Speaking from London, Thompson explains why his collaborator, set, and costume designer Ellen Cairns, dressed the cast in 21st-century clothes. “If you put it in modern dress, the modern parallels are going to strike everyone,” he says. Those parallels involve hoary debates over capital punishment and cycles of revenge that pass through a family. “What do you do with the desire for retribution, that harsh kind of justice? That is as relevant now as it was when Aeschylus was writing.” The director cites the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war—“started by a father and completed by a son.”
Thompson and Cairns raise difficult questions, then slyly leave the audience to confront their own beliefs. Literally. Cairns has installed a traverse that juts out into the theater. Audience members, placed on either side of the extension, will be forced to watch one another’s reactions as the tragedy plays out. “It reflects the fact that this is a play about debate, of opposing views confronting each other,” Thompson says. “And the traverse is great for that.”
Now in its seventh season, Woodstock Fringe was co-founded by Manhattan theater professionals with eyes trained on fresh talent in theater and music. Pieces are performed in the historic Byrdcliffe Theater in Woodstock. Artistic Director Wallace Norman may have reined in the number of offerings this year but continues to shape offbeat pieces in workshops.
“The opportunity for a playwright to hear his new work is so rare,” Norman said. “Our sense of purpose for doing new work is ever stronger.”
The 2009 season of Woodstock Fringe includes "The Night the Cardiff Giant Sang Ruffini on the Lawn" (August 13–23) by Charles Traeger, a founding member of the Fringe. For history buffs, the Giant in question is part of New York lore. When exhumed in 1869 in the western part of the state, it commanded national headlines as well as the attention of showman P. T. Barnum. Trager’s comedy, as the title suggests, is a surreal foray into the subject and takes place in Cooperstown, where the behemoth remains on display.
