In Greek mythology, Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, a woman so stunning to behold that everyone loved her.
She was so dishy that Hades wanted her all to himself. So, one day — while Persephone was out picking flowers on the plain of Enna — the old devil opened up the earth and took her down.
This ancient story of love and hell is coming back to life in a new play, “Estrella Cruz (The Junkyard Queen),” that begins a three night run at the Yale Cabaret tonight.
The student-run venue has been serving up some particularly interesting new theatre this season; the modern-day version of the Persephone myth is the work of two first year Drama School students — playwright Reese Smith and director Jesse Jou.
I got both artists on the phone the other day and Smith said the project started as something she could work on herself as a performer.
The writer is studying acting at the Drama School, but believes actors have to be pro-active about employment opportunities these days — she began writing the play more than a year ago when she was living in Brooklyn.
“It all started with a dream I had on New Year’s Eve,” she said, of the nightmare variation on the Persephone myth.
“The dream was a departure from the myth…I was choosing my own destiny and Persephone doesn’t have that choice. I thought, ‘What if she had a choice?,’” Smith recalled.
Not long after starting her studies at Yale last fall, Smith met directing student Jou and told him “I have a play for you.”
The duo proposed the piece as a Yale Cabaret project and soon found themselves on a fast track to this weekend’s world premiere production.
Jou said he was delighted to be staging a show at the Cabaret during his first year in the Drama School.
“I’m sure it happens,” he said of first year students being tapped by the Cabaret. “But, I’m not sure how often a first year (writer) and director have been chosen. I think the work spoke for itself — it’s a great play.”
“I don’t think this happens in the larger (theatre) world so quickly,” Smith said of the swift acceptance of “Estrella Cruz.”
The writer has had her early impressions of Jou’s skills as a director completely reinforced during the past few weeks: “He’s great at using whatever people happen to be in the room. He can bring out the best and most creative ideas and then shape them in a really collaborative way.”
Jou said it was the “physically beautiful use of language” that immediately attracted him to Smith’s script.
“A professor said he thought I was a little bit of a sentimentalist who likes happy endings. Reese’s play is bittersweet but it’s filled with beautiful images and language…it’s very mature.”
When I asked Smith if she will be delivering a happy ending to the audiences who see her play this weekend, she laughed: “It does have plenty of hope.”
Speaking of hope, the writer said in this speeded-up, media-saturated world, “the theatre is one of the last things that does give me hope. It seems like we’re always in the middle of frenzy and detachment, so to walk into a theater and commune with live actors is one of the most beautiful things you can do.”
She disagrees with the doomsayers who believe live performance is becoming a thing of the past: “People gathering together to watch a story being told is a universal impulse and I don’t think that will ever go away. It’s a primal urge.”
(“Estrella Cruz (The Junkyard Queen)” will be presented tonight at 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 with a $2 discount for seniors and a $5 discount for students. Food and drink service is available before each performance. To make reservations, call 432-1566.)
