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Episode 6: Medea
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In this episode, Naomi talks to Professor Al Duncan (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) about Euripides’ Medea as a revenge drama, Medea’s liminality, and the particular performance opportunities presented by this extraordinary tragedy. Then she interviews Rhodessa Jones, founder and director of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, about Medea and “women on the edge.”
Guests:
Al Duncan is an associate professor in the Department of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on ancient Greek and Roman theater and its afterlife, especially questions of performance and audience perception. He is the author of Ugly Productions: An Aesthetics of Greek Drama (2025) and co-editor of Unsettled Dynamics: Emotion, Cognition, and Audience Engagement in the Ancient Greek Theatre (forthcoming 2027).
Rhodessa Jones is an actor, director, teacher, playwright, and author. She is Co-Artistic Director of Cultural Odyssey, a performing arts organization based in San Francisco, and Director of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, a community-based program that she founded in 1989. Her many awards and fellowships include a US Artists Fellowship and the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She received an honorary doctorate from California College of the Arts in 2004 and was the Frank H.T. Rhodes Chair of Humane Letters at Cornell University in 2018–21.
Recommended Translations:
Lefkowitz, M. and J. Romm, ed. 2016. The Greek Plays. New York: Penguin Random House. (Medea translation by R. Kitzinger.)
Martin, C. 2019. Euripides. Medea: A New Translation. Oakland: University of California Press. (With introduction by A. E. Stallings.)
Rayor, D. J. 2013. Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Svarlien, D. A. 2008. Euripides: Medea. Hackett. (With introduction and notes by R. Mitchell-Boyask.)
Some Further Reading:
Allan, W. 2002. Euripides: Medea. London: Duckworth.
Foley, H. 2001. Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fraden, R. 2001. Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women. Foreward by A. Davis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Knox, B. M. W. 1977. “The Medea of Euripides.” Yale Classical Studies 25: 193–225.
Mastronarde, D. J. M. 2002. Euripides: Medea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Edition and critical commentary on the Greek text. Includes extensive and very helpful introduction to the play.)
Mastronarde, D. J. M. 2010. The Art of Euripides: Dramatic Technique and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Powers, M. 2021. Reclaiming Greek Drama for Diverse Audiences: An Anthology of Adaptations and Interviews. London and New York: Routledge.
Reitzammer, L. 2023. “Re-Imagining Euripides’ Medea: Pre-Colonial Indigenous Elements in Alfaro’s Mojada.” American Journal of Philology 144: 473–501.