Facing Tragedy: Interview with The Trojan Women Actors
with Katherine Pioch
KP: Would you please briefly introduce yourselves, your character, and tell us what your character wants.
BB: My name is Braden Barber. I am a senior English-Drama double major, and I am playing Talthybius. What Talthybius wants is to get out. While he has sympathy for the plight of the women, he has a strong desire to distance himself from it.
BT: I’m Ben Thomas. I’m a senior Drama major. I’m playing Menalaus, and what Menalaus wants is to get some justice for Helen’s betrayal.
SA: My name is Sienna, [a senior Drama major,] and I play Hecuba. I think that Hecuba wants to seek justice.
MC: My name is Mary Carlin, a junior English major. I’m
playing Andromache. My character at first wants comfort from Hecuba and the other women, and then she just wants to be able to save her baby.
KP: What is the central conflict of the play?
SA: We find ourselves in the immediacy of the Trojan War, highlighting specifically the women, their stories. The central point is for [the women] to pick themselves up after the conflict.
BB: It’s odd seeing a conflict that is the aftermath of a larger conflict. The play is really a series of conflicts, things getting worse for the Trojan women, who are waiting to be carted off. I think the conflict at the heart of it is between the women and circumstance. It’s facing what is inevitable.
Below: (left to right) Jude Self, Madison Conly, Nora Eulie, and Heidi Burke; photos by Christopher LeBlanc
MC: [It’s] between force and mercy. You have this idea of destiny, the gods, [and] the Greeks, who see it as their right to use force to do whatever they want against the weak. But then you have this idea of mercy and that this isn’t right, that there is an objective justice. The women see that, and they see that what is happening to them is unjust.
SA: The conflict within Hecuba at least is between giving up or continuing. It’s a constant choice to pick herself up. And it seems like Hecuba keeps losing, and [for] the Trojan women, it’s one hit after the next.
BT: It’s very much a one-sided conflict. There’s nothing any of the Trojan women can do. It’s a constant barrage. The gods have completely abandoned them. The Greeks are out to inflict pain for its own sake.
BB: Talthybius has a different conflict, between his sympathy for [the women] and his orders. What he says at one point is, “What I have to say is not of my own choosing.” He has to find himself acting as an instrument inflicting pain on people in a way that he does not enjoy.
BT: There’s a conflict in the Greek mindset as well. When this was written, there was the strong written tradition of glory revolving around war, but Euripides is centering the very human cost of war. These “heroes” are actually trampling people to get glory, whatever that is. That’s part of the meta-narrative. Greek idealization of glory and then harsh reality. It’s a spectrum: Menalaus is on one side, Talthybius is in the middle, and Hecuba is on the end.
KP: What is your character’s relation to personal responsibility? To justice?
SA: I don’t think Hecuba has any power any more. As a queen, [she’s] responsible with all the things that come with being a queen. She’s no longer queen, but she still has that surrounding her. The city she was once queen of has fallen, and she is left with nothing. Hecuba has to do everything she can to protect those that are left.
MC: [Andromache] finds that everything she believed about morality has been overturned. She believed that if she was a good, virtuous, hard-working wife, she would be rewarded, but instead, her husband was killed, she’s enslaved,
and her baby is is going to be taken away from her. She doesn’t know how what has happened to her fits in with the moral code that she believed in. With her baby, Andromache sees it as her job to protect him, but when they come to kill him, she realizes there’s nothing she can do, and that even if she does try to fight them off, it actually will hurt her baby more and herself. And so in the end, she realizes she can’t do anything.
BT: There is a lot of pressure [for Menalaus] to be above it all. He could do something, but I don’t think he cares. These are not people to him. These are just Trojans. At a certain point, there is a dehumanization of the enemy that needs to happen. I think that is so complete in his mind.
BB: There’s this massive loss of Greek and Trojan life. For the Greeks at the end, if we invaded this country and wiped them out for Helen, then this had better be worth it. For Talthybius, he does have this responsibility to do as he was told. Wherever he can, within the bounds of [that] responsibility, he tries to drop things he thinks will make it better [for the women]. As far as the gods are concerned, they’re really not present. Physically, they’re there at the top of the play, and they never come back. The Trojan women mention, especially after Astyanax is taken away, that the gods have abandoned them.
