By Alexandra Crossett
Staff Writer, ‘12

Among the many performances and showcases that take stage each week at Saint Peter’s, few honor the past as the Greek Theater project does.  On Monday, March 9th, an exhibition of four ancient plays was performed in Roy Irving Theater as another installment in the series of Greek plays Saint Peter’s has hosted.  Entitled Fragments, the show was a little different from its predecessors.  Most of the plays have not been performed since their original displays in ancient Greece, making their modern debuts here.
Casey Groves directed Fragments, which was composed of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Unbound, Euripides’s Phaeton, Sophocles’s The Searchers, and Menander’s The Woman of Samia.  The scenes are actually fragments of full plays from the respective writers, discovered and translated in the last ten years.
Amanda Staub, a Classics major of the Class of 2009, says that the text of the full plays has yet to be found.  “In the past, she went on to say, ”Greek Theater was performed at three-day competitions, with different segments performed each day.”  Since only portions are available, the plots of the plays are unknown, but suppositions can be made based on available material and similar myths.  The plot of the Phaeton fragment, for example, can be surmised from myths and other plays about the eponymous son of Apollo.  The same can be said of Prometheus Unbound, an account of the story of Prometheus’s punishment for giving fire to man.
The Searchers, a satyr play (it featured an animal-human cast) is significant because it is a comedy from Sophocles, who almost exclusively wrote tragedies.   The Woman of Samia is a comedy from Menander.
Two actors in the plays, Jacob Hines and Kevin Forrest also commented on the project.  Hines said that he enjoyed the production very much, saying it was one of the most entertaining plays he has taken part in.  Forrest acted in the Menander play and described its plot and premise like that of a soap opera, something that was “definitely fun to perform and watch.” He became involved in the show only a few days before it was staged, filling in for a few unexpected absences, but said he was happy to participate.
The Greek Theater project is funded by the Polychronis Foundation, an organization promoting the study of Greek language and culture.  Each year, SPC receives money from the foundation to be used a scholarship to send students to Greece and other pursuits.  This year the money has gone primarily to the theater and to the fund for a trip to Greece, which several students have taken.