The original anti-war play updated to current day in a one-hour, one-woman retelling.
"The show you’ve been waiting to see. Masterfully directed by Meghan Finn … your heart will stop and start again" ★★★★★ Q Online
"The show you’ve been waiting to see. Masterfully directed by Meghan Finn … your heart will stop and start again" ★★★★★ Q Online
With one woman playing all the characters, from gods Athena and Poseidon to the prophet Cassandra doomed to never be believed, this retelling of the Euripides classic is sparked by a mother losing a child in a flash of modern-day warfare. The tour-de-force physical performance by Albanian actor Drita Kabashi opens with Irina, a mother from an unnamed war-torn land, who becomes compelled to embody every war-stricken Trojan woman the moment she realizes her child is gone. The Trojan Women was the original anti-war play, performed in Athens in 415 BC as a protest against the Peloponnesian War, and depicts the cost of conflict through the lens of the women of the Iliad and their children. A Trojan Woman premiered in Athens before transferring to the USA, and now has its UK premiere at the Kings Head. Mixing elements of biting satire with a howl of grief and rage, it asks why the play has remained relevant for centuries.
Ahead of performances at the MAC Theatre in Belfast on 29th and 30th November 2024 and at the King’s Head Theatre in London from 3rd - 9th December 2024, we sat down with writer Sara Farrington to learn more about the show.
What can you tell me about A Trojan Woman?
Yes! It’s my contemporary adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women (sometimes called The Women of Troy). The entire piece is performed by the actor Drita Kabashi, who becomes almost possessed by each iconic Greek character. She moves from one embodiment to the next with rock star agility, while still making the play and story really easy to follow. I’ve actually worked hard to make the piece truly accessible to a modern audience, especially with this play, which historically can be quite complex. For example, in my version, the classic Greek messenger character (Talthybius) is reimagined as a customer service representative, which I feel aligns with Euripides’ view of messengers. Poseidon becomes a casually depressed surfer dude/sea god lamenting the loss of Troy, his favourite resort town (a take inspired by Euripides’ creation of the character as fickle and melancholy). The Chorus, represented by two umbrellas that Drita carries, have a kind of naïve Hollywood starlet vibe, and so on.
However, the biggest contemporary device is that my version of the play is framed by an act of modern warfare (which could represent any current conflict, although I was particularly influenced by the Russian war against Ukraine at the time of writing). In this framing, a mother may or may not have lost her child. In that moment, in that flash of violence, time is compressed, and she performs The Trojan Women. By the time she reaches the end of the play, she realises what has happened to her child in real time. There’s a modern magic in that structure as well. Also, it’s only an hour long – my favourite play length!
Where did the inspiration for A Trojan Woman come from?
In late summer 2022, director Meghan Finn brought her two boys (who are the same ages as mine) over to my house and said my favourite sentence ever: “I need you to adapt any Greek play you want for a theatre festival in Athens.” I had a true Pavlovian response. As a playwright, I live for the ancient Greeks—they invented theatre, playwriting, actors, the revolutionary concept of bringing more than one actor on stage (which annoyed Thespis at the time), dramatic structure, sets—essentially everything.
Because I’m a bit mad, I chose the one Greek play I’ve always struggled with: Euripides’ The Trojan Women. I’d read it, seen it, and even performed in it once. But I didn’t get it. To me, it felt like hours of women lamenting to uncaring gods, with strangely little actually happening on stage. I knew I was wrong—it had to be my own failing, not Euripides’. So, I spent the rest of the year and into summer 2023 challenging myself with every translation and ran the story and characters through my own tragicomic lens.
Once I removed the ancient Greek references I couldn’t connect with and stripped away the museum-like tone and language that I found so off-putting, I made it sound and feel like me—a contemporary, powerless mother witnessing horrors that the human mind isn’t equipped to process. Then I got it. Of course it’s a lament to uncaring gods! Of course nothing happens! That’s precisely Euripides’ point. In one unexpected theatrical gut-punch, he captures the essence of war: it’s pointless, no one cares, nothing happens, no one wins, and the poorest civilians—women and children—suffer the most.
What research did you do while developing the piece?
I wish I spoke Greek (or Ancient Greek, in this case), but I don’t, so I spent a long time reading all the English translations out there, both old and new—and there are quite a few. I also watched films and recordings of stage adaptations online. I particularly liked Michael Cacoyannis’ 1971 film version, which is utterly devastating and beautifully acted.
However, I’m a playwright, not a scholar, so I had to make it personal. I actually began my career as an actor (I’m still a voice actor), so I tend to start writing a play the way an actor begins rehearsing: by asking how it relates to my own experiences. How is Cassandra me? How is Queen Hecuba me? How are the gods me?
