Storyboard Update

We divided the show into a set of panels representing beats/scenes:

Pre-Show
Trail
Scenes 1-5
Finale

Associations with each:

Pre-Show
- Deep History: story of the Golden Ram, story of the Dragon's Teeth,
- Electoral Spoof: Gods as Politicians

Trail
- flying ram(s) & sacrificial lambs
- illuminated maps
- islands of greek myth installations
- Hecate + dogs
- hovering Harpies
- Argonaut try-outs?

Pageant: 5 scenes bridged by Chorus of Water/Argonauts (or both):

Scene 1 -- SCENE 1 & SCENE 2 MIGHT BE SWITCHED
- The audience boards the Argo and become the Argonauts

Scene 2 -- SCENE 1 & SCENE 2 MIGHT BE SWITCHED
- Lively banter between Ram and Dragon
- setting: a great Golden Fleece in a live Tree

Scene 3-4 (order undetermined)
- Hunger & Harpies
- Yoking of Bulls that breathe fire and associated fire things
- Children, sown as seeds and grown as Soldiers

AT THIS POINT WE STOPPED AGREEING ON THINGS?

Scene 5:
- (boat?) Chase with severed or illuminated body parts used to distract pursuer(s)
- Calling of names

Finale
- Ram Sacrifices itself
- Illuminated Heart altar through which people walk


Hanging chads:

Some progression of Hunger --> Sowing --> Starving --> Slaughter
Harpies --> Bulls -------> Soldiers --> Body Parts

Do Jason & Medea exist as characters? How about her father & brother?

What is the role/meaning of sacrifice and how do we feel about it?

Do the Gods have a role beyond the preshow? Does the Kingdom of Colchis (the foreign, the "other") play a role?

What is the Story?
- Hunger/Desperation turning to violence
- Seeking Redemption for harm we have done ourselves
- Allegory of personal sovereignty (self knowledge, self control, personal responsibility?)
- Medea's Transformation


some further notes from Janaki:

That the barrenness is about personal sovereignty: the first barrenness that caused the sacrifice that caused the Golden Ram to come out of heaven was a trick played to gain sovereignty (can explain this further, but won't here).
For us, a contemporary audience, I automatically transform sovereignty of the realm into sovereignty over ourselves, mastery of ourselves as individuals.

In this light, the wresting of the bulls becomes wrestling personal demons; mastery over our bulls.
The Harpies are a fight with internal, personal desires. Escaping the cries of our insatiability.
The dismemberment could still be us dismembering the Body Politic because of homicidal mistakes.

Continue even in the noontime light of morning to be drawn to Arwen's lead that the show is an atonement for our mistakes, our lack of of vigilance, our inaction, our self-involvement.

Could see the Dragon representing perfect vigilance, action, and concern for another. And, as Soozin has suggested, the Fleece is the innocent that is forced to sacrifice itself as the result of all the mistakes made by the Argonauts.

The final mistake of the Argonauts is to put the Dragon, the only Moral Authority, to sleep. (How to represent this? A number of abstract possibilities. That the Fleece rips in half when it tries to leave the tree, indicating its equilibrium with the dragon. That one of the Deep History characters returns to chastise the the Fleece, such as Helle from the depths of the water. Re-enact a St George and the Dragon tableau to show an epic shift has occurred, etc.)

In this scenario, we need Jason and Medea onstage to represent the Argonauts, otherwise the audience is blamed for everything, which is both hard to communicate and unfair to them.