Emily Węgrzynowicz
Minister | Director | Actor | Designer
Coursework
Loyola's theatre major capstone is play direction, in which students pick an 8-10 minute scene from any published play and put it on. Apart from the rehearsal room, directors are also charged with putting together a Director's Production Notebook (DPN) that includes information like dramaturgical background, preparatory script work, designs, ground plans, and much more.
I directed Euripides's Medea for this course. The linked document is an excerpt of my DPN- specifically, an excerpt of the production paper. In this production paper, I analyze themes, characters, and provide a linguistic analysis of the Greek script to get a better sense of what is at the core of this play. Additionally, it includes dramaturgical background, challenges of directing this work, and answering the questions: "Why this play? Why now? Why for this audience?"
Final essay on Luis Alfaro's Mojada, a linguistic analysis of the use of oppressive language in Spanish and Ancient Greek.
Mojada is Luis Alfaro's chicano adaptation of Euripides's Medea, following the story of a family of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in LA and trying to get by and avoid the ever-present threat of deportation. Alfaro uses the Medea tale to provide commentary on xenophobia in 20th and 21st century America in a similar way that Euripides did in the original text of Medea. This essay dissects the Attic Greek text of Medea, and English translation, and the use of Spanish in Mojada to draw a comparison between the way language is used to oppress immigrants across time and borders.
Final essay on Tawfiq al-Hakim's The Donkey Market, theatre of the mind, and how contemporary Egyptian politics and Islam shaped the world of The Donkey Market.
Tawfiq al-Hakim is considered to be one of the most influential Arab playwrights of the 20th century. The Donkey Market, one of his later and lesser-known works, is an absurdist comedy about two unemployed men who attempt to find work by deceiving a farmer into believing one of them has turned into a donkey. While the ridiculous premise of the play invites the audience to laugh at the action, the intricate network of symbolism al-Hakim currates in his play provides a deeper commentary on the Egyptian working class and the Egyptian Revolution.