The exhibition project “Objects of Desire” presents art works in different genres, from the classical painting to performance art. But as W&A also work with theatre art, Rolf Alme wrote the text “Medea’s Sons” in the form of a theatre play about the young man of today. The text relates directly to the exhibition project. Every scene is based on a specific part of the exhibition:
Act 1: The Letters (The conceptual work “The Letters”)
Act 2: The Sons (The paintings)
Act 3: The Golden Flee (The installation “W&A Re-Tailored Jeans”)
Act 4: The Curse (The video-paintings)
Act 5: Narcissus (The video)

Using myths and themes from classical Greek tragedies the text describes the young metrosexual men of today as a product of our classical European civilisation.

The evolution of feminism was a precondition for the man to discover himself as an object. Medea is the iconic strong woman of the classical Greek mythology and literature. It is only logical that she, Medea, is the mother of the young men of today.

MEDEA’S SONS
ACT I
THE LETTERS

(The stage is empty except for a grey projection screen covering the back wall. As the spectators enter the title of the play and the scene is projected.)
(Four young men dressed in elegant grey suits, white shirts, black ties and black sneakers enter.) (When the First Son says “Apollo” the back wall is covered by a video projection of a crystal-like object turning around slowly reflecting light.)

FIRST SON:
Apollo
God of fine arts
Son of Zeus and Leto
We call upon you
To tell our story

SECOND SON:
For us
The sons
No loss
No grief
No tragedy

THIRD SON:
Medea
Our mother
Was the tragedy
The loss
The grief
The victim that hit back
That granted
Us
Freedom

FIRST SON:
Our story begins in Kolkhis
The mystical place
Where the Golden Flee
Is guarded in the temple by a dragon
Kolkhis
The barbarian land
Every spring
A beautiful young man
Is sacrificed
Cut up in small pieces
Buried in the fields
To ensure good harvest
To be sacrificed
An honor

SECOND SON:
In Kolkhis
Where the blood of young men fertilize the fields
Medea grows up
Priestess in the temple of Hecate
Hecate
The goddess of witchcraft

THE FOURTH SON:
Our mother Medea
Daughter of king Aeëtes
Cousin of the goddess of magic Circe
Granddaughter of the sun god Helios

THIRD SON:
But then
The attach
The Argonauts’ raid
Our mother Medea
Robbed as a pray
By the commander Jason
Ravished
And brought to Corinth on the boat
As cargo together with The Golden Flee

FIRST SON:
Or
Our mother Medea
In love with the enemy Jason
Now traitor
Fled with him on the ship
Sacrificed her little brother
Prince Absyrtus
Cut him up in small pieces
Threw the pieces in the sea
Delayed
The soldiers following them
They stopped their boats
Picked up the pieces from the sea
To bury the young prince in the temple

SECOND SON:
Apollo
You know better than all others
You the God of the arts
There is no truth
Just stories
Told with a purpose

THIRD SON:
Apollo
Hear our story
Now from Corinth
The city devoted to
Aphrodite
The goddess of love

FOURTH SON:
Here Medea gives Jason two sons
Tisander and Alcimenes
But Jason leaves her
The stranger
The sorceress from the strange Kolkhis
To marry the princess
Daughter of the king of Corinth
To get power
To become king

FIRST SON:
Our mother Medea
In despair
Now victim
Takes revenge

SECOND SON:
And what revenge
She kills the princess and the king with poison
Her and Jason’s two sons with knife

THIRD SON:
Then escape
To Athens
The sun God Helios
Sends carriage of shining light
King Aegeus of Athens
Gives Medea
The sorceress from Kolkhis
New home

FOURTH SON:
Apollo
Hear our story
Now from Athens
The city named after the goddess of wisdom
Athena

THIRD SON:
Goddess
Not god
Our mother
Medea
Always specified

FIRST SON:
King Aegeus
The drunkard
Without sons
Medea
Gives him sons
Us
Her witchcraft
Nothing else
Than replacing wine
With water

FOURTH SON:
But
A warm summer day
Athens’ curse
Hit
Medea
And us

FIRST SON:
After the lost war
Against king Minos
Of Crete
Athens’
Punishment
Every summer
Send young men
As gift offerings
To the monster Minotaur

SECOND SON:
Apollo
Hear our story
That now begins
On the ship
Sailing towards Crete

THIRD SON:
We
Medea’s sons
Chosen
As gift offerings
Chained to the ship’s hull
Transported as cattle
As food
To the monster
Half bull half man
Minotaur

