JoAnne Akalaitis Bears ‘Bad News’
MESSENGERS IN GREEK TRAGEDY ARE TASKED with bearing witness to the unthinkable and of passing on their eyewitness accounts. Messenger speeches are not unlike stories of atrocity told to Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, or stories told by designated survivors of the Holocaust, whose responsibility was to survive precisely so they could describe what they had seen with their own eyes in the hope that it would never happen again: Nunca mas.
Indeed, “I will tell you everything” is a constant refrain in Bad News! I was there…, a new site-specific processional performance composed of messenger speeches from Greek tragedy compiled by director JoAnne Akalaitis and coming to New York City’s NYU Skirball Center, Sept. 6-8. There’s the speech by which Medea learns of the effect of her poisoned robe on Jason’s bride; the one in which we learn of Iphigenia’s sacrifice; another about the slaughter of the entire Persian army; and one about Pentheus’ death and dismemberment by the Bacchae and his own mother.
Of course, the messenger is also a storyteller—one charged with passing on not only the facts, but their affective impact. In doing this they must relive the horror, embody Messengers, then, are quintessential actors. Or vice versa.
