A Day With the Dead: Introducting Chas Libretto’s “Laodamiad” for Reading Greek Tragedy Online

Euripides, Trojan Women, fr. 646a

“Follow me when I guide you”

ἕπου δὲ μοῦνον ἀμπρεύοντί μοι.

Today’s performance of Reading Greek Tragedy Online is a new play, The Laodamiad,  by Chas LiBretto based on the story of Euripides’ Protesilaus . Protesilaus is the first hero to die at Troy and who received cult rites at a few places in ancient Greece. Euripdiess’ play remains only in fragments.

Laodameia is the name of Protesilaus’ wife, according to the Euripidean tradition. Other traditions have him married to Polydora, a child of Meleager. IN the non-Homeric tradition, Protesilaus was permitted to leave the underworld to meet his wife for a single day. The action of the play seems to have centered around this event, following Laodameia’s grief and the reactions of her near and dear.

Chas Libretto brings us a new interpretation of this story, rooted in the fragments that have survived and imagining the pieces we have lost. In a way, this is as true to the theme of the tale as humanly possible, arranging the remains of the lives we lead around the absence of the people we’ve lost.

Special Guests

Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 654

“When two are speaking and one is enraged
the one who resists fighting with words is the wiser.”

δυοῖν λεγόντοιν, θατέρου θυμουμένου,
ὁ μὴ ἀντιτείνων τοῖς λόγοις σοφώτερος