FOURTH SON:
But
Our mother Medea
The sorceress
Disguised as the sea god Poseidon’s priestess
On the ship

FIRST SON:
Scorching sun
Flute players
Singers and dancers
In procession
Accompany the gift offerings
Us
To Minotaur’s subterranean palace
The labyrinth

SECOND SON:
There
In the endless subterranean hallways
Where no one locked in ever found the exit
We should
Be chased
Torn to pieces
Devoured
By the monster
Half bull half man

THIRD SON:
Our mother Medea
The sorceress in disguise
Gave us a simple ball of yarn
As farewell gift
As we were locked in
Into the labyrinth

FOURTH SON:
Attached to the exit gate
The thin silk thread
Minotaur roaring
The dark
The smell of blood
We run
Get lost in the labyrinth
The damp breathe of the monster in the neck

FIRST SON:
But
Medea’s gift
The silk thread
Shows the way back to exit gate
To freedom
To life

SECOND SON:
Apollo
Hear our story
Now from Lycia
An endless sea journey from Crete
And the world we know

FIRST SON:
Our mother Medea
The sorceress
Finds a new home
Among sisters

SECOND SON:
Lycia’s sisters
Prepared
To fight
Like her
Our mother

FOURTH SON:
Medea
Shared with Lycia’s sisters her wisdom
Cursed fear
Called upon the goddess of wisdom Athena
Cursed the darkness

THIRD SON:
Medea
Our mother
Created Lycia
The nation where women on horses now
Defend the cities
The temples
The knowledge
The resources
The nation where
Councils of women not men
Dictate the laws
Lycia
The land of the Amazons

FOURTH SON:
Here
In Lycia
Medea and her sisters
No kings
No human sacrifices
No monster half bull half man
Only queens
Amazons

FIRST SON:
Listen
Apollo
God of fine arts
Here
In the land of Amazons
We grow up
We
Medea’s sons
As free men
(Music: Max Richter: “November”. Dance.)

ACT II

THE SONS

(The title is projected on the back wall. Then we see still projections of the young men on stage made live on stage. The images have the same colorful aesthetics as the paintings in the exhibition.)

ICARUS:

Wings. My name is for eternity connected with wings. And wings are connected with freedom, or escape, or in my case arrogance. But it isn’t true that I am arrogant. I just love the freedom that wings have given me the opportunity to achieve. I love it and I enjoy it while gliding over Arcadia’s forests where Pan’s flute can be mistaken for the chirping of birds. Presumably it’s just the chirping of birds that I hear, but it gives me a greater kick to think that I hear Pan himself, the forest God, down there between the tree-tops while I carefully flap the wings.

ORPHEUS:

Of course it is Pan that you hear, Icarus. His flute is more complex than chirping birds. He has a greater repertoire. As a musician I clearly hear the difference between Pan and birds.

ENDYMION:

By the way I saw you the other day, Icarus. You were flying in front of the Moon. I’m quite sure it was you. There is something specifically elegant in the way you move the wings.

GANYMEDE:

I presume you studied the movements of the Moon, Endymion.

ENDYMION:

Yes, I can’t resist. She’s so beautiful. Haven’t you noticed how she expands herself night after night from a little sharp parenthesis in the sky into a circular object, and then she reduces herself into an opposite parenthesis, end of parenthesis so to speak. She is very discreet in her appearance.

ORPHEUS:

You are in love with the Moon, Endymion.

ENDYMION:

And she, the Moon, Celeste, is in love with me, Orpheus.

ORPHEUS:

It’s no secret any more, Endymion. We all know that you became an astronomer in order to spend all your time together with her. And the other day I heard that she, the moon, not long ago has asked Zeus to give you eternal youth because she thinks you are so handsome, and you are. You are perhaps the most handsome of all of us.

ICARUS:

Or Ganymede is the most handsome of us. At least according to Zeus. It is well known that he got you to the Mount Olympus as servant for the Gods because he was in love with you and your beauty. By the way he has already given you eternal youth. How is it to be Zeus’ lover Ganymede?

GANYMEDE:

At first it was a choc of course. To be honest I was very happy as a shepherd on Mount Ida by Troy. The loneliness in the nature made me serene. I had, except for the goats of course no conversation partners and thereby no external regard on myself. I didn’t make any thoughts about the fact if I was handsome or not. I bathed in the rivers when it was warm and slept by the goats when it was cold. Now, among the Gods on Mount Olympus I have to take care of my looks all the time not to embarrass Zeus. I bath in rivers perfumed with water lilies and sleep on soft clouds that glide smoothly over the night sky. It is a new and very unfamiliar situation.

