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Fall 2002
Vol. 65, No. 1

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COLLEGE CLASS GIVES ANCIENT PLAY A CONTEMPORAY CAST

Admit it, Admetus: Oblivious to the life or death situation being played out in the youth hostel run by his friend Admetus, Herakles, played by Jim Hykel '03 (left), tries to engage the hostel's servant, played by Katie Gurnett '04, in a discussion of the more temporal issue of partying.

Oh, those eternal questions! Would you lay down your life to save a loved one? Can mortals bargain with the gods? Would Euripedes include the words
to the Baha Men's Who Let the Dogs Out? if he were trying to characterize the partying friend of a mortal in trouble with Mount Olympus?

Such questions were on the minds of students in Greek Drama in Translation, an upper- level College class, as they updated the work of the 5th century B.C.E. play Alcestis for a contemporary audience of Rochester students.

"A lot of the issues that Euripedes deals with are still relevant," says Jim Hykel '03, a classics major who helped adapt the play and who performed two roles-that of Apollo and Herakles (you may know him as Hercules)-during the one-day-only, semester-ending performance last spring in the Welles-Brown Room of Rush Rhees Library.

Monica Florence, senior lecturer in the Department of Religion and Classics, says the idea behind the project was to have students think in new ways about ancient Greek literature and culture.

"We wanted the play to not only be modern, but to also have a University setting and context," Florence says. "This was the first time the course has been taught, and it was a lot of fun."

In the play, Alcestis has been marked for death by the gods, who are angry with her husband, Admetus. The gods agree to take a substitute if Admetus can find someone willing to replace her.

All ends happily when Herakles (whose party quirks include belting out the signature "woof, woof" of the Baha Men's song) wrestles Death to free Alcestis.


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