Euripides’ HELEN to be performed in the Amphitheater in Apr 2017

AUDITIONS are happening now (ongoing) for this musical, odd, funny and happily-ending Greek play. For more information, head to www.msuhelen.org

[Egypt 29944] ’Papyrus and lotus flowers at Abydos’. In this relief detail we see pharaoh Seti I presenting papyrus (left) and lotus flowers (right) to Geb and Nut (who are outside the frame of the picture). The relief can be found on the east wall of the Inner Osiris Hall in the Seti I Temple at Abydos. The scenes in this hall depict rites in the Osiris Mysteries which were enacted once a year at Abydos to celebrated the resurrection of Osiris, the son of sky goddess Nut and earth god Geb. The Seti Temple at Abydos was begun by Seti I and completed by his son Ramses II in the 13th century BC. Photo Mick Palarczyk.
Seti Temple; 13th cent. BCE. Photo Mick Palarczyk.
“I never went to Troy…” said the famous Helen in Stesichorus’ (mostly lost) poem — she went to… Egypt!? Euripides took Stesichorus and Herodotus at their word, and so was born this unexpected and stereotype-crushing Greek tragicomedy, Helen.

HELEN, waiting patiently in Egypt while the Trojan War takes its course due to a phantom of her having been sent to Troy to replace her, finally receives word from the exiled and shipwrecked Greek soldier TEUCER that MENELAUS, her husband, never returned to Greece from Troy, and is presumed dead….             Translation of play by Diane Arnson Svarlien.

SAVE THE DATES! APRIL 20, 21, 25, 27, in the MSU Amphitheater adjacent to Kasser Theater