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The House of Atreus and Thyestes

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Seneca and Nero's Rome

Conversations with the Director & Designer:
Snuff Theatre

Right: Mick Weber as Atreus and Wandachristine as the Minister (Michael Brosilow).

Few would challenge the notion that an epic tragedy written by Nero’s tutor would be considered a classic. Thyestes represents an important early chapter of the House of Atreus, the foundation of much of Greek drama.  While no Greek texts of this story survive, Seneca’s Latin version greatly influenced Elizabethan theater, including the works of Shakespeare.  Yet the play is largely unknown to modern audiences.  Can a play truly be called a “classic” if it no longer holds meaning in contemporary culture?

Since Court was first captivated by Caryl Churchill’s dynamic translation of Thyestes, we have been exploring this question.  Our interest grew upon learning that University of Chicago scholars were creating new translations of Seneca’s works for publication.  New translations help a classic text retain its potency across generations by liberating the story from outdated vernacular and illuminating its contemporary relevance. 

We are fortunate to be part of a vibrant academic community at the University of Chicago and are thrilled to partner with students, faculty, and the many centers for scholarly and creative work on campus.  Thanks in large part to the University of Chicago Women’s Board, we have been able to realize tonight’s ambitious production.  We are eager to play an even greater role in ensuring that important classic texts continue to find life on the stage.   

Court has embarked on a major new effort to enrich the canon of dramatic literature with new translations and adaptations of classic texts, made possible by the generosity of one of our visionary Trustees, Barbara Franke.  The Barbara E. Franke Commissioning Program for New Classics will allow Court to commission writers whose works will premiere on Court’s stage and live on for future generations. Aiding us in this effort is an advisory committee that includes playwright Richard Nelson, director and educator Chuck Smith, dramaturg and literary agent Morgan Jeness, and University of Chicago faculty David Levin.  We look forward to sharing with you the fruits of this exciting new program in the coming years. 

Thyestes exemplifies how a new translation in the hands of a skilled director like University of Chicago alumnus JoAnne Akalaitis can help us revitalize an ancient play.  And we look forward to many more opportunities to rediscover with you the power of classic theatre. 

Charles Newell, Artistic Director and Dawn J. Helsing, Executive Director

The House of Atreus and Thyestes

This is the story of Tantalus and his descendents, which gave so many writers their plots:

Tantalus was a rich king, a son of Zeus, friends with the gods.  One day when they came to visit he killed his young son Pelops and served him up for dinner.  The gods punished him after his death by standing him in a stream while a tree dangled fruit near his mouth – when he tried to eat the tree whisked the fruit away, when he tried to drink the stream dried up.  He was being tantalised

Pelops was brought back to life.  He wanted to marry a princess, who would only be given to the man who could beat her father in a chariot race; losers were put to death.  Pelops won by having the king’s axle damaged so that his chariot crashed and he was killed. 

Pelops had two sons, Atreus and Thyestes, who were supposed to take turns ruling the country and keeping the symbol of power, a ram with a golden fleece.  While Atreus was king, Thyestes seduced his wife and together they stole the ram.  Atreus was driven into exile and there was a civil war.  He got into power again and drove Thyestes out.  The play begins here, with Atreus as king but longing for revenge on Thyestes, who is in exile with his three sons.  By the end Thyestes’ sons are dead.

Years later Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus go to war against Troy to get back Helen, Menelaus’ wife.  To get a favourable wind,

Iphigenia to the gods.  When they come back from Troy Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, avenging Iphigenia, and her lover Aegisthus, another son of Thyestes, avenging his dead brothers.  Urged on by his sister Electra, Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, kills Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.  He is now in horrible difficulties – the revenge code has broken down since he has only been able to avenge his father by killing his mother, whose murder it would have been his duty to avenge.  He is pursued by the Furies until the goddess Athene intervenes to quiet them and bring revenge to an end.

- Caryl Churchill

Copyright  © 1995 by Caryl Churchill.  Thyestes is published by Nick Hern Books, www.nickhernbooks.co.uk.  Reprinted by permission.

Seneca and Nero's Rome

No one knows exactly when Seneca wrote Thyestes, but we may presume that with this dramatic tale of vengeful one-upmanship, Seneca employed the age-old method of cloaking his political commentary in a work of fiction.  By the time Seneca’s pupil, the Roman emperor Nero, reached the age of 24, his penchant for violence and opulent excess could not be overlooked.  He had already killed his half-brother and his mother in order to preserve his own power; he had spent his first year in office letting the senators govern while he got to know the local prostitutes; and after having an affair with his friend’s wife, he had his own wife exiled, then recalled and killed.  He eventually turned on his tutor, accusing Seneca of embezzlement and releasing him from his advisory duties.             