SA: It’s enraging.
BB: Yeah, it’s a very conspicuous absence. There’s not really anything to do about it aside from being enraged like Sienna said.
SA: [Hecuba] spend[s] the rest of the play calling to them and ridiculing them and getting upset with them that they’re not answering.
BT: I had a thought about Hecuba. I think a lot of Hecuba’s responsibility is to keep her nation together. While Troy is destroyed and burned, everything that makes a nation at the top of the play is still there. And then gradually, that’s all ripped away. Cassandra and what happens to her is the destruction of religious identity. With Astyanax and Andromache, [the Greeks say] you don’t get a next generation. You don’t get a lineage. That’s gone now. Hecuba is trying to keep that from happening to her country. She’s trying to hope
Next page, above: David Semga; photo by Christopher LeBlanc
Next page, below: (left to right) Sienna Abbott and Mary Carlin; photo by Christopher LeBlanc
Wherein Justice Lies:
The Trojan Women Overview
by Joseph Sacco
Euripides’ The Trojan Women follows the women of Troy while they contend with their immense grief, pain, and fear at the death of their families and the loss of their home in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Having lost her son Hector, her husband, and her city, Hecuba weeps with the Chorus of Trojan women as the Greeks claim them and lead them off like cattle. Hecuba’s daughter Cassandra, who was violated during the Greek invasion, appears to have gone mad. Andromache, Hecuba’s daughter-in-law, must protect her son Astyanax. Even though Astyanax is a young child and completely innocent, the Greeks see him as their next great threat.
The women are plunged into even greater pain when Talthybius, the Greek messenger to the Trojans, arrives with grim news about the women’s fates. Unlike the other Greeks in the play, Talthybius expresses his sympathy for the women and regrets their suffering. He struggles to convey the brutal orders of the Greek leaders.
The women must fight to keep living without the help of the gods, who are notably absent. Appearing only at the beginning of the play, Poseidon laments the destruction of Troy. Despite having taken the side of the Greeks in the war, Athena asks for Poseidon’s help in punishing them because they violated her temple. This is the last that audiences see of the gods, and “[A]s the play moves on, everyone is upset or believes that the gods have abandoned them,” Dr. Danze, Chair of the Classics Department, observed. “And so, every moment of hope that comes up is thwarted by the next person who enters the stage.”
The question of the culpability of the gods for mortals’ actions hangs over the story. Hecuba treats Helen as a pariah and claims she is wholly responsible for causing the war with her wanton lust for pleasure. Helen justifies herself by blaming the gods.
Hecuba’s resilient longing for justice amid a society in ruins gives her a reason to stay alive. But she cannot know whether her longing is in vain. “People call it an anti-war play,” Dr. Danze explained, “but I don’t think that it is really opposed to war at all. What it questions is Greek belief about the gods and wherein justice lies in the midst of war, but also in the aftermath of war.” She continued, “[Euripides] puts before us in this play [that] these are the consequences of men’s actions, regardless of whether the gods were involved.”
Next page, above: (left to right) Trojan women, Christian Marin, Johannes R. Carrillo, and Sienna Abbott; photo by Amelia Ebent
Next page, below: (left to right) Mary Carlin and Trojan women; photo by Amelia Ebent
by Callena Teunissen
Despite having written a multitude of plays, including The Trojan Women, Electra, and The Bacchae, surprisingly little is known about Euripides’ life. Euripides followed Aeschylus and Sophocles in becoming one of the three great dramatists in Athens throughout the 5th century BC. Euripides was born in 484 BC to his mother Cleito. His father’s name was either Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides, and his family was likely upper class (although this point is still debated, as some historians believe that Euripides’ mother sold herbs in the marketplace). Euripides married twice in his lifetime to Melito and Choirile, and he had three sons: Euripides, Mnesarchides, and Mnesilochus. He later departed from Athens to Macedonia, where he died in 406 BC. Euripides wrote approximately 92 plays in his lifetime, but these plays likely did not gain much popularity until after his death. From these 92 plays, only four times did Euripides win the first place prize in Athens’ dramatic festival, whereas Sophocles won twenty victories. Despite this struggle for approval during his lifetime, Euripides gained popularity and praise as a dramatist in later years. Dr. Danze, a scholar of Athenian tragedy, said in an interview that, to this day, Euripides’ plays are performed more often than those of Sophocles and Aeschylus. Dr. Danze further explained that “the fact that we also have so many of Euripides’ plays than others suggests that he was just well liked. Fandom is essentially what kept Euripides alive.” Euripides refined Greek tragedy by envisioning realistic characters motivated by genuinely human desires. Euripides tends to portray ordinary citizens as opposed to the grand and tragic characters of Aeschylus and Sophocles. He is a deeply psychological playwright. In addition, according to Dr. Danze, Euripides is “associated with plays about the power of reason and the questioning of the gods.” In other words, Euripides masterfully captures aspects of humanity in his characters, and he places these characters in a tragic world, left searching for divine justice, to create convincing, poignant dramas.
