BLOG

INFORMATION. INFORMATION. INFORMATION.

Posted by DCA Theater on December 3, 2008 in July-December 2008 Season, INCUBATOR Series: The Plagiarists

By Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer & project facilitator

“The annals of the marine record no example of a shipwreck so terrible as that of the Medusa frigate.”
– From Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816

In 1816, The Medusa ran aground on the Bank of Arguin and was abandoned. While high-ranking and well-connected passengers found refuge in the longboats, the rest were forced onto a makeshift raft and abandoned miles from shore. Of the 150 people on the raft, only fifteen lived to be rescued. When the survivors returned to France tell their story, they were blacklisted and slandered by a government desperate to cover up the truth. With a mix of monologues, scenes, and metafictional elements, much of it taken directly from first-person accounts, we tell the story of The Medusa’s wreck and her unfortunate crew and the disastrous circumstances that led to it, and the paranoia, madness, cannibalism, hallucinations, murder and daily mutinies on the raft itself.

We also tell the story of the aftermath – the struggle to make the truth known, the effect it had on the lives of the survivors and the country as a whole, and Théodore Géricault’s famous painting that the story inspired. It is a play about epic stupidity, small-mindedness, and selfishness – of privilege and appearance rewarded and defended against competence and honesty, but also about people making the truth known despite all odds, standing up to those who would have them silenced, and the struggle of art to capture and communicate the truth of harrowing experiences.

So, what the heck are we doing??

You might well ask. I’m wondering myself. Plagiarist Ian brought us this story almost a year ago, and we immediately seized on it as being a project we were all excited about. I mean, come on, it’s got everything. We worked on it, discussed it, read about, chewed on it, all while working on other projects and basically got nowhere. What we needed was a more focused and disciplined approach, a big chunk of time, and a bunch of smart people. So we got the chance to work at the DCA, we immediately knew what we had to do: we gathered a bunch of brilliant, talented, holistically-oriented theatre artists together to help us develop the piece. Our goals are to emerge with a clear idea of what the piece is and where it needs to go next and to get good drafts of quite a few scenes and such. Then, on December 22nd, to show everyone what we’ve been up to.

So, there you go. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how last night went. And I’d like to close with this moment from *Ghostbusters*:

Egon Spengler: “… There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.”

Dr. Peter Venkman: “I love this plan! I’m excited to be a part of it! LET’S
DO IT!”

I agree. Let’s do it.

Théodore Géricault , Le Radeau de la Méduse (“The Raft of the Medusa”), 1819