Sitting on the floor in a circle. A hand begins a beat. Tum tum tum tum. A rhythm begins. Repeat after me. One word. A few words. A string of words. Repeat after me. The beat tum tum tum tum pulsing by fingers, toes and bodies. Back and forth, more words strung together in call and response. These words are not in English or from any known language. A mix of ancient Greek, Navajo, Latin and more. The words, the music, the rhythms are new and wonderful.
In 1996, a company of original members from the 1974 La MaMa production of The Trojan Women along with a new generation of performers was assembled. The original creative team of director Andrei Serban, composer Elizabeth Swados and producer Ellen Stewart revived the show with the desire to share it with a new generation of artists and audiences. The lead roles were shared in rotation between older and younger generation performers, and everyone performed each night in the chorus. Following the run, Ellen and members of this newly assembled intergenerational company took the production to international festivals, continuing what had begun in 1974.
I was one of the new cast members, invited in 1996 to learn La MaMa’s Trojan Women from the original company. My strongest memories are of sitting or standing in a circle, learning songs and spoken choruses from the original members. If there was a question about a word or phrase, out came little notebooks or perhaps an old date book with chicken scratch notes in the margins, from their original rehearsals in 1974 or perhaps from over the years. A complete script did not exist, as far as I knew. Typed pages of text would be shared, only after we had already begun to learn the piece, and eventually a stack of pages with most of the words that could pass for an almost complete script. Mostly, we learned by oral tradition. Tum tum tum tum. We, too, got a chance to write down our chicken scratches of our own. How does it sound to you? They might ask. Write it down. Then we would continue. A hand or a drum setting a beat. Liz sitting in the room, listening, encouraging, stepping into the circle to lead us in what felt like an expedition into the wilds of a jungle, a world of sound, song, chants, exclamations in ways only Liz could do.
And now we continue this oral tradition today in the Trojan Women Project.
Sitting on the floor in a circle. My hand begins a beat. Tum tum tum tum. A rhythm begins. Repeat after me, I say. One word. A few words. A string of words. Tum tum tum tum, we chant.
And a world opens up.
The Trojan Women Project will celebrate five years of work in Guatemala, Cambodia and Kosovo with an eleven day festival at La MaMa, December 5th-15th, 2019. The Trojan Women Project was born out of the desire to share the production not only with international audiences, but with a new generation of international artists. How can they, and we, carry the legacy of this special show in our bodies, voices and collective memories?