The greatest testament to Euripides’ poetic genius is that at least 18 of his plays have survived to this day, and he remains one of the most-often quoted dramatists in history.
The Defeated: What is Greek Tragedy
by Noah W. Newmann
Classicists understand Greek tragedy to include any play composed by a Greek playwright from the 6th through the 4th century BC, performed in the Athenian festival called the Great Dionysia. One reason for this broad definition is that the Greeks of the 5th century did not view tragedy in terms of genre as a modern audience would. Instead, they thought about tragedy in terms of verse rhythm, inclusion of particular characters, and the structure of the play itself. Dr. Danze of the Classics Department clarified that this play had to be in a trilogy with each play focusing on “a legendary mythical character who meets some kind of misfortune.”
These characters were often portrayed by actors who donned masks with exaggerated expressions and spoke in elevated, measured tones. Developments eventually allowed for up to three main actors on stage at a time, along with a chorus of about fifteen masked actors. The chorus served as the voice of the common people, speaking out in a way that anticipated the main character’s actions or provided commentary on the developments of the plot. Oftentimes, the outcomes of these moral issues led to the death of a character, which would always occur offstage. “Tragedy is always about the losers,” said Dr. Danze. “How is the audience supposed to respond to that? Aristotle says it’s pity and fear.” This response is what Aristotle called catharsis, a vicarious participation in the unfolding drama that is cleansing and yet leaves one somehow feeling refreshed.
Euripides knew how to communicate these aspects of fear and pity to his audience through the emotion of the heroes of his plays. The playwright is known to have written with an extraordinary pathos, driving home the psychological distress of his characters. The Trojan Women in particular gives audiences a window into the mind of the ancient Athenian contemplating the brutalities of armed conflict. Euripides wrote in the midst of the Peloponnesian War when questions of conflict and responsibility to victims preoccupied the minds of Athenians. It is through the medium of the aftermath of warfare that the legendary characters of Hecuba and Helen are communicated and made real to the audience.
“I think Hecuba is really our protagonist,” said Dr. Danze. “She’s also the hero in the traditional Greek sense. That is, a hero is someone who does something remarkable, experiences something remarkable, and is clearly somehow blessed by the gods.” Euripides draws audiences’ attention to the Trojan War survivors, for whom this play, Dr. Danze said, “is arguably the hymn of a slave.” This singularity of having survived their city’s destruction is both the source of their heroism and tragedy, as many of them will be made slaves at the hands of the conquering Greeks. The fates of these women were Euripides’ reminder to the Athenians, embattled as they were with Sparta, that their fortunes, too, could change and that they could become the defeated.
Interview: Movement Director Danielle Georgiou
by Katherine Pioch
KP: What’s your story of coming to be an artist?
DG: I started dancing when I was three. My parents put me in dance classes, and I just took to them. I continued dancing through high school and college. While I was dancing professionally, I started choreographing for plays. I applied to a PhD program to study aesthetics [...] and got offered the opportunity to produce my own show. And it’s 14 years later, and I work as a professional director, choreographer in theater, dance, and opera and film. I think I was just always meant to be an artist.
KP: What do you do as a movement director?
DG: [As] the movement director, I’m looking at how to add the physical language and the physical environment. I work almost as a sculptor. It’s like I make a [sketch] offering to a director and to an actor and let them play inside of those shapes and help guide them to what organically can be the final movement score. The end result is a collaborative effort from all parties. I’m more a conduit for everybody’s vision. To be a movement director, the ego has to go away. I am there to serve the vision of the show.
