Pulsating electronic music swells and grinds as a Grecian mythological prince — sprawled out on a ratty couch with a bag of Ruffles Potato Chips — reaches his right hand underneath the multi-colored blanket and begins to jerk off.
When not pleasuring himself, Hippolytus, played by Communication junior Austin Bainard Harvey, offends his family, stuffs his face and sleeps around.
His reasons: Life is too long and he’s bored.
“I told my mother this character is the absolute antithesis of what I want to be as a person,” says Harvey. “He’s this guy who has every opportunity to do anything to help himself and the people around him, and he does absolutely nothing for both.”
Updating the Grecian myth, Sarah Kane’s play “Phaedra’s Love” centers on the collapse of Theseus’ royal family due to insecurity, loneliness and unrequited love. What results from Phaedra’s obsession with her stepson is numerous taboo-breaking and incestuous sexual trysts (think threesomes, blow jobs and rape).
“This is what happened in Greek tragedy that they didn’t show you,” says Communication freshman Allison Hirschlag, who plays Hippolytus’ step-sister Strophe.
Hirschlag says she and her fellow actors became numb to the intense sexual content of the play through their weeks of practice.
“It’s like taking Human Sexuality 4,000 times,” she says.
However, Hirschlag, who says she was “flabbergasted” when she first read the script, hopes the graphic nature of the play shocks the audience.
“People ask for visceral images and very sexual things,” Hirschlag says. “(Kane) is like ‘OK, public. Here you go, but are you happy with this? It’s the most fucking disturbing thing you’ve ever seen. Here, is this what you wanted?’
“People should be shocked because they realize they’re getting exactly what they wanted,” she continues. “They should leave saying ‘I don’t know why I really wanted to see (this play) for the sex.'”
However, Hirschlag says the audience should recognize that the graphic and sexual actions on stage are just that: actions on a stage. Like Sophocles and other ancient Grecian playwrights, Kane included a chorus to remind the audience that it is a performance.
Throughout most of the play, these three actresses, clad in black and white odds-and-ends, lounge seductively over the couch or curl up under the table.
“Our bodies react to the moods of the characters,” says Communication junior Jennifer Probst, one of the ensemble members. “We’re like living furniture that they are not aware of.”
Director Mike Sherman says the emotions and ideas conveyed through movements and moments is paramount to just telling a story.
“It’s worth thinking about theater in different ways than just conventional story telling,” the Communication senior says. “That sounds so fucking pretentious.”
Stage manager Julie Kaplan, a Communication freshman, says a main theme of “Phaedra’s Love” is the spatial exploration. This theme is carried over from the chorus’ statue-esque poses to the show’s location: the Bobb Hall lounge.
“We wanted to bring theater to a space that didn’t really have theater before,” Kaplan says.
According to Sherman, Sit and Spin Productions tries to use alternative venues for its performances. “Phaedra’s Love” is the first play performed in Bobb Hall.
For Harvey, “Phaedra’s Love” is the first play in which he will be naked.
“It was one of those things that if you told me three years ago, I would have completely rejected it,” he says. “You know, I come from the suburbs, where you don’t hear of people doing full-frontal fake sex on stage.”
