Hippolytus Presentation
Samantha Reilly
CLS 210: Greek and Roman Drama
December 16, 2022
Our final presentation was on a modern rendition of the play Hippolytus by
Euripidies. It was based loosely on the Amber Heard versus Johnny Depp trial. To put it into a
modern day setting we used the gods (Artemis and Aphrodite) as the lawyers because they have
the power to sway the view of the audience. Hippolytus was the plaintiff because it was his
character who was being defamed by the defendant Phaedra. Theseus is called as a witness even
though he isn’t a witness to the crime in the play because he receives the planted evidence of the
crime much like when he found Phaedra’s tablet explaining why she hung herself. We excluded
the character of the nurse because the nurse was used to cause drama and move the plot forward,
but we started the play in the midst of the drama, so her role was slightly unnecessary and some
of her important lines were given to the Aphrodite character because she was defending phaedra
much like the nurse.
Similarly to Ancient Greek plays we only had three actors, which led us to have to
cast the play a little differently. We had one person play all of the female characters in the play
because in Ancient Greek plays there is usually one person who specializes in female
characterization and we wanted it to be similar to that. We decided to make the chorus one
person and cast them as Theseus as well because we had them as a reactionary character as well
as an explanatory character and the issue was that the reactionary character couldn’t react to the
main character Hippolytus, if they were played by the same character. We added a character of
the Judge to give the final explanation of what happens since we decided we weren’t going to
kill the characters as it wouldn’t fit well with the modern rendition we were creating, so instead
of having Hippolytus die we have the Judge come out to give the verdict which ends up being the
death of his character. Hippolytus and the Judge are played by the same person because
Hippolytus realizes in the play that his death was bound to happen because of his flaw of
worshiping only one god and thus having the Judge and Hippolytus be the same person it
symbolizes him giving the verdict to himself as if he wrote his own fate.
Death of character was a large theme in our play since we didn’t end up
physically killing the two main characters. Death of a character in this play shows how ruined
the characters are and how they can’t come back from it, much like they wouldn’t be able to
come back from death. It is declared that Hippolytus’ career is forever stained with the
accusations at the end of our rendition to prove death of character even though he is proven
innocent. This falls along with the fact that it is based off of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard
trial where even though Depp proved that he was defamed and Heard was lying, his career was
still ruined and there were many people who did not agree with the outcome of the trial and still
try and attack him on social media and stain his reputation, which is what we were trying to get
across with Hippolytus’ character being stained by the accusations. As for Phaedra it isn’t
explicitly mentioned in the play that she has a death of character, but she is proven guilty and to
have lied and Theseus points out how despicable she is when he begs Hippolytus for forgiveness.
I played the Narrator who was modeled off the chorus and the chorus’ lines. We made the
character a new reporter who was reporting on the events of the trial, that way we could use them
not only to add transition lines, but to give background on what was happening in the play. With
the narrator being a news reporter, I used an umbrella as the microphone and had them stand in
the middle of the room to look directly into the audience as if giving a report to the camera. The
Narrator was given some of the chorus lines because in the actual play the chorus is used as a
reactionary character that moves the play along. They feel bad for Phaedra and wonder what is
wrong with her and why she has so much sorrow. They also react to her death with Theseus in
anger and confusion as to how it could have come to be, but they also try to clear Hippolytus and
in the end they conclude with the tragedy and speak on how sad the events that transpired were
which is why they made a good news caster because they are reacting to the news as it comes
and they get to conclude what happened to the audience. It wouldn’t have worked if it was a
multi-person chorus because we did not have enough actors to pull it off. We talked through the
idea of making the chorus be the audience/jury in the courtroom, but with only three actors it
wouldn’t have come across as well as having them as the news caster which is why we made the
actual audience of the play, the audience of the courtroom.
I also played the character of Theseus whose character we mostly kept the same as the
character in the play. The major change with the character of Theseus is that he is no longer
Hippolytus’ dad and instead best friend because we felt that it would have been a bit odd in
modern setting to have Theseus as the dad and it would feel like a big more relatable betrayal to
the audience to have Theseus “betrayed” by his best friend. Theseus is still played as if the world
revolves around him as seen in the play when he felt as if the problems that were happening were
all on him and that he was the one ruined when in actuality it was Hippolytus and Phaedra who
lost their lives. The costume for Theseus was a button down shirt with a street-wear jacket over it
to emphasize the fact that Theseus is trying to dress up for the courtroom, but still tries to come
off as the cool celebrity that is like everybody else, so that he can connect to the jury on a more
personal level. I also had him directly talk to the jury even though witnesses aren’t allowed to do
that to show how overdramatic the character is supposed to be, just like the character in the play.
He also gets into a verbal fight with Hippolytus where he spews overdramatic insults without
thinking much like the character in the play.
We focused the main theme of our modern rendition on what false accusations can do to
a person. There are other themes present in the play such as misogyny and how only worshiping
one god can bring your downfall, but we didn’t play around much with those ideas. Misogyny
was briefly touched on with the subject of Theseus believing Phaedra’s assault somehow ruined
him, but we since we were modernizing to the Heard versus Depp trial we wanted to focus on the
main aspect of what lies could bring about and having the characters being very misogynistic
wouldn’t have played well for Phaedra being the villain in our rendition. Also, we got rid of the
god theme in order to modernize the play since we no longer worship the gods. Our point to
make was that false accusations can ruin lives both of the accused and the accuser and that it can
forever stain the reputation of those involved.