In addition to being a museum of ancient art, the Getty Villa is also a venue for theatrical productions based on classical plays. Greek and Roman tragedies and comedies provide vivid insights into the social, cultural and political realities of ancient life. Presented alongside the Villa’s antiquities collection, they offer visitors a rich insight into the past.
Each year the Villa Theater Lab Series invites local, national, and international directors and companies to present ancient plays and creative reinterpretations. “The Villa works with artists who have a fascination or obsession with a particular play,†says Norman Frisch who administers the theater program. Theater Lab pieces are shown at the Villa’s indoor auditorium. Past presentations have included Culture Clash’s interpretation of Aristophanes’ Birds, Antaeus Theater Company’s rendition of Seneca’s Phaedra and Ellen McLaughlin’s new play Penelope.
Once a year a fully realized play is presented at the Villa’s outdoor theatre. The museum’s façade is a beautiful backdrop for the drama. This year’s production is Agamemnon, staged by the internationally renowned director Stephen Wadsworth, who has been praised for his “blend of historical fidelity, choreographic rigor, aesthetic refinement and startling jolts of psychological intensity†(American Theatre magazine). Wadsworth has brought his passionate, visually evocative reimaginings of plays and operas by ancient authors as well as Molière, Wagner, Handel, Mozart, Shaw, Wilde and Coward to audiences at the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Covent Garden and elsewhere. He worked on Agamemnon for six years, collaborating closely with the late Robert Fagels, a renowned translator of classical authors, to create a text that would resonate as it is spoken on stage (Wadsworth presented an earlier version of the play as a Theater Lab reading in 2006).
Agamemnon is part of the Oresteia trilogy written by Aeschylus in the fifth century B.C. It recounts the story of the House of Atreus, cursed by the gods for their transgressions. In Agamemnon, the victorious King of Argos returns home from the Trojan War to the simmering wrath of his wife Clytemnestra. At the beginning of the war Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods, retain support of his troops and further the military campaign. Clytemnestra waited for 10 years to avenge the death of her child. Now, with her lover Aegisthus, she plots the death of her husband. Her action only perpetuates a cycle of family violence. In the following play, The Libation Bearers, Orestes kills his mother to avenge the murder of his father, an act illustrated on a vase in the Villa collection.
The combination of Wadsworth’s intensely-felt vision of Agamemnon and the spectacular setting of the Getty Villa Theater is sure to provide the audiences with a moving and memorable experience.
Previews: 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, August 28–30. Tickets $15
Performances: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, September 4–27, 2008. Tickets $38; $32 students/seniors.
Getty Villa is located at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway. For reservations call (310) 440-7300.
