Electra by Sophocles

 I'm sitting in on a course on directing for the theater that my mother is taking through the Fromm Institute, a continuing education outfit in SF. The teacher is a Carey Perloff, writer, director and former artistic director at the American Conservatory Theater in SF from 1992 to 2018 (ACT); she has worked in Canada, France, Finland, Great Britain as well as the U.S. She staged plays by Pinter, Stoppard and did the first staging of Angels in America outside New York, as well as directing a huge number of plays, ancient and modern, at ACT and elsewhere. 

The class is on zoom, which is why I can attend, and has been a marvelous introduction to the work and process of directing a play. Last week was an intense overview of that process, and this week we read Sophocles' Electra and learned about ancient Greek theater production and the kinds of artistic choices a contemporary director might make in staging the play. Next week we'll talk about The Merchant of Venice, which I know I read years ago, so I'll have a chance to read it again. She is a passionate and effective lecturer. I'm thrilled to be able to sit in on this course.

Here's a very brief preview clip of the ACT production of Electra, with Olympia Dukakis as the leader of the Chorus:

 

And here is a clip of Carey Perloff explaining the play:  

I admire her accomplishments as the artistic director of ACT while being a mother of two small children. She came to the company when it was almost bankrupt, homeless after the 1989 earthquake, and in need of a complete overhaul. In her first seasons her productions aroused opposition: the Duchess of Malfi was too violent and obscene; Dario Fo's play made the Catholic Church mad; people didn't like her productions of classical Greek theater; her color-blind casting got some people riled up. She was surprised at how conservative the theater audience was. As a young woman, she didn't enjoy automatic support. She had to do incredible fund-raising. She was successful and rebuilt ACT.