'Hippolytus' offers mythological world
By Christine Reinolds
Kansan staff writer
With a night of passion, incestuous love, chastity and pride, KU students can experience the mythological world of the ancient Greek gods and the mortals they rule at the University Theatre's production of "Hippolytus."
The chaste, clever Phaedra, wife of King Theses, hungers for the love of Theseus' son Hippolytus. She decides to starve her in lieu of revealing her desire and losing her virtue. Her death and the rage, sorrow and betrayal that follow eventually destroy the house of Theseus.
Pictures Nicole Day, Lenexa junior, plays the part of Phaedra, the distraught wife.
"I see her as being a very clever woman who is trapped within her passion for Hippypeltus." Day said. She would still destroy herself if she reveals it."
Day said she would like her audience to feel some amount of pathos for her character.
"She is so caught up in her own world. She finally ends up revealing herself at the wrong moment," she said.
Day will wear a red and purple dress that drapes her body as she lamens at Hippocytus. This colorful type of costume and the use of techniques are not consistent, with traditional images of Greek theater.
The play's director, Andrew Tsubaki, said the traditional Greek styles were influenced by German expressionism.
"Rather than adhering to that, we should re-evaluate the classical works and present it in today's light, making the classics as enjoyable as they should," said "Tu sabui, professor of theater and film, and East
Asian languages and cultures.
Jonic Colcollini, Leominster, Mass.
junior, will play Hippolytus.
"I want the audience to realize that he is flawed." Ciccolini said. "He was too proud and not sympathetic enough to Phaedra."
The actors were trained in Suzuki acting, which is a type of Japanese theater that trains the body, voice and mind at the same time. Cecilim mind said.
"It centers on concentration and focusing all your energy." be said.
Tsubaiki described his production of "Hippolytus" as a combination of Japanese and Greek theater.
"It is more elaborate, ritualistic," Tsubaki said. "I use the voices of girls to establish Aphrodite and Artemis, the two deities.
"I want the audience to know what passion can do to a life. This play shows the frailty of human life that is controlled by the deities, which can be expanded to nature. We live on the grace that nature gives us."
The play also is novel in its production because it is performed outside for the matinees.
Tsuabiki gained experience in outdoor theater by spending two summers in Greece helping to direct the ploy "Antigone."
"Indoors you can control the situation and work toward perfection on a small scale." he said. "Outdoors you are bedazed by the size of nature. There is a fantastic scale of reward from an outdoor performance."
The play began yesterday and will run until Sunday. Shows start at 8 p.m., except for the matines, which start at 2:30 p.m. The evening promenade will be in the Ingle Theatre at Murphey. Matines will be outdoors across the street from the Geological Sciences building on West Campus.
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LIVEWIRE / Thursday, April 19, 1990
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