Randolph College performs ‘Elektra’ in outdoor theater

By Casey Gillis

Published: October 7, 2008

When Amy Cohen first saw Randolph College’s outdoor Greek theater, the Dell, she was in awe.

“I almost couldn’t speak,” says Cohen, who joined the college’s faculty as a classics professor 10 years ago.

For Cohen, whose graduate work was on performance aspects of Greek tragedy, having something like the Dell at her fingertips was a dream come true.

“It just makes me so happy,” she says.

Cohen and a group of her students are gearing up for their sixth production in the space, a longstanding college tradition Cohen revived in 2000. Performances of Sophocles’ “Elektra” — which tells the story of a girl and her brother plotting revenge after their mother kills their father — are scheduled for 4 p.m. Oct. 10, 11 and 12. If it rains, performances will be in the college’s Houston Memorial Chapel.

The annual Greek Play began in 1909, when Greek professor Mabel Whiteside and her students produced Euripides’ “Alcestis.” Whiteside continued the tradition almost every year after that, and by the time she retired, had done 40 plays in 45 years.

“It was this special tradition for the college that was very, very dear to the people involved in it, but that almost entirely collapsed after Miss Mabel retired,” says Cohen.

Randolph College’s former president, Kathleen Bowman, approached Cohen about starting it up again.

She was inspired to do it during a college reunion, when a group of alumnae “started reciting their lines in Greek, 50 years later,” Cohen says.

Because it’s such a big undertaking, she does the play every two years, adhering to most of the original conventions that governed theater during the time of the great tragedians. The belief is that the best plays will emerge from the conditions for which they were

written.

“I don’t believe you can understand the plays unless you put them on,” she says.

Cohen always casts three actors to play all of the main roles, just as it was done in Ancient Greece — though they don’t know why.

“It’s one of those details we don’t have enough evidence about. It’s disappeared,” she says.

“It wasn’t as far as I can see, a strict limitation. I believe the Greeks had an affinity for economy. If one character has a big monologue (at the beginning of the play), but then sits backstage for the rest of the show, it’s a waste.”

She also thinks the playwrights could have done it to add another layer of intensity to the production.

In “Elektra,” for instance, the main character’s brother kills their mother, and the same actor plays the brother and the mother.

“I believe the playwrights enjoyed what they could do with it,” Cohen says.

Other conventions include having a Greek chorus on stage for the most of the play and outfitting the entire cast with elaborate masks.

Making the masks is no easy process. A mold must be taken of each actor’s face. Then Cohen’s crew sculpts a head to those specifications and molds a mask to that. She estimates that it takes about 40 hours per mask.

But all the work is worth it, Cohen says.

“It’s a huge, overwhelming thing. But what I can tell them is how happy the world is that they’re doing this,” she adds. “It’s wonderful to be able to tell my students we are making a difference in how (people) understand Greek drama.”