With the freed-up schedule of a retiree, and with Nero’s increasingly paranoid and rash behavior at the forefront of his mind, let us suppose that Seneca thus began Thyestes, a play that chronicles the vengeance of the Nero-esque Atreus, whose life was consumed by a protracted battle for power with his brother, Thyestes.  With help from the god Zeus, Atreus finally solidified his authority and banished Thyestes.  But banishment alone could not satisfy Atreus’s thirst for revenge and it is here, as the ruler’s schemes become more sinister, that Seneca begins his tale.

Like Atreus and Thyestes, Nero came of age amidst power struggles that led to considerable familial violence.  The  nephew of the emperor Caligula and stepson of Claudius, Nero spent his formative years acting as his mother’s pawn in her quest for a hand in the rule of the Roman Empire.  Just as Atreus’s kingship was defended by the gods, Nero’s legitimacy was unquestioned and his rule absolute.  And so the paranoia that engulfed both men knew no reasonable source—and no peaceful end.  Seneca closes his play before the Greek tale ends, leaving both Atreus and Thyestes alive, each awaiting the next move of the other and judgment at the hands of the gods.

Seneca didn’t live to see how Nero would meet his end.  In what we may assume was an effort to justify his own violent wishes, Nero accused his former tutor of plotting to assassinate him and sentenced Seneca to death by suicide.  Seneca obliged, slitting his own wrists. 

Conversations with the Director & Designer: Snuff Theatre

Visionary director JoAnne Akalaitis talked with Court Theatre’s Jack Tamburri about their inspiration for Thyestes’s unique look …

In researching Thyestes, JoAnne Akalaitis and her design partner Kaye Voyce went back not to the story’s Greek origins, but Seneca’s Roman context.  Akalaitis explains, “Our question was always, how contemporary versus how Roman do we want this to be?  Do we dare go all-Roman?  The impulse to make it contemporary – to set it in the 1950s, or Washington DC or something – that was never on the table.  What was on the table was Rome itself; the complexity, sophistication, and horror of Roman society.”

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The Roman theatre encompassed a variety of genres and methods.  According to Akalaitis, the spectacle of lions mauling slaves and prisoners was considered as theatrical as a verse drama – they occupied the same space in the Coliseum and played to the same crowds of thousands.  Bloodsport was as common and popular as modern baseball.  The director describes condemned criminals who were often cast in villainous roles in plays so that the villain’s just reward could be accomplished without stage tricks – men were routinely crucified, beheaded, and beaten to death on stage.  When speaking about this period in Western theatrical history, Akalaitis dubs it “snuff theatre.”

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“I was speaking to two nuns, and I was explaining the plot of Thyestes.  They kept saying, ‘this is shocking, it’s terrible.’  It’s always refreshing to be reminded that there’s still something people aren’t desensitized to.  One of them had taught Shakespeare for years and was still upset by my description of Thyestes, which of course was a huge influence on Shakespeare.  It’s no accident that you’re doing Titus Andronicus later in the season.  Shakespeare, the Jacobeans, people throughout history have been moved by Seneca’s poetry and the play’s violence.  The verse does not allow us to escape from the horror of the event.  And that’s the point of the play.”

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Thyestes’s sons play a pivotal role in their uncle’s revenge plot.  When asked about the place of children in such a violent world, Akalaitis muses, “Children are a part of all worlds, all human worlds.  The Romans immortalized their rulers from childhood.  All over Rome there’s visual documentation – I know what Nero looked like in his little boy outfit and his teenager outfit and his grownup outfit.  And he wasn’t so crazy when he was younger.  Caligula too, he was okay when he was little.  Madness came on them with age and power.  Boys become the emperor.”

Nero was a great lover of theatre.  He considered himself to be an excellent actor, singer, and musician, and would hold concerts that lasted hours in one of the many performance spaces in his decadent palace, the Domus Aurea.  The audience, consisting of Nero’s family and courtiers, were locked in the room, and guards were appointed to beat anyone who did not laugh or applaud at the appropriate times.

“It is clear that Atreus is Nero,” says Akalaitis.  “This is Seneca’s way of criticizing his boss, which was common in Roman theatre.  You couldn’t say it directly because you’d be killed.”  According to Akalaitis, Nero’s Golden Palace is even slyly referenced in the script.  “When the Messenger comes in and talks about a palace that ‘presses on the city,’ built with gold and containing all these secret chambers, that’s Nero’s place.  Roman people are starving and he builds this obscene Domus Aurea, and when it’s finished he says, ‘Now I can live like a human being,’ which is insane.”