ATLAS | Trojan Women

‘Trojan Women’ examines war aftermath

“Trojan Women,” a collaboration between the ATLAS Center for Arts, Media and Performance, and Naropa University in Boulder, was presented in three performances in February in the Black Box Studio.

The performances examined the aftermath of war and its dehumanizing affects and is based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s adaptation of Euripides’ war story. The production combined song, dance, music and multimedia.

Trojan Women was directed by Kevin Kuhlke of New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, with music by New York-based composer Cynthia Hopkins and choreography by CU Dance faculty member Onye Ozuzu.

“As someone who has worked inside a university environment for the past 25 years, I know all too well how difficult it can be to pull off collaborations of this kind,” Kuhlke said. “I really must applaud all who participated.”

A media team, which was under the direction of Center for Arts, Media and Performance Director Rebekah West, included center technical manager Bret Mann and performance production manager Gary McCrumb; Jean Hertzberg, a professor in Engineering at CU; CU students Grant Reynolds, Kevin Rice, Autumn Bjugstad, Brandon Lied, Nate Wheeler and Alex Hesemann; associate dean of journalism Steve Jones; journalism instructor Paul Daugherty; and Russ Schissler, a member of the Boulder community and computer wizard. Center Director West also served as the production’s media designer.

This group, along with the production team assembled by Wendell Beavers at Naropa, which included local designer, Mark Fisher, CU faculty member and choreographer Ozuzu and internationally acclaimed SITI company lighting designer Brian Scott, helped create a work of theater that broke new ground in the use of media in live performance.