beautifully stark verse is absent from my adaptation, her role as a resisting reader of Homer served as a constant guardrail for my own efforts. But something more was needed. Even if The Odyssey has a cracked moral foundation, time and again it has inspired alternative visions of itself — some more beautiful and noble than its historically accurate intent. One translator belonging in this category is English satirist and critic Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902). More than his serviceable prose translations of Homer’s epics, Butler is probably most infamous among classicists for The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897). Butler’s claim? That a woman must have been the first rhapsode to sing of Odysseus, and that she cryptically reveals her presence in the peripheral character Princess Nausicaa. What would a ‘modern’ Nausicaa make of Odysseus’ journey? Or Penelope or Circe, for that matter? With leave to freely adapt the story, these questions became central to this production. – Jay Ball teacher of mine used to say that there’s a difference between a notion and an idea and that the theatre was filled with too many notions and not enough ideas. Many years ago, I had the notion that it would be “cool” to stage an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey in a park where the audience could Amove from “island to island” along with Odysseus. Years later, I brought up my notion to Karla Boos, and when she expressed great interest in the project, it became my task to turn the notion into an idea. I immediately turned to Jay Ball, my longtime collaborator, who worked on Quantum’s production of The Task as dramaturg and Pantagleize as adapter/playwright to help. I also started asking random friends and acquaintances what they remembered of the story. Almost everyone mentioned “the Cyclops” first, with “Circe” the sorceress and “the Sirens” coming after. Some would also mention his wife Penelope weaving during the day and unraveling her work at night to stave off the suitors that demanded she pick one of them to become her new husband. While there are many other events in the narrative, it is these parts of the story, with their necessary attendant backstories, that we have chosen to explore from a more A modern perspective with the hope of finding some ideas worth pondering. While practicality necessitated letting go of having the audience move to a different place with each scene, we ask that you join Odysseus for the final leg of his journey home. – Jed Allen Harris love these guys. I’ve known Jed longer than Jay, but I consider them both artists from formative years and ones with whom I’ve gone into major artistic trenches. It’s funny that our current project is about perspective applied to the Iart of storytelling, holding the teller accountable, considering the time, the audience, the shared narrative of those hearing the story … and questioning all of it as we must, we who pass the story on. This is funny when I read their program notes, because … I never sent Jay to Emily Wilson’s translation, but thanks Jay for attributing that to me, she is brilliant! I didn’t jump on the bandwagon of The Odyssey from Jed’s notion … I would do any project you suggest, my friend, as a collaboration with Jay. (The Task remains among my favorite projects of all time, and I dearly loved Pantagleize.) So I’m correcting the narrative here. Having artists in long relationships with each other is a fertile thing to be cherished. In this project they extend in every direction – into the designers, actors, and crew. Our love for each other and our collective art has brought us to this pass, engaging with the great, original storyteller. We welcome the young and the newcomers (happily there too) to our midst. We see you as our tribe. Oh, be not alarmed by my choice of that word, friends, the tribe is very big, ever-expanding, hospitable to guests, and of some humility. It encompasses you too, out there in the seats, under the skies, of our community (from the Latin, that word! Jay, did they get it from the Greeks??) – Karla Boos “The power of art can break the shackles that bind and divide human beings.” – Daisaku Ikeda Pietragallo is proud to support Quantum Theatre. Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP is a multi-disciplined business and commercial litigation firm headquartered in Pittsburgh with five offices throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia from which we serve our clients in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. “The power of art can break the shackles “The best way that bind and divide human beings.” – Daisaku Ikeda to predict the future is to create it.” - Abraham Lincoln Pietragallo is proud to support Quantum Theatre. we are proud to support quantum theatre. Member of FINRA and SIPC Sponsorship made possible through the generosity of the Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP is a multi-disciplined business and commercial litigation firm Clark Hunter Foundation headquartered in Pittsburgh with five offices throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia from which we serve our clients in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. BIOGRAPHIES Jay Ball (Playwright) holds a Ph.D. in Theatre History and Performance Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and has taught at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, Texas Tech University, the College of Charleston, and Central Washington University. His previous collaborations with director Jed Allen Harris include adaptations of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (with Michael M. Chemers) and Aeschylus’ Eumenides for Carnegie Mellon University, and Heiner Müller’s The Task and Michel de Ghelderode’s Pantagleize for Quantum Theatre. Since 2018, he has been focused on his second career with the National Park Service. Jay lives with his wife Stephanie in northern New Mexico. Jed Allen Harris (Director) first came to Pittsburgh in 1976 as a member of Theatre Express, a young company dedicated to new and unusual theatrical experiences. After the demise of Theatre Express, he started a long-term relationship with City Theatre Company where he directed over 20 productions between 1981 and 2001. In the Pittsburgh area, he has also directed at The Pittsburgh Lab Theatre, The Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, The University of Pittsburgh, Bricolage Production Company, Quantum Theatre, and Carnegie Mellon University where he taught in the directing program for 30 years and received the Hornbostel Award for Excellence in Fine Arts Teaching. Significant productions in Pittsburgh include Endgame, Pre-Paradise Sorry Now, The Marquis De Sade’s Justine, The Curse of the Starving Class, The Danube, Glengarry Glen Ross, Seventy Scenes of Halloween, Night of the Living Dead-The Opera, The Task, Collaborators, Nicholas Nickleby, Balm in Gilead, Mad Forest, Angels in America- Millennium Approaches, and The Oresteia Project.