Billie Krishawn - Andromeda Jeremy Keith Hunter - Percy Andromeda BreakS Director Stephen Spotswood
Playwright
Nick Martin
The original story of Andromeda has surprisingly little Andromeda in it. Her mother boasts that her daughter is more beautiful than the sea nymphs. Her parents chain her to a rock to appease Poseidon’s jealous wrath. Perseus saves her, and not even on purpose. He just happened to pass by on his way home from slaying Medusa. We named a galaxy after her, but in her own myth Andromeda has been given no lines. She became the prototype for every damsel in distress, every woman whose sole purpose is to be saved.With this play, I didn’t want to just give her a voice, but to give her agency and power and desire--to reimagine Andromeda as a damsel who can save herself. As soon as I knew what the story needed to be, the form fell quickly into place: a crime noir tale set against myth-infused Southern gothic. In noir, heroes, victims and villains are never clean-cut. Everyone is suspect, and no one emerges unscathed. At the end of the day, this is a story of two people fighting against a corrupt Olympus.A story about complicity and compromise that asks how much you’re willing to sacrifice for justice. Or for revenge. A Southern Gothic, crime drama retelling of a Greek Myth is how Andromeda Breaks was first described to me, and upon reading Stephen’s first draft that’s precisely how I’d describe it as well.As a director I love to probe a script, with a fantastic team of collaborators, to determine exactly what the rules of the play are and how they manifest in production. Each of those three distinct facets of Andromeda Breaks is rich in this regard, and their interplay even more exciting.The script balances competing impulses with such ease that the great joy of this process has been discovering how to let this enthralling world develop in the most intuitive and organic way. Of course, much of the work of navigating the twists and turns of the script fall on the terrific actors you’re about to witness. It’s a distinct pleasure to take a deep dive into the vivid world of Stagger County with this team of artists and to facilitate the magic they can create. I hope you enjoy Andromeda Breaks as much as we did creating it! Jeremy Keith Hunter, a multi-disciplined artist focusing in theatre, writing and graphic design. Previous theatre credits include The Farnsworth Invention (1st Stage); Rabbit Summer (Ally Theatre Company);Word Becomes Flesh (us -Theatre Alliance), Hooded or Being Stephen Spotswood Nick Martin
Black for Dummies, Milk Like Sugar, andWhen January Feels Like Summer (Mosaic Theatre Company). Jeremy attended the College of Southern Maryland. iammercury.com
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