In rehearsals, I’m doing a lot of physical training with them. I got to lead them through a movement workshop last week. So I was able to lead them through a short guided meditation and then also work with them on just understanding how the body is connected to itself and to other bodies in space and work to create a common mind thread between them. [For example,] the Cassandra scene we were working on—she carries the prophecies, but how does that look physically?
To do a Greek play, it’s important to find the voice of the people. And so I wanted them to find the voice of themselves as a community in that room. I mean the body voice. We did improvisational work for them to each express themselves individually, physically, and learn each other’s physical language and repeat it back so that they could then create one language, and that’s the language of the Trojan women.
KP: Why is it important for our actors to undergo movement training for The Trojan Women?
DG: The basis of Greek theater is movement, is physical. And so to have the opportunity to present a movement practice and to present physicality with The Tro -
(left to right) Amanda Wolfe, Lucy Gallagher, Nora Eulie, and Allison Peterman; photo by Amelia Ebent
Temple of the Body: Costume Design
by Sophie Le
Alice Forgét is currently under the direction of resident costume designer, Martin Sanchez, for an independent study in costume design during the production of The Trojan Women.
Forgét found her inspiration for The Trojan Women in Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s sketches, La Mort de Sardanapale by Eugène Delacroix, the Dior Cruise 2022 collection shot on the Acropolis, among others. Her work will replicate the distress and sense of desecration rife in the play. This desecration is Alice’s basis for the Trojan women’s costumes, which she said “are going to be ragged, destroyed, covered in soot.”
Referencing the source of her inspiration for this difficult idea of bodily desecration, Alice explained, “I don’t think it’s something just to move past when considering The Trojan Women I think it is the core heartbeat of this play. If you’re a Christian or Catholic, you may be familiar with the passage, ‘Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,’ and that’s where I had that idea. [The body has been] completely destroyed and ruined and taken advantage of.”
With this theme in mind, Alice started with Cassandra, who embodies this desecration. Alice achieved movement in the fabric of Cassandra’s costume to capture Cassandra’s identity and the movement of her disaster. Alice has several layers of sheer chiffon in the costume intact, but it is muddy and torn in other places. Despite the atrocities Cassandra has experienced, she
remains with a red headscarf to “[remind] us again of the flame that she carries,” said Alice.
Most of the women’s costumes hold the same ragged appearance. Alice depicts the Chorus in purple tones. To communicate the effect of having walked through their destroyed city, Alice designed bandages for their feet. Browns mainly cover the purple tones on their costumes, and soot thoroughly marks them from neckline to hem.
Despite this hopelessness, the gods and their assistance are absent for these women. To communicate the idea that the gods are as removed from Troy as modern audiences are to the events of the play, Alice has designed the gods’ costumes with a modern, everyday style. Poseidon will wear chill loungewear and sunglasses and carry a foam latte. Athena, the victor of the Trojan War, will wear a boxing robe, whose trim is evocative of a laurel wreath. She will also wear Dior tennis shoes, sunglasses, boxing gloves, and a leather breastplate. Their jarring visuals serve as an amplifier that emulates the modern world viewing this war over 3000 years later. As a result, audiences feel what the Trojan women feel toward the gods: utter alienation. The department is excited to see what Forgét does with The Trojan Women and what she will do in the future. Her upcoming plans include an MFA in costume design, costume designing for local theaters, and much more.
Senior Studios: Alice Forgét and Ben Thomas
Glory in the Flower:
by Sarah Rondeau
Glory in the Flower, written by William Inge, is a bittersweet drama examining the Hollywood-esque romance of high school sweethearts twenty years after they part ways. Meeting up in the local bar, Bus Riley attempts to lure Jackie Bowen to relive their “glory days.”
This presents Jackie with the choice of pursuing Bus’ enchantment or pursuing the life she has built in his absence. Director Alice Forgét invites the UD community to ponder Inge’s insights on relationships, nostalgia, and growing up.
When asked what inspired her to select Inge’s work, Alice commented, “I didn’t go looking for Inge. He found me.” Alice described the process of combing through a host of plays while deciding her Senior Studio production: “When you’re choosing a Studio, you’re always thinking about your community.” Alice settled upon Inge’s play because she was able to see herself and all of the UD community reflected within Inge’s nostalgic inquiry of days gone by. The comfortable, small town in which the play takes place reminds Alice of both her hometown and of UD, where everyone knows everyone else and where many senior students feel torn between familiar places and exciting futures.
