Changing history with her story — “Medea: Her Story” wins national awards at KCACTF

 

The University of Idaho Theatre Department’s rendition of “Medea: Her Story” received several national awards at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) in Denver February.

The awards included Outstanding Scenic Design, Outstanding Musical Composition, Distinguished Production of a New or Devised Work, Distinguished Directors, Distinguished Ensemble Work, Distinguished Performance by an Actor, and a special award given to Kelly Quinnett, the head of the acting program at UI and the lead role of Medea.

Jesse Dreikosen, Assistant Director of Scene Design and Head of Design and Technology at UI, conceived the idea of putting a spin on the classic tale and took it to his fellow faculty members Quinnett and Matt Foss to get the ball rolling on production.

“It’s a story about a woman who, over history, has sort of gotten a bad rap, but we explored it from a different point of view,” Dreikosen said. “We delved deep into who this woman is and what really drove her to do the things that she did.”

Dreikosen, said it is important to see the myth with a different perspective.

“It’s really about humanity and what drives us to do what we do and how we can be better,” he said.

The issues in the play mirror the controversy of gender equality and the heightened tension of the time the play premiered, Dreikosen said.

“When we first produced it, it was election time, and maybe that’s where the title came from, ‘Medea: Her Story’, but that’s why we wanted to explore it right now,” he said.

The Greek and Roman versions of the story depicts a male point of view with a predominantly male voice, and Dreikosen said he wanted to present her story with her voice.

Dreikosen said he had seen the play many times, and always wondered why it wasn’t shown from her perspective even though it is her story.

In this rendition of the myth, Dreikosen wanted to give not only a voice, but a more significant meaning to the female characters, so he gave larger roles to the women in Medea’s life — characters rarely mentioned in the original myths.

He wanted to take all measures to give the character of Medea a true voice and represent her history in totality, so he incorporated different myths surrounding her into the play.

Dreikosen said theater is important for bringing up current issues and he used “Medea” to do that.

“I think it’s current. It’s stuff we need to be talking about and that’s what theatre is about, we need to explore ideas and get people talking and thinking about their world and what’s around them,” he said.

While Dreikosen credits some of the success of the play to this aspect, he also said much of the play’s victory is owed to the collaborative nature of the production and the theater department.

Dreikosen said the cast and crew all played a part in putting the production together, from helping write the script to lending ideas for the set.

“The way we create theater here, it’s very collaborative, it’s unique,” he said. “I think that’s where the success came from is that we really worked together to create this piece.”

Dreikosen said he thinks the students learned from looking at a story from a fresh perspective and taking their play to the festival.

“Getting the chance to do that, I think expanded our students view point about what it is that they are studying to do,” he said.

Dreikosen will attend the KCACTF National Festival April 16 to April 22 in Washington, D.C., to receive the awards on the behalf of the “Medea” cast and crew.

Kara Billington can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @K_Billington3

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