How do you solve a problem like Medea - Kate Mulvany
What drew you to the myth of Medea and the idea of adapting it? Was there something in particular that appealed to you?
I was asked by Belvoir literary manager Anthea Williams to write an adaptation of Medea from an idea by director Anne-Louise Sarks. Anne-Louise wanted to update the story for a modern adult audience, but told from the children’s point of view. This intrigued me for a couple of reasons. The first being that the children in Medea are often forgotten. Even though they are the victims, the emphasis is always on their mother. I wanted to explore their world before they were taken from it.
The second reason was that Medea herself is always cast as some kind of evil monster. Her actions are indeed horrific. But what led her to such drastic measures has never fully been explored, in my mind. I wanted to understand the woman behind the mythical 'monster’.
Where did the idea of framing it from the perspective of the kids come from?
Anne-Louise Sarks came up with the idea after reading a newspaper article about a father who threw his daughter off a bridge. His other child watched from the back seat of the car. We were both horrified that a parent could do such a thing, of course, but also intrigued as to how that other child dealt with what he witnessed. There was a spate of such stories at the time that focused a lot on the adults but not much on the children. We wanted to give those children a voice.
Anne-Louise and I wanted the audience to get to know these children. We wanted them to laugh with them as they played in their bedroom. We wanted the audience to forget the mythology of Medea until suddenly they are right in amongst it. We wanted them to sit in a bedroom with two children in the last hour of those boys’ lives. We wanted the audience to feel how quickly and tragically things can fall apart in the family home. We wanted to test the boundaries of community responsibility.
Do you see Medea as a sympathetic character? How do you relate to her personally?
I see her as a human being. I see her as a woman who has had a turbulent life and many destructive relationships. I see her as very very very scared parent. She has made wrong choices, and the results are eating away at her. In our version of Medea, she appears only for brief stints for a few minutes at a time. But we are seeing a woman in rapid emotional decline who feels there is no other way out but to do what she does. We do not make her a heroine. But we do not judge her either. We refused to make her the caterwauling, crazed version of a woman that she is so often represented as, and instead made her someone completely recognisable. A mother. A sister. A child. A friend. A parent.
In your version, Medea has quite limited stage time. As a writer, how do you tackle that build up to that final decision and sacrifice with a character offstage?
“Through the mouths of babes” is an apt description of our play. We find out about Medea and Jason’s relationship via the boys’ interactions. They listen to them arguing. They talk about “Dad’s special friend” (Glauce). They imitate their parents' lives and conversations. They somehow make Medea and Jason more human without us even seeing them. Then, when Medea finally enters, we have more context than we realise. In our version she is dressed in her husband’s tracksuit pants, a dowdy t-shirt, but with sparkling diamond earrings. Her perfect makeup is tearstained and her feet are bare. She is a confusion of worlds, just as we have gleaned from her boys. The boys become our portal into Medea’s mind, which is why it’s all the more tragic when they are taken from us. Therefore, our Medea doesn’t really need to do or say much when she is onstage. She tells them to clean their room. She shows them the gift she has made for “dad’s friend”. She gets them dressed into their suits while they play a word game. It’s not until later that we realise they are their funereal suits. It’s through the banal that we made Medea break our hearts - by her appearance and what the boys’ have said about her, we know she is unstable.
Why should contemporary audiences care about Medea? Why do you think it continues to resonate?
Because parents are still killing children. Domestic violence is still happening, day after day. Mental illness is still not getting the attention it needs in our medical system. Medeas aren’t just mothers. They are men too. Sometimes, the Medeas are children themselves, broken by a cycle of violence. The story of Medea is more resonant now than ever.