Bienen and Communication senior Mya Vandegrift’s “Pythia” premieres as a fusion of opera and musical theatre Thursday. As Communication junior and producer Nora James Eikner describes, the performance becomes “a genre of (its) own.”
According to Vandegrift and Eikner, the show sold over 200 tickets in four minutes last Sunday for their five showtimes in the Annie May Swift Hall’s Alvina Krause Studio, which premieres Thursday through Saturday.
Vandegrift said she started writing “Pythia” in February 2024 for her senior thesis. The music drama is based on Greek mythology and specifically the history of the Pythian priestesses — the women who served at the Oracle of Delphi at the Temple of Apollo. These women delivered prophecies that would guide Greek and Roman empires and were thought to be the connection between Gods and humans, according to the show’s program.
However, the women themselves were erased from history, with only their prophecies remaining.
“(I explored) the idea of prophecy, what it means to be all-knowing, how history is recorded and remembered and what women and what people are erased,” Vandegrift said.
Communication sophomore and music director Santina Juma said that her experience has been “incredible” because having the composer in the room added a special element of collaboration.
Juma also plays Gaia in the show. Gaia interconnects the divine with the characters in the show. She added that her role on stage mirrors her role on the creative team.
“[Playing Gaia] has been super awesome because that is incorporated with my role as music director. My main function is to control time, which is what I’m doing with conducting,” Juma said. “I’ve loved having the intermingling of both of those because usually a music director and the characters of shows are quite separate, and it’s been super cool that Mya has blended all of these elements of performance.”
Communication junior Sarah Novak plays the lead role, Pythia. Novak also performed her freshman year in another of Vandegrift’s shows, she said, adding that it was “a full circle moment” that Vandegrift decided to trust her with the lead role.
Novak said the most interesting part about her character is that she is both mature and youthful at the same time.
“She has a really cool dichotomy of being both an angsty teenager with her dad and also being able to see the past, the present, the future and make so many ginormous decisions for kingdoms and empires,” Novak said. “It’s cool to be able to play a character with that kind of depth.”
For cast members, like Novak, Vandegrift and Eikner showed appreciation.
Vandegrift said that when casting for an original piece, there is immediate trust between the cast members, director and composer. She said she is lucky to have a “room of people who are fearless and down for whatever,” and Eikner echoed this sentiment.
“The people have made the hard things easy,” Eikner said. “Also, everyone in this show has the most angelic voice you will ever hear.”
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