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ADAPTING A CLASSIC: A HIP HIPPOLYTUS |
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by Ivana Ivkovic |
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Playwright Ivana Ivkovic, originally from Chicago and now residing inCalifornia, has written a new comedy called The Chaste Garcia Baker. Her play is based on Euripides' Hippolytus, which dramatizes aspects of Greek mythology. Ivkovic offered to share her adaptation process with Headline Muse.com. Read on for a Q & A interview which details Ivkovic's strategies, puzzles and solutions for updating myths for contemporary audiences. |
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Headline Muse: It's an intriguing and ambitious idea to update a classic.What made you choose Hippolytus? How did you get the idea? |
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Ivkovic: Actually the play's title drew me in. I had read all of Euripides' works except for this particular piece; not to mention that this is theleast familiar Euripides play among American audiences. Not to mention that I've never come across any adaptations of it! I naturally wondered if there was a reason for this, so I read it. And loved it. |
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HM: For those who haven't read the original, please describeEuripides' play briefly.
Ivkovic: It's love at first sight for Phaedra when she spots Hippolytus.Hippolytus eventually falls madly in love with Phaedra, despite his desirenot to--once he's found out she's his father's new wife. |
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HM: How would you describe The Chaste Garcia Baker? Is it aradical departure from Euripides' drama? |
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Ivkovic: Well, yes and no; Euripides' play is a tragedy and The ChasteGarcia Baker is a tragic comedy. While I was reading Hippolytus, I couldnot help but notice a certain cynical, comic undertone throughout the entire play. I merely decided, because I simply could not resist, to bring that element to the surface in an exaggerated fashion. |
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HM: So Hippolytus became a character named Garcia Baker. What other direct updates did you use for characters? |
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Ivkovic: Phaedra remained Phaedra...I needed at least one character to, at least phonetically if not figuratively, keep me grounded. This is the way I write; unless I have a character or theme that serves this respective purpose, my writing will just go off the wall, which can be a lot of fun forme, but not to an audience member. I also kept the other characters, only made each of them more colorful and slightly altered their respectiverelationships to one another and to Hippolytus. The chorus remained intact as well; yet en lieu of having twelve women and men chanting in monotone, I cut it down to three outspoken, flask-toting, obnoxious, flapper girls. I also brought in Aphrodite as a smooth-talking, furtive vixen, and Artemis as a gentle guerrila soldier. |
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HM: Theme is always important in adaptation. How did you decide to change the play from a tragedy to a comedy? Were you working with a specific theme in mind?
Ivkovic: I'll try to explain it this way--it took me two years, a six-monthbreak to write comedy, and three drafts, to finally complete a serious drama that just had to be written, and I knew if I didn't write it, nobody else would touch it. It was based on a series of rape/death camp survivortestimonies that I translated in the fall and winter of 1995 during aninternship at a feminist non-profit organization in Zagreb, Croatia, andinterviews that I conducted at refugee camps in the Croatian (yet thenSerb-occupied) towns of Vinkovci, Vukovar, and Karlovac. I began the first draft of The Chaste Garcia Baker in that six-month break that I took from my dramatic piece, and to be quite honest with you, Hippolytus' tragedy didn't faze me much. I wanted to make fun of his story, and I needed to have fun with it. It's a ridiculous story after all, but not without a lesson to be learned. This lesson I wished to bring to the forefront. Each of us is only on this earth for a whisper of time, yet something we do not understand, something cosmic and beautiful, connects us to one another. Two things bring people together: laughter and tragedy. Though we must be aware of the pain which is both cosmic and individual, we must not forget to laugh. There is the pain that passes, and the pain that remains, but we must not forget to love and laugh. We'll be all the more richer for it. |
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HM: Creative process is different for every artist. Let's talkabout the actual writing. Did you take sections of Euripides' play and rework them? Or did you try to reconceive everything from a fresh perspective before you began? |
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Ivkovic: I read it through a second time before I began to reconceive/envision a unique perspective for it. But I saw the comicelements within the tragedy all along; I just didn't know how I was going to work with them. Should I reinvent the play as a comic tragedy, or take it completely apart, blow it open, take bits and pieces from dreams andmeditations, feel the new texture and then see? Yes, I decided to do thelatter, and the result wasn't a fresh version of Euripides' Hippolytus. Itwas The Chaste Garcia Baker, inspired by Euripides' Hippolytus. There's a difference. |
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HM: There are specific archetypes in Hippolytus--Artemis andAphrodite, for example. How did you research their archetypal energies? |
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Ivkovic: I drew sketches of them and incorporated their respective images into my daily morning meditation. So no, I did not do much research on them at all. I used my general knowledge of what characteristics each goddess encompasses, and my meditations did the rest. I cannot stress how crucial meditation is; it should be incorporated into each of our daily schedules, but in particular the artist's routine, because it disciplines you--but in a non-threatening way. And since it's the artist's nature to rebel and feel free, in order to be focused and successful as an artist, one must be focused and disciplined. I really believe this. Last but not least, meditation teaches you not to second-guess yourself, but trust your instincts. Your instinct will bring you to the place you need to be, wherever that may be. |
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HM: Some people find it intimidating to work with the gods and goddesses in dramatic form. How did you reinvent these archetypes for amodern theatre audience? |
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Ivkovic: Aphrodite and Artemis transcend "modern"; mythology is timeless. There are parts of both Aphrodite and Artemis with which I identified or to which I could relate. I flipped through my own mental files, my own oscillating between extremes: the hermit and the social butterfly, the vixen and the crusader--and the "reinvention" was a piece of cake. |
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HM: In a lecture in 1922, psychologist C.G. Jung said thatcreative process "consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypalimage...By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of thepresent, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life" (The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, p. 82). Do you feel you have translated certain archetypes for a new generation in your play? |
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Ivkovic: I've translated archetypes according to the needs of this particular play's story. But whoa, a new generation? No comment on that one.
HM: What do you think it says about our culture that we need to be reminded of the lessons in Hippolytus ? |
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Ivkovic: That sometimes we need to take a chance on people we'd otherwise write off as not worth the frustration and pain. It's never been more difficult to trust others than it is today. There's a reason for this.Change is good, but I know many people who find it incomprehensible to let go of friends or significant others who simply are not good for them.Having friends and lovers are how we cope with living in a world we are not content dealing with on our own. Well, there are times we need to be alone. And more important than friendship is having good friends, strong friends who are comfortable being on their own. They're the ones who won't judgeyou, but will accept you for all your faults and weaknesses and beauty, and let you live your life according to your own philosophy, howeverincomprehensible it may be. |
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HM: Now that the project is written, what are your hopes for your play? |
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Ivkovic: It's been through a serious of revisions and workshop readings.It's production time for The Chaste GarciaBaker! I see this play onoff-off-Broadway or off-Broadway, one of the many Chicago stages, or at a subscription theatre in Los Angeles. But hey, I won't be picky. Wish meluck.
Headline Muse: Good luck, Ivana! And thanks for sharing your process with our readers. |
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WORK CITED
Jung, C.G. The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. Trans. R.F. C. Hull. Bollingen XX. Princeton, N.J., Princeton, UP, 1966.
COPYRIGHT 2001 BY IVANA IVKOVIC. WWW. HEADLINEMUSE.COM |
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