Lafayette College’s Theater Department performed “Medea” from March 5 to March 8. (Photo courtesy of Lafayette College Theater Department)
A Greek play adapted on Lafayette College’s campus — call that the first ever French tragedy.
“If you’re going to adapt a play, like an ancient work for today’s audience, it should say something about our world today,” said theater professor Melissa Livingston, writer and director of the theater department’s most recent production.
“Medea” is Livingston’s original adaptation of the Greek classic, showcased this past weekend by the Lafayette theater department. The story follows the titular character, played by Nihan Cedimagar ‘27, as she plots revenge against her husband, the Greek hero Jason. Medea once lived to serve him — after being shot by an arrow from the gods to make her fall in love with him — but finds herself cast aside when he decides to leave her and take a youthful princess as his new bride.
The play wouldn’t have existed without student involvement, with Aven Lancaster ‘26 designing the set as her senior capstone project, and Emma Li ‘26 designing the costumes.
“We were essentially creating this world out of nothing, because it was a new script, and so we were working directly with the director as the playwright to build out this world entirely,” said Lancaster, who has been working with the show since September. “It was a really fun process as a designer, to be working with these other creatives and being like, what does this world and environment look like?”
Theater professor Jake Salgado, who designed the lighting for the show, agreed that the show’s abstract nature set lent itself to creative visuals.
“For other shows, a lighting designer’s job might be ‘make the actors visible,’” Salgado said. “My job became just as much about managing darkness, as opposed to turning on lights, which was a lot of fun to play with.”
Cedimagar, who played the titular Medea, said that she found her manipulation by the gods to be a particularly interesting part of the character.
“The reason why all of this happens is because she’s literally under a spell that makes her see Jason as the one and only person that she can ever love,” she said. “That was interesting, realizing that, oh, she’s not that insane.”
Coming out of the show, attendees praised the student actors for their performances.
“The acting was phenomenal all around,” said Garrett Jones ‘28 after the Saturday performance. “I’m used to musicals, where you’ve got to memorize songs and stuff, but you’re not reciting entire speeches for an hour. That’s crazy hard to do.”
“I liked it a lot,” said Nolan Sirgany ‘29, another member of Saturday’s audience. “I thought the set was really cool and the acting was great.”
Nikolai Gentes ‘27, who played Jason, described the collaborative environment Livingston fostered.
“Building that character with Melissa, our director, was one of the most fun parts of the process, just because you get to mold that person together, and you get to peer inside their head and try to make them up together as you go,” he said.
“It was really awesome to be able to create a play with the students here at Lafayette and go through that whole workshopping process,” said Livingston, with “Medea” her second directorial endeavor with the theater department. “It was really a joy to do that with the students.”