MEDEA by Christopher Durang & Wendy Wasserstein

**DCdisco** · 03-20-2004, 09:43 PM

Does anyone have a cutting of this that i could look over? I'm a DI person, and out of the blue my coach tells me he wants me to do HI too at Nat Quals.....

So if anyone has a cutting of MEDEA that i could look at, that would be great! (my coach ordered the full script) but in the meantime i just want to get a feel for the piece.....

THANKS! :lol:

**Josiahzacks** · 03-20-2004, 10:06 PM

The piece itself is only about 15 minutes, so you shouldnt have to cut much. Its in most of the durang anthologies, so you might be able to find a capy sooner anyway.

**kevinTHEpreoccupied** · 04-06-2004, 02:30 PM

i would highly discourage the use of this piece... theres only one person who can pull it off that i know of. the other performances i saw of this piece were really quite dreadful. consider the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard. now multiply the annoyingness by 10, then add a screaming baby in the middle of a good movie, then add the old ladies in checkout lines that end up having the cashier call the manager and get really annoying, now add a dog letting it all out on your bed, and the uncomfortable atmosphere of an HI that lacks the H part of the term. in effect making it just... Interpretation, and a bad one at that. this is what the audience goes through when this piece is performed badly. i only know one person who can do it right, and she knows who she is.

also consider the fact that most people havent read medea, and usually if they have they are all seniors... making less than 1/4 of the speech population actually having some idea of the humor in the piece

04-06-2004, 08:43 PM

I hate hate hate hate hate Christopher Dur-hang-me. Not funny.

Medea is actually probably the best of anything he has written. The worst: The DMV Tyrant. Oh my God is that terrible. I think you could be Billy Crystel or Eddie Murphy and that piece would still be totally unfunny.

And what is with that Sister Mary Ignatius thing? I just don't even get that.

Mmm, maybe worse than DMV is Laughing Wild---exceedingly annoying.

I think the reason I hate everything he writes is that the bulk of it is forensics length, so people don't cut and you see the same thing trillions of times. And the humor (if any) lies not in the character but in the shock value of the dialogue, which, in turn, leads to bad, unfunny, bad HIs.

**SniffyGuy** · 04-06-2004, 09:14 PM

amen to that brother

i've noticed that all of christopher durang's pieces pretty much have the same jokes in every one; the wording is just a little different each time. There ALWAYS is at least one screwed up, weird character that says stupid things that are supposed to be funny, and there almost always, in reaction to that, is a normal person that is frustrated by the fact that they have to deal with the person (or maybe because they've been inserted into a durang script). stay clear of durang and make the world a better place.

**Lorelei** · 04-07-2004, 01:52 PM

i think durang has funny stuff but its not that great for speech. there are way too many characters and the plot is complicated, thus making it hard to understand in a 10 min interp done by one person..usually durang pieces dont do that great(funeral parlor is an exception....but there are only two characters). anyway...medea is one of the best pieces from durang, the thing is that only people that have read Medea understand the jokes. (same thing with Oedi...but oedi is actually easier to understand even if u havent read Oedipus Rex). so medea might be a bad choice for NFL....

**superboink** · 04-07-2004, 08:30 PM

Wasserstein is a great writer... i used one of her play for my TI last year...
Good Luck 2 U

**kevinTHEpreoccupied** · 04-08-2004, 09:56 PM

titanic is actually pretty funny, but its all in dialog, there is no room for good characterization

**Lorelei** · 04-09-2004, 04:26 PM

i did titanic....well i cut it and i was planning to do it. the problem was that the plot was so complicated that it took forever for people to understand who Lidia actually was and that richard was gay, and all that stuff. and then again ...all the sexual content. i liked the piece and the cutting but i just drpooed it when i saw that my team /coach/coaches from other schools got so confused...yeah... but its funny, i still love the piece..