Playing with Plautus: GROTON (con't.)

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And it does require a miracle—not to mention 20 talented and dedicated students—to pull off this ambitious project every two years.. The actors speak a hybrid of Latin and English, designed to be intelligible to anyone. In the month leading up to the play, each member of the cast meets once a week for 20-30 minutes with the director; together they translate the Latin and decide how much of it to leave in, how much to translate into colloquial English. There is no one final “script”: the dialogue changes from performance to performance.

To refresh the audience without sacrificing momentum (the show runs 60-70 minutes, with no intermission), the actors shift, every ten minutes or so, from speaking into singing. For each play I compose five songs, basing them, if possible, on Plautus’ ready-made cantica. For accompaniment we use the piano and whatever other instruments our cast members can play (e.g., clarinets, oboes, violins). The audience is asked to sing along on one verse of each song.

Besides performing twice at St. Olaf, we take our show on the road, lugging with us the painted bedsheets attached to portable screens that we use as backdrops. Last spring we performed Rudens five times (at a university, a college, two private schools, and one public school—with students from four other public schools and three other private schools bused to the performances) during our two-day, 250-mile “tour” across southeastern Minnesota. We estimate that 1000 people saw the play. What a jolly way to promote Classics and to prove to modern audiences that old jokes never die!

“We pretty much threw the Latin play together in the two days before our performances, so it was a wild ride. And the best part of it was that people who didn’t even know Latin were able to enjoy it since the majority was in English. Many of my friends didn’t want to come to a Latin play, thinking it would be boring, but they absolutely loved it. It’s so great being in something with fellow Latin nerds. It makes you feel less weird because everyone is excited about the grammar jokes and Latin word puns.”—Andrea Gatzke ‘05

It costs our department very little to stage a Latin play, especially since now, after 13 productions, we have a large supply of colorful tunics, gowns, and caftans packed away in plastic bags, ready to become costumes for the next cast of characters. All of the performances are free, and we charge no money to the schools that invite us to perform there. If they wish, they can provide snacks for the actors or help pay for gasoline and van rental.

We have videotapes of seven plays (Aulularia, Curculio, Menaechmi, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria, Pseudolus, Rudens). Anyone who would like to purchase a copy is welcome to order it from me; we charge just the cost of making the copy and mailing it.