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EXCERPTS
FROM MARIANNE MCDONALD’S
AWARD WINNING PLAYS
(all
with copyright, all available for production)
Prizes:
• KPBS Patté Award for Theatre Excellence, February,
2001.
• "Women Who Make Theatre Happen” Award, Sledgehammer
Theatre, August 23, 2003.
• 7th Annual KPBS Patté Awards: Special Citation for
“Old Plays, New Productions” 2004.
• Billie Award (San Diego Playbill), “artist of the
year” for Children of Heracles, Medea, Queen of Colchester,
Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus 2004
Selected
Reviews:
Translations:
Antigone
“Directed by Athol Fugard…
But it is McDonald’s text that is the star of the evening,
lending the play plenty of punch without depending too heavily
on anachronistic language. The translator’s focus on the
central ideas has an emotional clarity that is entirely seductive.
There may be, Sophocles and McDonald whisper to anyone who will
listen, a tremendous moral power in compromise.”
Luke
Clancy, London Times (July 21, 1999)
Children of Heracles
Critic’s
Choice, San Diego Union July/August 2003
“With UCSD professor Marianne McDo9nald’s fluent,
lively translation as its spine, and a fine ensemble of actors
sparking her script to life…”
Anne
Marie Welsh, San Diego Union (July 21, 2003)
Oedipus at Colonus
“There’s humor, perhaps not all of it Sophoclean,
in McDonald’s direct language….”
Anne
Marie Welsh, San Diego Union (April 12, 2004)
“Despite the passage of time and the absence of more sophisticated
theatre techniques, the story in Marianne McDonald’s fluid
translation is still engaging drama.”
Bill
Fark, North County Times (April 15, 2004)
“Oedipus, Schmoedipus…As Long As He Loves His Mother…McDonald
used the line I borrowed to title this section …and also
said that the Greek tragedies, on which she is an expert, should
be updated and re-translated every decade or so, to keep them
fresh, relevant, and presented in a language that people can readily
understand. Well, she’s certainly doing her part, making
her way through the whole tragic canon, with translations that
are clear, colloquial and comprehensible…..there are several
memorable lines that go right to the heart and soul of our current
cultural climate; ‘so much for fame, when it trickles away
and comes to nothing.’ ‘I was a victim, not a criminal.’
‘Trouble for the sake of a parent should be no trouble at
all.’ A country’s power withers, just like a man’s
body.” ‘ You ignored our sovereignty and took what you
wanted by force.’ (That one really hit home.)
Pat
Launer, KPBS (AIRDATE April 16, 2004)
Oedipus Tyrannus
“McDonald’s translation is terrific; it’s poetic
and lyrical, crystalline in its clarity.”
Pat
Launer, KPBS (October 2003)
“In UCSD Prof. Marianne McDonald’s clear and poetic
translation, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus plays in a smashing
head-on production…”
Charlene
Baldridge, The Beacon (10/30/03)
“’Call no one happy/ Until that person has ended
life /Free from sorrow.’ These words come from Marianne McDonald’s
poetic new translation…”
Jennifer
de Poyen, San Diego Union (October 18, 2003)
Adaptations:
Medea,
Queen of Colchester
“Marianne McDonald’s script ingeniously modernizes
all this. Medea is a black transvestite from South Africa’s
Colchester (the original Medea was involved from Colchis) who
becomes involved with white drug dealer James, a widower with
two sons.”
Don
Braunagel, Los Angeles Times I (Aug. 29, 2003)
Trojan Women
“Sorrowful, spent, angry, enlightened: The Trojan Women
makes you feel these things, often at once. In 90 minute, the
Old Globe staging of Euripides’ tragedy, directed by Seret
Scott and adapted by Marianne McDonald, delivers a shattered world,
the one women inhabit when soldiers leave.
Without flinging the play heedlessly into the present, UCSD professor
McDonald’s words have an unadorned familiarity. Her text
brings home the horrors of war transparently; we can see through
the language to the rapes of Kosovo, the bombings in the Gulf
or Vietnam, and as Euripides so boldly anatomized, the Greek slaughter
of the men of Melos in 416 B.C.”
Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union (September 11 2000)
Original Play:
Dance Performance FireStorm Flower based on …and
then he met a woodcutter
“During last fall’s fires….Strangely, all of
that happened before Penner read Marianne McDonald’s 2003
play about devastation and rebirth, and decided to create a performance
that blended the play set in the aftermath of a 12th-century war
in Japan with her experience of the fires. …McDonald’s
play (titled …and then he met a woodcutter) deals with profound
issues, and the text offered a useful road map to exactly what
was happening…”
Janice Steinberg, San Diego Union (April 13, 2004)
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Excerpts
from Plays:
…and
then he met a woodcutter
Versions of Greek Tragedy:
Trojan
Women
Medea, Queen of Colchester
The
Ally Way (A Version of Alcestis)
Translations:
Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis
Sophocles’
Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles’
Oedipus at Colonus
Euripides’
Trojan Women (published by Methuen)
Euripides’
Medea
Sophocles’
Electra
Euripides’
Electra
Euripides’
Alcestis
Sophocles’
Antigone, Nick Hern Books
Euripides’
Andromache
Euripides’
Hecuba
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