The Puppets Delirious – Four Short Works includes Two Iphigenia Plays by Ellen McLaughlin. Iphigenia in Aulis chronicles the thoughts and feelings of Iphigenia on her way to being sacrificed to the gods by her father. The second, Iphigenia in Taurus is an account of of the confrontation of Iphigenia with her borther Orestes in the land of the dead. In the third piece, Monsieur Can Bagaden by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, two young perfume girls weave the tale of a wealthy ship owner who, too fat to move, shorts orders from his arm chair and counts his gold. All He Fears by Howard Barker tells the story of Botious, a philosopher who bring down upon himself everything that he dreads.

Director’s Notes – The Puppets Delirious

The House of Atreus has been cursed ever since the savage old man feasted his brother on a banquet of his own children. Now Atreus’s son Agammemnon languishes on the shores of Aulis with the assembled armies of Greece, waiting for a wind to carry them to Troy. Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, has declared that no wind shall be provided until Agammemnon offers as a blood sacrifice his own daugher, Iphigenia. Reluctantly he sends for Clytemnestra to bring their daughter to him, on the pretext that she is to be married to the great warrior Achilles.

The death of Iphigenia, and what became of her after, is not much more that a footnote to the celebrated events of the Oresteia: the Trojan War and Agammemnon’s bloody murder at the hands of Clytemnestra, followed by Orestes’ unnatural act of revenge upon his mother, calling the wrath of the Furies down upon him. Orestes is widely remembered for his ordeal, which ultimately brought the cycle of bloody vengeance to an end and ushered in a more civilized notion of justice.

But this is his sister’s story.

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The theater of live actors is a pale imitation of life. Only these simple puppets can catch the soul in their direct gestures and unchanging faces. Every puppet in our performance deserves to be called a living being.

From Like I Say by Len Jenkin