A Student Edition of Euripides' play, which accessibly unpacks Greek tragedy in its social context, issues of translation and adaptation, and performance approaches over the centuries.
Euripides' play Medea was first produced in 431BC and continues to be produced globally to this day. Its power and timeless appeal for audiences rests in its portrait of a woman driven to murder the new wife of the man who abandoned her and to murder her own children. In more recent times, Medea's actions have been taken as a symbol of female power in an otherwise male-dominated society.
Will Shüler's commentary in this Student Edition looks at the violence of the play - both onstage and off; the original performance conditions; staging challenges, both then and now (including Medea's exit on a dragon); the notion of myth and how Greek tragedians were telling old stories to get new meanings; and how the play has evolved through translation.
It considers a range of productions up to the present day, including the 2014 National Theatre production directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Helen McCrory; Sophie Okonedo as Medea at the Soho Theatre, London, in 2023; and the 2000 Australian version, Black Medea, which interpreted Medea as an indigenous woman brought to a city by her ambitious husband.
By:
Euripides
Translated by:
J. Michael Walton
Volume editor:
Will Shüler (Royal Holloway University of London UK)
Imprint: Methuen Drama
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: 2nd edition
Dimensions:
Height: 196mm,
Width: 128mm,
Spine: 8mm
Weight: 75g
ISBN: 9781350523722
ISBN 10: 1350523720
Series: Student Editions
Pages: 80
Publication Date: 11 December 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Chronology Contexts (ritual; myth as storytelling; multiple plays performed at one time; audience and performer experience including collective spectacle; didactic) Themes (gender; motherhood; feminism, including contemporary perspectives; political power; family) Play in Performance (Aristotle's Poetics; dramatic structure; space of a Greek tragic theatre; acoustics; violence onstage and offstage; theatre design) Text, Transmission, and Translation (How did this text survive until now? What are approaches to translation? What does this translation emphasise? What are the potentials for “translating” the play from page to stage?) Play in performance (how various playwrights and theatre-makers have adapted the material including the 2014 NT production directed by Carrie Cracknell; the 2023 production at the Soho Theatre, London; the 2000 production in Australia, Black Medea; and Cherrie Moraga's 1995 adaptation The Hungry Woman, which was a queer re-telling of the play.) PLAY TEXT Notes
Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC. His first play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some 100 altogether of which nineteen survive – a greater number than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined – and which include Alkestis, Medea, Bacchae, Hippolytos, Ion and Iphigenia at Aulis. He died in 406 BC. Will Shüler is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His research and teaching focus on performance pedagogies, teaching and performance-making with new technologies, as well as Queer theatre and Greek tragedy.
