{"id":137161,"date":"2026-03-13T08:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/137161\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T08:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:39:10","slug":"bewitched-by-a-college-production-of-medea-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/137161\/","title":{"rendered":"Bewitched by a college production of \u2018Medea\u2019 \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lafayette<\/a> <\/p>\n

Lafayette College\u2019s Theater Department performed \u201cMedea\u201d from March 5 to March 8. (Photo courtesy of Lafayette College Theater Department)<\/p>\n

A Greek play adapted on Lafayette College\u2019s campus \u2014 call that the first ever French tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going to adapt a play, like an ancient work for today\u2019s audience, it should say something about our world today,\u201d said theater professor Melissa Livingston, writer and director of the theater department\u2019s most recent production.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedea\u201d is Livingston\u2019s 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 \u201827, as she plots revenge against her husband, the Greek hero Jason. Medea once lived to serve him \u2014 after being shot by an arrow from the gods to make her fall in love with him \u2014 but finds herself cast aside when he decides to leave her and take a youthful princess as his new bride.<\/p>\n

The play wouldn\u2019t have existed without student involvement, with Aven Lancaster \u201826 designing the set as her senior capstone project, and Emma Li \u201826 designing the costumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Lancaster, who has been working with the show since September. \u201cIt 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

Theater professor Jake Salgado, who designed the lighting for the show, agreed that the show\u2019s abstract nature set lent itself to creative visuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor other shows, a lighting designer\u2019s job might be \u2018make the actors visible,\u2019\u201d Salgado said. \u201cMy job became just as much about managing darkness, as opposed to turning on lights, which was a lot of fun to play with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cedimagar, who played the titular Medea, said that she found her manipulation by the gods to be a particularly interesting part of the character.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why all of this happens is because she\u2019s literally under a spell that makes her see Jason as the one and only person that she can ever love,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was interesting, realizing that, oh, she\u2019s not that insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming out of the show, attendees praised the student actors for their performances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe acting was phenomenal all around,\u201d said Garrett Jones \u201828 after the Saturday performance. \u201cI\u2019m used to musicals, where you\u2019ve got to memorize songs and stuff, but you\u2019re not reciting entire speeches for an hour. That\u2019s crazy hard to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked it a lot,\u201d said Nolan Sirgany \u201829, another member of Saturday\u2019s audience. \u201cI thought the set was really cool and the acting was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nikolai Gentes \u201827, who played Jason, described the collaborative environment Livingston fostered.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really awesome to be able to create a play with the students here at Lafayette and go through that whole workshopping process,\u201d said Livingston, with \u201cMedea\u201d her second directorial endeavor with the theater department. \u201cIt was really a joy to do that with the students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lafayette College\u2019s Theater Department performed \u201cMedea\u201d from March 5 to March 8. (Photo courtesy of Lafayette College Theater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-137161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}