CRY, TROJANS! (Troilus & Cressida)
Sincere love
CRY, TROJANS! originated as a coproduction with the Royal Shakespeare Company of Troilus and Cressida at the World Shakespeare Festival in conjunction with the London 2012 Olympics. In that collaboration, the two companies took opposite sides in the Trojan War: the Wooster Group staged the Trojan scenes while the RSC staged the Greek ones. Scenes with both Greeks and Trojans were staged by both, each side developing its own version. The companies worked separately and without consultation until they met a few weeks before performances to sew the two halves of the show together. The seam was intentionally left rough so that the contrast of artistic approaches remained a foreground feature of the production, accenting the face-off of warring cultures in the play.
Seeking a decidedly American angle from which to encounter the RSC and the language of Shakespeare, the Wooster Group reimagened the Trojans as a pastiche fictional tribe of early Americans struggling to assert its dignity as doom closes in.
Following the special engagement with the RSC, the Wooster Group returned to New York and converted the collaboration into an independent piece. The spirit of the absent collaborator/enemy still manifests in various ways, but CRY, TROJANS! concentrates on the Trojan side of the story: the corruption of sincere love and the downfall of a noble hero.
text by William Shakespeare | with Ari Fliakos, Jennifer Lim, Greg Mehrten, Suzzy Roche, Andrew Schneider, Scott Shepherd, Casey Spooner, Kate Valk, and Gary Wilmes | directed by Elizabeth LeCompte | set elements, props, costumes Folkert de Jong, Delphine Courtillot | sound Bruce Odland | live sound mix Bobby McElver, Max Bernstein | lighting Jennifer Tipton | video, projections, control interfaces Andrew Schneider | stage manager Teresa Hartmann | assistant director Jamie Poskin | assistant costumes Enver Chakartash | assistant lighting Ryan Seelig | wardrobe, make-up Naomi Raddatz | production manager Emily Rea | technical director Bill Kennedy | video totems Ruud van den Akker, Aron Deyo | rigger Eric Dyer | Master Electrician Andy Sowers | Sound Consultant Jim Dawson | Special thanks for this project to Michael Boyd, Rupert Goold, Laura Hopkins, Deborah Shaw, and Jeremy Adams of the RSC, and to Tim Carroll, Alex Hassell, Bozkurt Karasu, and Ruth Mackenzie | special project funds were generously provided by the National Endowment for the Arts; the Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam; The Rolex Institute; and the CRY, TROJANS! (Troilus & Cressida) Producers’ Circle: George Ahl, Francesca Connolly, Wendy vanden Heuvel, Jennifer and Kristopher John, Diane and Adam Max, and Michael Tracy.
with the support of VISITBRUSSELS and the Brussels-Capital Region