About the actors, Alice remarked, “It’s hard because we’re still young, but we’re trying to pretend to be forty—looking back on our glory days—when we’re in our glory days right now.”
Inge’s Glory in the Flower invites audiences to conduct thoughtful comparisons between their own familiar pasts and the foreign futures. Alice acknowledged this internal struggle represented throughout the play. “It’s very ironic,” she remarked with a laugh, “that I’m trying to be nostalgic when I’ve only lived 21 years of life, right? But I’ve found that you can get trapped and stuck in this illusion of when things were better and the beauty of the past and constantly comparing that to the present and the future and how scary that is.” This comparison between the present beauty and the glory of the past motivates Jackie and Bus’ intrigue. Join Bus and Jackie as they grapple with their conflicting dreams and destinies in Glory in the Flower!
A Respectable Wedding:
by Lucy Gallagher
In Bertolt Brecht’s A Respectable Wedding, a “chaotic, nuptial farce”—to use director Ben Thomas’ words—a newlywed couple tries to keep the peace at their wedding reception, but they are challenged with a series of issues brought on by their friends and family. These issues force the couple to face a difficult decision of whether or not to accept the stark reality of marriage and adulthood. Although dealing with serious topics such as marriage, Brecht’s play has a comically chaotic feel: “The tone is pandemonium,” Thomas said. “It moves from very stuffy order to just a complete bedlam.” This tonal shift mirrors the conflict lurking at the heart of the play: the fight between appearances and reality. Every character attempts to hold up constructs of their identity to complement others’ constructed social identities. It becomes apparent that the faces people put on contradict their real identities and feelings. Inevitably, the tension becomes too much. “When everything breaks apart and comes to a head, that’s when reality shines through,” Thomas said, “and the reality destroys the appearances.” When their carefully constructed facade shatters, the bride and groom are faced with the reality of their marriage and the brokenness of the world around them. Thomas realized that by “taking every idea [he] had to its natural conclusion,” he created a production that includes “a pretty healthy helping of Brecht’s concept of verfremdungseffekt, the alienation effect where the audience is made aware that they are watching a play.” This production of Brecht’s play takes a non-naturalistic approach, incorporating exciting artistic liberties in both design and acting.
A Respectable Wedding’s issues and critiques remain relevant today. Thomas said: “A big reason I was drawn to it was that a lot of the digs at upper middle-class society and social circles are evergreen. They’re as true now in 2025 Dallas, Texas as they were in 1912 Germany.” The play’s exploration of marriage and navigating relationships in a world of expectations and ideals appeals to UD’s intellectual side. The brilliance of this play ultimately lies in how it frames these profound questions of identity through a farcical and relatable scenario. Thomas suggested that A Respectable Wedding is “somewhere between a rehearsal dinner and a WWE match.” It’s a wild, fun ride through serious topics.
Meet the Cast and Management
Sienna Abbott Hecuba Senior Drama
Braden Barber Talthybius Senior Drama/English
Heidi Burke Chorus Freshman Undeclared
Mary Carlin Andromache Junior English
Johannes R. Carrillo Guard Sophomore Drama Madison Conly Chorus Sophomore History
Jude Self Chorus Freshman Business
David Semga Poseidon Freshman Business
Ben Thomas Menelaus Senior Drama
Amanda Wolfe Athena Sophomore Drama
Allison Peterman Cassandra Junior Drama/Philosophy
Christian Marin Guard Freshman Drama
Nora Eulie Chorus Junior Drama
Lucy Gallagher Helen Junior Drama/English
Margaret Frank Production Stage Manager Freshman Drama
Emma Guglielmetti Assistant Stage Manager Freshman Psychology
Charlotte Zarzecki Assistant Stage Manager Junior Psychology
Previous page: (left to right) Madison Conly, Jude Self, Allison Peterman, Sienna Abbott, Mary Carlin, and Nora Eulie; photos 1–5 respectively by Christopher LeBlanc, LeBlanc, Amelia Ebent, LeBlanc, and LeBlanc