Firenze, installazione scarpe rosse in Palazzo Medici Riccardi contro a violenza sulle donne 2013-03-21 © Majlend Bramo/Massimo Sestini

The Getty Villa (Villa Theater Lab) and Rogue Machine Theatre Presents:

Aeschylus’s
THE SUPPLIANT WOMEN
ΙΚΕΤΙΔΕΣ

Translated by George Theodoridis

Directed by Michael Arabian
Produced by Michael Arabian, Joshua Bitton, and John Perrin Flynn

Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 3:00 and 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 3:00 p.m.
Admission: Tickets: $7. Call (310) 440-7300 or click here.

Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Women, one of the oldest extant dramas from ancient Greece, is the first play and only surviving full text of the lost Danaid Tetralogy. The tetralogy was inspired by the myth of Io and her two warring sons, Aegyptus and Danaos. After Aegyptus usurps Danaos’s throne, the 50 sons of Aegyptus seek to possess the 50 daughters of Danaos by forced marriage. Danaos and his daughters reject the compulsory unions and flee to Argos for sanctuary, pursued by the Egyptians.

The Suppliant Women is also one of the earliest known stories of refugees. It is one of Aeschylus’s most poetic pieces, beautifully translated by renowned writer and translator George Theodoridis. In this remarkably timely production Argos becomes modern Greece and the daughters, wearing life jackets and arriving on overcrowded boats, become Syrian refugees. This ancient play has neither hero, nor downfall, nor even tragic conclusion. Instead, the play’s themes, still pertinent today, explore human rights, the continuing oppression of women, and societal reactions to refugees.

About the Director
Michael Arabian has directed and produced numerous West Coast and world premieres in New York and Los Angeles, winning over 50 awards. In Los Angeles, he is best known for his production of Waiting for Godot at the Mark Taper Forum in 2012 which was honored with five Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, including Outstanding Production and Direction. It was also nominated for ten Ovation Awards, winning five, including Best Production.

In 2016 Arabian directed Disgraced at San Diego Repertory Theatre, which received a San Diego Critics Award nomination for Best Production, and Red starring John Vickery. Both shows made the San Diego CityBeat’s Top 10 list. He also directed Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, starring the dance icon Leslie Caron at the Laguna Playhouse and Staging the Unstageable (commemorating the centennial of the Armenian Genocide) at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Other productions at the Mark Taper include Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Edward Albee’s The Sandbox, Harold Pinter’s A Slight Ache, and workshops of new works.

His site-specific company, Theatre InSite, formed a partnership with CBS (Radford) Studios (a first for L.A. theater), to produce live TV pilots (Third Rock from the Sun picked up) and inventive, large-scale productions, such as an updated production of Romeo and Juliet where audiences followed scenes and car chases through the backlot’s suburban streets, and The Trojan Women set during the Gulf War and staged in 400,000 gallons of water at the old Gilligan’s Island Lagoon site.

Arabian’s film King of the Ants, shot on 35mm film, is distributed by Vanguard Cinema.

About the Company
Rogue Machine Theatre was founded in 2008 as a performing arts organization to serve the greater Los Angeles community by developing and nurturing emerging playwrights, introducing important new contemporary works to Southern California, and engaging diverse audiences by presenting vital, invigorating productions. The company mirrors and examines contemporary culture as a theater of ideas and imagination.

This year, Rogue Machine Theatre (RMT) received the Polly Warfield Award for Outstanding Season from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, making it the only theater company to be given this award twice in the past sixteen years. The company is a recipient of the American Theatre Wing’s 2014 National Theatre Company Grant, awarded to select theater organizations for the development of new work and other significant contributions to the field of professional theater in the United States. World premieres have subsequently played off Broadway, in major regional theaters, and at the Donmar Warehouse in London. RMT has been nominated for the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and/or Ovation Awards Best Production in Los Angeles in six of the last seven years and has won each award three times. In addition, RMT has garnered more than 60 awards for direction, design, and acting. More information is available at RogueMachineTheatre.com.