Genesius Guild's “Electra,” July 2 through 10

Saturday, July 2, through Sunday, July 10

Lincoln Park, 1120 40th Street, Rock Island IL

One of the most exciting and moving of all classical-Greek tragedies will be staged in Rock Island's Lincoln Park from July 2 through 10 when Genesius Guild stages its masked drama Electra, the Sophocles masterpiece set a few years after the Trojan War, and a one-act act theatre experience that the L.A. Post noted as "unique among Greek tragedies for its emphasis on action."

In this arresting Sophocles work that scholars largely believe was written between 420 and 414 BC, Electra longs for her younger brother Orestes to avenge her father's death. Prior to the events of Electra, after King Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra – who had taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover – killed him, believing the murder to be justified after (as commanded by the gods) her husband sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war. Another child of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Electra rescued Orestes from their mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis, and now he has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge. Electra herself, however, has been in a "holding pattern" since the events of that tragic night, and after saving her brother, now serves in a household deaf to her mourning and sadness. A play about division, generational trauma, and the wish for seemingly impossible justice in a true catch -22 situation, Electra finds its title character forced to ask impossible questions. Should she avenge her father by having her mother killed? Or should she allow the murderer of her father to live because the woman is her mother?

A forceful and fascinating stage work revered by scholars worldwide, Electra inspired The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama authors John Gassner and Edward Quinn to argue that the play's "simple device of delaying the recognition between brother and sister produces a series of brilliant scenes which display Electra's heroic resolution under constant attack." Meanwhile, regarding the tragedy's title character, British scholar Edith Hall wrote, "Sophocles certainly found an effective dramatic vehicle in this remarkable figure, driven by deprivation and cruelty into near-psychotic extremes of behavior; no other character in his extant dramas dominates the stage to such an extent."

Directing Electra for Genesius Guild is Jill Sullivan-Bennin, a classical-theatre veteran whose area credits include directing The Trojan Women for the Prenzie Players and appearing in Genesius Guild's 2006 production of Much Ado About Nothing. Electra is portrayed by fellow Prenzie Player Stephanie Burrough, who performed in the company's King Richard the Second and Lear, and directed the Prenzies' Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night. And with Sophocles' Greek Chorus composed of Heather Kangas and Genesius Guild veterans Kathy Calder (Prometheus Bound), Claire Henniges (Romeo & Juliet) and Melita Tunnicliff (Hippolytus), additional members of Sullivan-Bellin's cast include familiar area talents Guy Cabell (Genesius Guild's Measure for Measure), Dee Canfield (the Prenzie Players' Trojan Women), Mischa Hooker (Augustana College's Macbeth), Anna Kronenberger (the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's The Odd Couple), and Matt Walsh (the Black Box Theatre's The Turn of the Screw).

Genesius Guild's Electra will be staged in Rock Island's Lincoln Park on Saturdays and Sundays July 2 through 10, with donations encouraged for the free 7 p.m. performances, and more information is available by visiting Genesius.org.