Orpheus
Orpheus was the greatest musician and poet who ever lived. When the Argonauts sailed, his songs charmed the ocean’s fish to jump out of the water and be eaten. When enemies threw rocks at him, his songs charmed the stones to hover in the air and fall gently at his feet. When death took his wife, his songs charmed Hades to open the gates between worlds and set her free to live again, but Orpheus messed it all up by failing to follow the very simple instructions Hades had spoken to him.
Orpheus was bad at everything, except for the one thing he was really good at.
Of the Orpheus she’ll bring to the stage as part of “The Crew” night of short works, Megan says only “My play is about listening.”
ORPHEUS by Megan Cohen
Directed by Steven Westdahl
Staged Reading on November 11, 2015
Layne Austin (Stage Directions)
Matt Gunnison (Orpheus)
Heather Kellogg (Eurydice)
Dubbed “a ruthless innovator” by SF Weekly, playwright and performer Megan Cohen has been called “funny, erudite, and poignant” (Poetry Monthly), “torturous” (Backstage), and “highly engaging” (Huffington Post). Megan is the most frequently-produced female playwright in the San Francisco Bay Area, with 56 unique works or stagings to her name in the year 2014 alone. She’s a founding member of the San Francisco Neo-Futurists ensemble, a group voted “Best Theater” in the 2014 SF Weekly Readers’ Poll, and named a 2014 “Best of the Bay” in the final issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. This is Cohen’s fifth year as a festival writer (2011 Orion, 2012 Zeus, 2013 Odysseus, 2014 Centaur). Her play “Joe Ryan” appears in the SF Olympians “Heavenly Bodies” anthology. Her work has reached audiences in New York, London, Scotland, and Australia, and her show “Take Me Home: a One-Woman Odyssey” became the first international production to be born here at the Olympians Festival. Find out more at MeganCohen.Com or follow her on Twitter: @WayBetterThanTV
The bodacious image of Orpheus was illustrated by Cody A. Rishell.