ENDYMION:

I’m not quite sure, but I think I saw you the other night, you and Zeus on a cloud smoothly gliding past the moon. To be quite honest I looked away. It was just too intimate. In the moonlight one can see you make love with Zeus, Ganymede, just so that you know…

GANYMEDES:

One can’t be shy if one is Zeus’ lover, Endymion… Zeus isn’t content with just looking at his lover as your beloved moon…

ICARUS:

Hush, Ganymede, don’t say that in front of Orpheus…

ORPHEUS:

It is ok, Ganymede. We all know that I hadn’t been able to live with my beloved Eurydice without ever looking at her after I retrieved her from the underworld…

ICARUS:

Tell us what happened, Orpheus. There are so many myths about this event.

ORPHEUS:

There isn’t that much to tell, Icarus. As you know I enthrall everybody with my music. After all I’m the best lyre-player and singer of our time. When my beloved Eurydice died, and was brought to the underworld by Hades, I thought I perhaps could enthrall even the God of death. So I descended into the underworld singing the most beautiful melancholic ballade from Thracian. Hades eventually got so charmed by my music that he said I could take with me Eurydice back to life. The only precondition was that I couldn’t ever look at her. As we came up I didn’t hear her steps behind me any more and instinctively I looked back. Then in a very short moment I saw how my beloved disappeared back into the underworld. I will never forget the despair in her eyes.

ICARUS:

You are the only one of us brothers being unhappy, Orpheus, even though you are a god-gifted musician. Your beautiful face is also very sad, and your music will probably forever be melancholic. It makes your music even more divine, I suppose but it is sad nevertheless.

GANYMEDE:

Even Medea’s sons cannot escape destiny. We will all be victims of our destiny one day or another. Zeus has told me in confidence that you Icarus one day in your arrogance will fly to high up in the sky, too close to the sun, and the wax that mother used to attach your wings to your back will melt, and you will fall down into the sea…

ICARUS:

But that day hasn’t come yet, Ganymede. And until that day I will continue to fly high up in the sky and enjoy the liberty our mother Medea gave us.

(Music: Max Richter: “Sarajevo”. Dance.)

ACT III

THE GOLDEN FLEE

(The scene title is projected on the back wall, then white light. Out of this light slowly occurs a projection: A very sensual close-up video of a young man pulling on a pair of jeans. It is only after last verse we see the image clearly.)

THE FOUR SONS:
Poseidon God of the sea
Falls in love
With the nymph Theophane
Who’s forefather is the sun God Helios
The sea and the sun
Water and light
Copulate
Bring forth
A golden winged buck
The coalesce of water and light
Gives gold and wings
Gives reflexes of light
Gives access to the air
The winged buck
Flies
Over the ocean
The young man Frixus on his back
Saves him from his destiny
Sacrificed death
In Kolkhis
This mystical country
The buck lands
The fur gold
Frixus kisses the buck thanking him
In that moment
The buck transforms to a golden fleece
And golden feathers
Falling silently down from the air
The young man
Takes the fleece around his body
And becomes
Irresistible
Women and men
Want his body
The Golden Fleece
Wraps itself tight on his body
It lets his body glow
Reflecting the light
Like gold
The young man
His beauty
Irresistible
In the tight Golden Fleece
Offers the buck’s feathers of pure gold
To Eros
Winged God of love

(Music: Max Richter: “Everything is Burning”. The young men undress their jackets, ties shirts and trousers. Under their trousers they are wearing white shorts.)

ACT IV

THE CURSE

(They do gymnastic exercises to exhaustion before and in between each verse. On the back wall projected delayed and graphically altered video of the young men on stage. )

THE YOUNG MEN:

Prometheus. A handsome young man from Sparta participates for the first time in the Olympic games. He enters the stadium. The sun shines from above. It is warm. His naked body is sweaty. His skin shines. The humidity reflects in the sunlight as if his skin was made of pure gold. Prometheus hears the jubilation of the spectators. He positions himself together with the other runners, then the hitting of the drum. He runs. His only thought is to run. His only thought is to channel all the energy of his body to running fast around the stadium. He is the fastest. He wins. Prometheus is called forward. He can hardly see the spectators, as the sun is blinding him. The laurel wrath on his head, the bliss, he is carried around the stadium, he sees spectators waving palm leafs.