How much influence do you have on the production beyond writing?
I’ve evolved a lot on this front over the last two decades. When I was a younger playwright, I insisted on being in every rehearsal and kept an iron grip on everything—I thought I had all the answers. Now, I realise that’s a very naïve way for a playwright to operate, unless you’re an auteur like Richard Foreman or Robert Wilson.
I believe my job is to write the play exactly as I want it, with all the elements I’ve envisioned and a watertight world built into the script. That process takes time and requires input from directors and actors during early rehearsals. But at a certain point, the play should become the director’s and actors’ to shape. If I’ve done my job properly, and if I’m working with the right people, the “acorn” of the play should grow into the “oak tree” it’s meant to be.
In recent years, I’ve rarely attended rehearsals. If something goes wrong—which it always does at some point—I’ve learned to use it as a lesson for the next play.
Why is this piece relevant to a 2024 audience?
The play transcends the cesspool of politics, and that’s a rare quality. To achieve that, a play has to be old enough to withstand the test of time. Contemporary political plays can easily be dismissed or quickly become dated. But an ancient play that continues to resonate with audiences? That’s significant.
What’s extraordinary about this piece is how universally it speaks to people. We’ve performed it in a Greek amphitheatre for 600 people, in front of progressive American theatre audiences, and even in front of very conservative American audiences—and the responses have been identical. In the US, where everyone seems to be at each other’s throats about everything, it’s astonishing to witness such unity over what a work of art means. We’ve been calling it a clarion call to our shared humanity.
How was premiering the show in Athens?
That was the most nervous I’ve ever been performing this piece. We staged it at The Interbalkan Festival of Ancient Drama in a massive outdoor amphitheatre called Teatro Attica Alsos. The theatre is carved into what feels like a cliff edge or small mountain in a park overlooking Athens. As the sun set, shadows crept mythically up the rock walls—it was as if Dionysus himself were present.
We performed for 600 Greek people, in English, with Greek supertitles projected above Drita’s performance. What made it nerve-wracking was knowing that this audience had an innate understanding of these stories—far more than I do. But they seemed to enjoy it, and our Greek translator, Ioli Andreadi, summed it up best: “It’s not written like a scholar; it’s written like an artist.”
How thrilling is it to have Drita Kabashi bring the piece to life?
Completely thrilling—she’s utterly at home on stage in this role. She has a young Mick Jagger-like quality, moving with ease and agility from one role to another. It feels as though she’s genuinely experiencing everything, almost as if she’s possessed. The play avoids the typical solo show trope of “Now I’m here, now I’m there, let me change my voice and run around.” Instead, Drita acts as a conduit for these iconic ancient characters, and it’s mesmerising.
What keeps you inspired?
My imagination for playwriting is boundless—I often say, “No jail can keep me.” When I find the right vein, writing sends me into a flow state where I lose all sense of time and space. For instance, in October, I finished the first draft of a new play called A Beautiful Suicide, about two teenage girls driving alone from California to New York in a treacherous, theatrical coming-of-age style. Halfway through writing it, I could vividly see these girls—down to their clothes, hair, eyes, and makeup. I could hear them, their voices, their cadences—it felt like I was taking dictation.
Of course, theatre-making isn’t always transcendent. A lot of the time, it’s frustrating, unrewarding, and painful. But when that flow state takes over, it’s worth all the struggles, obscurity, and rejections that come with a life in the theatre. That’s what keeps me inspired.
What do you hope an audience takes away from seeing the show?
From the story itself, I hope it serves as a reminder of the miraculous sameness of being human. We all wake up in the morning and do the same things—brush our teeth, get dressed, and try not to be awful minute to minute. Those small, shared moments could expand into a deeper care for one another. The play reminds us that we don’t have to succumb to the tribal mindset of “us versus them,” which I believe is tearing apart the US right now.
From the form of the play—the modern tone and language—I hope it offers an unpretentious entry point into classics like these. Classic adaptations often put people off because they feel like you need prior knowledge of ancient history to engage with them. That’s not fair. Classics should be for everyone. Euripides wrote for his audience’s ears and minds, as did Shakespeare, Molière, and Chekhov. But today, when humanity needs these stories more than ever, we continue to present them in dusty, precious, museum-like tones. Why? My version of A Trojan Woman strips away that tone. It’s profoundly accessible. You don’t need to know who Cassandra, Queen Hecuba, Andromache, or Helen were—or what the Trojan War was about. That’s my responsibility as a playwright: to weave that information seamlessly into the story.
Where can audiences see the show?
We open in Belfast at The MAC Theatre on 29–30 November.
Then we’ll be in London at The King’s Head Theatre from 3–9 December.
https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/a-trojan-woman
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