Meggie's Blog #4

The performance of “The Trojan Women” at the Getty Villa provided a more streamlined version of the play than the original text by altering, adding, and eliminating characters. The show chose to rid the script of Athena, add the character of Odysseus, and change the chorus from a group of captive Trojan women to just one man. By doing this, the production seemed to be more straightforward than the original play because, by deleting extraneous characters, it gave more lines to central characters and centralized the “chorus.”
The performance eliminated the character of Athena, most likely because she had such a small, unimportant role. In the original text, the character comes “to ally [Poseidon’s] power with [hers]” (The Trojan Women 39). The one purpose her two-page appearance may serve is to explain why she did not help Odysseus for the first ten years after the Trojan war. She believed she had “been outrageously insulted” by the Greeks who destroyed her temples. Had she appeared in the performance, her quick scene probably would have felt very random, and quite purposeless for those who are not familiar with the Odyssey. Fortunately, cutting her altogether made room for Odysseus, who did not appear in the original text.
By actually including the character of Odysseus, the play showed a more human side to the Greeks. In both the play and the performance, Hecuba is disgusted by Odysseus, calling him “a foul man of trickery,/ an enemy of justice,” and “a lawless man” (The Trojan Women 47). However, in the original play, Odysseus has no chance to defend himself, and thus the reader assumes that he is as horrible as Hecuba claims he is. In the performance, Odysseus is actually somewhat relatable, admitting that he is very cunning, but explaining that he had to create the Trojan horse. It makes sense - having been at war for ten years, everyone involved (including Hecuba) wanted it to end. Because of this, the audience has the potential to feel more sympathy for the Greek man and his army, instead of simply viewing him as a monster.
The performance also changed the chorus from a group of Trojan women to just one man, a helper of Hecuba. Since the set and the special effects in the play were minimalistic, it makes sense that the writers also chose to streamline the chorus. Hecuba’s helper portrayed the same despair for the situation and support of Hecuba as the chorus did in the original text, only without the many repetitive and over-excessive songs. This gave more time for the central characters to make their points (and to add the subplot about Andromache killing Astyanax). However, the play itself is called “The Trojan Women,” so it was confusing to me why the writers chose to reduce the chorus, which is supposed to be full of Trojan women, to just one man.
Overall, by consciously choosing to rid the play of unnecessary characters and adding dynamic ones, the writers made the adaptation more fast-paced than the original. By cutting out a few characters (Athena and the chorus), the play, like the set, props, and costumes, became more minimalistic and simultaneously dependent on the few main characters. Poseidon, who only appeared for a few pages in the book, was on stage the entire time. Andromache had a dynamic new subplot that was not in the original. Because of these changes, the performance was slightly more interesting and concise than the text.