IPH
IPHGENEIA
If I could sing like Orpheus,
Who touched the hearts of stones,
I’d sing so every rock and stone
Would beg you not to kill me.
I would sing, but can’t.
I have only tears
And these white arms
Which reaching out to you,
An olive branch, implore you
Do not kill me.
I am young, too young
And light is sweet to look upon,
In death I would be blind.
Iph. . . Euripides, translated and adapted by Colin Teevan
Since it premiered in Athens in 405 BC alongside Bacchai, Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis has been one of the most performed and re-imagined of Ancient Greek Tragedies. The story of how Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, agrees to her own sacrifice so that the Greeks might sail to Troy has been re-interpreted in drama, opera and film by amongst others Racine, Gluck, Goethe and Cacoyannis.
This translation and adaptation, which availed of the most recent textual scholarship of the source text, strips the piece down to its Euripidean essentials.
Colin Teevan's version, Iph..., which was first performed at The Lyric Theatre, Belfast in 1999.
It was produced on BBC Radio 3 in 2001.
Produced as a stage reading directed by Colin Teevan at Cottesloe Stage of the National Theatre May 2002
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 "It draws on the contemporary vernacular to ripping, rollicking, rumbustious effect...and [Teevan] has given us a piece of theatre that is wonderfully robust, resolute and resonant" Paul Muldoon
"In it's hip, vernacular language...[and] its writer's modernistic ideas of rupture and fragmentation, Iph... breaks new ground"
Irish Times
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Iph. . . is published by Oberon Books. To order a copy click here.
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