At McCarter, we pride ourselves in the bold and risk-taking work that we produce on our stages. As a theater dedicated to producing new plays and re-investigating the classics, we often deal with scripts, subject matters and performances that touch on some of the more controversial issues of the day. Since Argonautika is set in ancient, mythological Greece, we assumed that the cultural references and depictions were were making would not offend.

We were wrong, and for this we apologize wholeheartedly.

To those who have recently taken action against McCarter, we respectfully remind you that we offer several different forums in which you can express your views on any of our productions, including audience discussions, electronic surveys and, of course, this blog.

To the prankster who signed off as “Poseidon” in his e-mail message: flooding all the bathrooms in the administrative hallway is not an appropriate response to your feelings that Argonautika mocked one of your relatives. Although we suspect you meant it only as a prank, your act of vandalism was further compounded by the lightning that repeatedly struck McCarter during Sunday’s matinee of Argonautika—several of our audience members mentioned how odd it was that lightning would strike only when the actors said the name “Zeus” onstage.

We received a very threatening letter (signed with the pseudonym “Aphrodite”) that threatened dire consequences unless the Greek gods and goddesses were treated with more gravitas. Her threat was unspecific (just garbles about “Eros” and “arrows,”), but from my office it sounds like the marketing department has had some serious mood-alteration over the weekend. I can’t go into any details on the blog, but let me tell you that there are some strange noises coming from that office.

In retrospect, we realize that the light-hearted approach to Greek mythology portrayed in Argonautika could be offensive to some deities. We also apologize to those gods (and demi-gods) who feel that they were unjustifiably left out of the story—due to the nature of theatrical performance, it is not possible to represent all of the Olympian gods in our production, and we hope that the “protest party” that “Dionysus” is throwing in the Lockwood Lobby will end as soon as possible, because the Princeton Police are threatening to revoke McCarter’s alcohol license.

Thank you for your understanding.

Happy April Fools Day!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.