Playwright Justice Jones talks his play The Sea Ends at Troy, a modern take on Greek literature classics
This summer, inspired by conflicts around the world and his love for ancient Greek literature and theater, Justice Jones, a junior theater and performance major at Emerson College, wrote “The Sea Ends at Troy”. The play is a modern-day retelling of the Trojan war, a battle in Greek mythology fought between the Greeks and the Trojans.
This week, Jones sat down with The Independent to talk about his process of writing the play and his experience watching the work come to life over the past month of rehearsal. “The Sea Ends at Troy” premiered at the Semel Theater on Nov. 23 and 24.
“”The Sea Ends at Troy” (TSEAT) takes place right after the fall of Troy, which in this case is in the future. [The story] centers the royal family, specifically the Queen, who’s trying to find her way out of Troy and bring the survivors to safe passage. The wind has stopped so the Greeks who invaded the city cannot leave. So there’s tension there. It’s really about the ways we have to survive, and that instinct we have to keep on living, even when we have to look away from what we built and how glorious is. Come into the show blind. Come in with a lot of tissues.”
“I wanted to do something in the Greek classical era and I had an idea a year before writing it, of the poem “The Iliad,” which is one of my favorite stories, but in this futuristic, racially liminal area where everyone’s of color, mixed and with multiple languages. I didn’t want to go through adapting “The Iliad” into play formatting, so I did research about plays set in the Trojan War, and I had been familiar with Euripides [a Greek tragedian of classical Athens] work because of school. I found The Trojan Women and I was really intrigued by it – I really loved it. A lot of people say it’s an adaptation; I feel like it’s more of an interpolation. I really wanted to take the bones and structure from it and build something with my previous ideas.” ‘
“I was pondering upon how such an old text could be shifted to modern sensibilities. I think Euripide’s framework for how he writes women is very different. Hecuba [Queen of Troy, mother of Cassandra and Polyxena] is very angry in The Trojan Women, and we have aspects of that in “TSEAT”, but I toned it down a lot. I know at the time it was revolutionary to see a woman screaming, screaming at other women and really harnessing her anger, but nowadays it just looks like she blames the other women for the fall of Troy. I really wanted to center the story around love for these women and the anger to be centered towards the men, because I think that’s where we are now in stories. That’s the reality of war now. [Hecuba’s] angry at these men for taking away the great life they had.”
“I wanted to really simulate this feeling that a lot of women from more oppressive places have. The feeling of working, working, working, to go to a better place where they can be seen as equals and leave their past behind. That was my grandmother’s story. She did what she could to get her family to Jamaica. She worked as a maid, and that was not my grandmother’s life. My grandmother had a great house, her husband had a job, and she lived in a nice neighborhood, but Jamaica just wasn’t the place to raise her children anymore. So she became a maid and she became a cleaner, cleaning bowling alleys in Toronto. And I really wanted to harness that.”
“So many immigrants are not really given what they deserve, and are almost treated as if they chose to lead this life; as if they have a lot more agency than they actually do. I really found [The Trojan Women and The Iliad] to be the political launching point for the entire text. I really wanted to take in what it feels like to not expect your world to fall apart so quickly, but when it does, it is just devastating. I was also really moved by the idea of displacement, not just from the immigration crisis, but also internal displacement and how so many stories can just disappear. So many things in “TSEAT”, like one character in particular just disappears and is never given a full, closing to their story intentionally because some people just don’t exist anymore, and we will never know their stories because of the brutality of war.”
“I was very inspired by modern day war, especially the conflicts that are going on now. Over the summer, there was this operation in Gaza – a little port was created by humanitarians to bring in supplies. It was a neutral place the Peace Corps could use to bring in whatever [civilians] needed. It was built by the Americans for that purpose, and it was used as a way to invade [Gaza] and people died because of it. No one really expected invaders to come from this specific port, because it was always a neutral place. It never harbored any weapons and they never revealed themselves as military. People were drawing the comparison between that and the Trojan horse, and it hit me immediately. I immediately found the emotional throughline to the modern day with that.”
“A lot of Troy was written in a week’s span, which is kind of crazy. It was thought of for months, but a lot of the actual writing and the emotions from the writing came in a week. I faced a lot of insecurity while everyone was rehearsing. I was like, ‘Oh my God. Does it feel like I wrote this in the week? Like, oh my God I’m so embarrassed.’ I was a little bit anxious about it. I felt strange showing it to people. It felt so weird seeing people perceive what I’d written and then repeat it. And then I felt at ease the more I saw it build up. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is amazing.’”
“When you pitch [a play to EmShakes], you pitch it to the board, and prepare a presentation with visual aids, like a Pinterest board, maybe even a Spotify playlist. Abby [Lee, Director of TSEAT] and I had a Spotify playlist for our pitch. You gather a team of people you know can do the job, and you pitch the show, why it’s relevant, the timeline you’re working with, the budget you want, and then they reach back out to you saying ‘We want you to do this.’”
“Abby and I had been creatively working together for a while. So I don’t really need to be [at rehearsal] as much, because I trust Abby. I know Ashley [Monet-Long, Assistant Director of “TSEAT”]. I’ve seen them do work. I’ve read Ashley’s scripts, and I’ve seen her do short films, and I’ve seen shows that Abby has observed or assistant directed. So I never really felt too scared that I wouldn’t have as much hands on it.”
“I’m also really close with a lot of the designers. I’m really good friends with Sydney who does movement so I knew that she was gonna turn out. Kate’s thing is creative direction. She got the vibe so quickly; it was just really nice to see. I’ve seen Julia do hair so many times, and her hair always looks good. When you know the team super well, there’s a lot more understanding. They know what I want, and I get to step back with ease.”
“I love the incorporation of movement and dance into theater. I love it much more than I love seeing people sing on stage. I love seeing expression through the way the body can move. I wanted to create a delicious mixture of movement and storytelling. I really love the idea of the chorus bringing us through the story and being this omniscient narrator. I wanted to find a space where I could have these characters thrust us through the story, give context, fill in the space and establish ambience. They’re not specifically talking to the audience and they’re not really seen by the characters. I wanted to make them liminal and really strange, as if they are being possessed by the spirits of people who were there before, like the ghosts of both Trojans and Greeks who were fighting in the war.”
“I never really thought this far ahead. I thought it was going to be rehearsal straight into performance. So this in between period where we’re doing tech, getting the hype out, telling people to get tickets and posting our photoshoots – I just forgot about that aspect as someone who’d never actually experienced student theater behind the scenes. It’s so interesting – it’s a new hat I’m wearing.”
“Seeing it really build up I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is amazing.’ Seeing it all done with no scripts in hand from top to bottom was insane. It was devastating in a way I didn’t fully realize. I know that I’m heavy handed with the melodrama, because I really love evoking emotion. I don’t care as much if you don’t know everything about character, as long as you know enough to empathize with them. I felt myself becoming the victim of my own devious plan. I was just moved. It was also beautiful, because I love theater so much, and theater at Emerson isn’t really diversity focused as much. To have a show that’s all people of color doing things that I always wanted to do and giving that opportunity to such a large cast was so enlightening, and it filled me up in such a joyous way.”
Regions: Boston, Emerson College