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“Victory Gardens Theater did not simply present a world premiere of a new play on Thursday night. It conjured a new life for a myth that is more than 2,000 years old. And it did so with such stunning and completely realized theatricality that it seemed as if all the talent involved in the project has suddenly ripened and burst apart. The play is called PECONG. And although at first its Caribbean island setting seems far from the ancient Greece as a globe will permit, it turns out to be not just one of the most astonishingly powerful retellings of the Medea story, but one of the most faithful. In moving this classic tale of sexual possession and bloody revenge to another continent, playwright Steve Carter has rediscovered its meaning. Sex and power are the focus of PECONG, and the struggles come in all varieties. At the center there is the battle between man and woman in the ferocious relationship of Mediyah (the Medea character), the sorceress, and Jason Allcock, the shallow womanizer whom she falls madly in love with and cedes all her power to, only to be crassly dumped. Hell hath no fury like this woman scorned. But there are also wars among women, between brother and sister, between those of light and dark skin tones and, of course, among men. (In the Carnival scene a ‘pecong,’ or verbal battle of insults hurled in rhymed verse, is played out in great style by Mediyah’s brother, dressed as a rooster, and her lover, dressed as a ram.) PECONG is Carter’s most ambitious and beautifully written play to date — full of humor, passion, high drama and low comedy.” —Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
Author(s)
Steve CarterHorace E. "Steve" Carter, Jr. was an American playwright, best known for his plays involving Caribbean immigrants living in the United States. Mr. Carter received the Living Legend award at the 2001 National Black Theatre Festival. He was Victory Gardens Theater's first playwright-in-residence beginning in 1981 and has also served as playwright-in-residence at George Mason University. Carter's PECONG (winner of the Joseph Jefferson award for New Work) premiered at Victory Gardens in the 1989 – 1990 season and received subsequent productions at London's Tricycle Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and Newark Symphony Hall. His plays EDEN (winner of an Outer Critics Circle award, an Audelco award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award ) and NEVIS MOUNTAIN DEW received Midwest premieres, and DAME LORRAINE, HOUSE OF SHADOWS, SHOOT ME WHILE I'M HAPPY, SPIELE '36 OR THE FOURTH MEDAL and ROOT CAUSES all premiered at Victory Gardens. Mr. Carter died at the age of 90 in 2020.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Originally produced by the Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
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