Lives of Tiresias
2018
A Jefferson Market Playhouse Production
Jefferson Market Library
New York, NY
CAST
Ben Bailey, Frank Collerius, Jailyn Sherel Harris, Rebecca Wei Hsieh, David Richman, Patrick Toon, Pauline Walsh
CREW
Director: Cecilia Rubino
Music: Lucas Tahiruzzaman Syed
Assistant Director: Monica Gronchi
Stage Manager: Ari Grossmann
Physical Consultant: Michael Buffer
Dramaturg Coordinator: Adithya Pratama
Production Dramaturgs: Danajha Davis, Bob Greifeld, Svetlana Orel, Wayne Willinger
Cover Photo: Will Lucas
ABOUT
Created and written by David Richman and co-written and directed by Cecilia Rubino, Lives of Tiresias is a new theatre piece with music that juxtaposes Richman’s personal story--the story of an ageing blind theatre artist—with the complex and competing myths that swirl around Tiresias, the unimaginably old blind prophet of Thebes.
Combining classical language with Brechtian technique, the play interrogates and exemplifies such questions as: What does it mean to have sight? Insight? Foresight? Why are we desperate to know the future—and why are we even more desperate NOT to know the future? Why do the blind (we are all in various ways blind) come into such fundamental conflict with themselves and with each other? For Jean Genet, the aged prophet Tiresias is the patron saint of actors, and for T.S. Eliot, he is “the most important personage” in The Waste Land. The play delves into what is enduring about Tiresias—a personage who figures in so many ancient and modern tales and enacts aspects of his story – from the double sex change, the voyeurism with Athena and with the serpents, and the various encounters with Theban kings that have become iconic in Greek and Roman tragedy.