Prometheus. A young handsome man wins the Olympiad. He is honored with a statue. He is honored because he won but also because he is handsome. Both his beauty and his strength are being honored in a sculpture placed in the temple of Apollo. Many come with offerings to the sculpture, flowers and incense. Men and women children too come with offerings bow in reverence looking at the sculpture of the handsome young man. Young women and lyre players sit down in groups playing and singing polyphonic songs about Prometheus’ beauty. Young boys come to the temple to pray. They pray Prometheus to give them beauty and strength. Prometheus is a God.

Next year the young man from Sparta comes back to the Olympiad. Now as a spectator, he is still handsome still young. He stops in the temple of Apollo sees behind a crowd the sculpture of him. Hesitating he goes towards it.

He goes through the crowd close up to his own, mirrored image his own exact copy cut out of marble. Nobody notices him. No one looks at the young handsome man from Sparta. No one sees the human being Prometheus. All people’s regards and desires all people’s prayers are forever directed towards the cold shining marble.

ACT V

NARCISSUS

(The scene title is projected on the back wall. The young men dress while talking. They all end up wearing their suits.)

ICARUS:

Are we going to tell about our brother?

ORPHEUS:

Yes, we are, Icarus. It is written on the wall over there…

GANYMEDE:

Our dear brother Narcissus, I went together with him up in the mountains. We should be shepherds for a while and enjoy the countryside’s calm and tranquility.

ENDYMION:

Ganymede, perhaps you should tell why you took Narcissus with you up in the mountains…

ORPHEUS:

You took him up in the mountains because he was totally impossible, Ganymede.

GANYMEDE:

But it wasn’t so easy for him either. When you are so handsome that all, absolutely all people fall in love with you, well, then you get dismissive and arrogant just to protect yourself. When we went to the market together he got fruit and herbs for free from the vendors and young women came running towards him with flowers. The lyre-players stopped up in front of him and started to play and sing melancholic love-songs. It was totally embarrassing.

ENDYMION:

I will not tell you in detail what happened when I one day went together with him to the public bath…

ORPHEUS:

No, please, we don’t need to hear it, Endymion.

ICARUS:

Fact is that Narcissus rejected everyone that fell in love with him. He was arrogant. Ganymede’s is probably right when he says that the arrogance was some kind of survival mechanism, but it wasn’t directly sympathetic.

GANYMEDE:

Well, we moved up in the mountains together. But after some time Narcissus got irritated and said I always looked at him with lust in my eyes. He had lost any sense of reality. I Ganymede was in love with my own brother? Truly I thought he was exceptionally handsome, I thought it was lovely to lay against his body and I always felt a kind of…

ORPHEUS:

You don’t have to go into details, Ganymede. Fact is that Narcissus left you and went down to the deep forests in order to hunt in total loneliness.

ENDYMION:

And as far as we know the following happened a warm summer day: Echo, a bewitched mountain nymph watched Narcissus while dancing strangely around the trees, and she fell immediately in love with him…

ICARUS:

Endymion, it is important for the story to mention that Echo had been bewitched to only repeat the last word spoken by other people.

ENDYMION:

Yes she repeated the last word spoken by other people. We can imagine how irritating the conversation was between Narcissus and this confused, bewitched mountain nymph. It ended with Narcissus rejecting her in his usual arrogant way.

ICARUS:

And then the dramatic thing happens. The nymph gets so heartbroken that she dies. That is she dies in the specific way a mountain nymph dies; her body disappears leaving behind only her voice. One can actually hear her voice in the mountains when shouting. As you know the phenomenon is named after her, echo.

ORPHEUS:

Echo. And then the terrible thing happens. The God of revenge, Nemesis cursed Narcissus…

GANYMEDE:

He should himself experience to love someone that he couldn’t get…

ORPHEUS:

As Narcissus shortly after got down on his knees in order to drink water from a little pond, he saw his own, mirrored image and fell in love with himself, his own image.

ENDYMION:

Day and night he sat there watching himself and admiring his own beauty. You were the one that found him at last, Ganymede…

GANYMEDE:

To be honest I followed him down into the deep forests and I saw everything. I saw everything happen. After a while I went over to him. I caressed him gently over his head in order to free him from this cruel curse. But he didn’t move. He was totally cold. He was dead. His eyes were open and directed towards the water and his own, mirrored image. And you know what? For the first time I saw love in his eyes, pure love and happiness.

(A video projection of a young man’s face slowly appears on the back wall. After last line the light on the stage disappears and we only see the video projection of the young man. A short moment he smiles seductively to us then blackout.)

THE END