Getty Villa to Host Four Performances of ‘After Iphigenia’

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

The Getty Villa will host four performances of Villa Theater Lab: “After Iphigenia” the weekend of November 12 through 14.

“Ignited by Euripides’ ‘Iphigenia’ plays, the acclaimed Critical Mass Performance Group presents a kaleidoscopic meditation on the theme of sacrifice,” according to a statement from the Getty Villa ahead of the shows. “This work-in-progress mines the mysterious story of Iphigenia—a young girl sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon—in the context of our era’s personal and communal moment of calamity, loss and transcendence.”

Los Angeles-based Critical Mass Performance Group was founded in 1985, according to its website.

“Known for category-busting new works, exuberant theatricality and electrifying collisions of ideas, CMPG was named 2013’s Best Theatre Company by the LA Weekly,” the website continued. “We believe that sharing stories sows the seeds of empathy, in order to imagine and manifest a just, equitable and peaceful future.”

Core ensemble members of the group include Fran de Leon, Lorne Green, Nancy Keystone, Nick Santoro, Ray Ford, Russell Edge and Valerie Spencer.

“We are passionately committed to theatrical inventiveness in which movement, image and text have equal weight in telling the story, to discover the most theatrical and poetic expressions that work their way through the audience’s nerves,” according to the group’s website. “We are compelled by surprising collisions of ideas, by material which reflects humanity’s struggle to navigate a difficult world, and by untold aspects of these stories and how they relate to the American experience.”

Other productions by the group include “Bad Medicine” in 2014, which was commissioned by Heretick Theater Lab, “Parataxes from the Near Side of the Heart” in 2015 and “Bread” in 2011. In 2013, the group developed “Alcestis” at the Getty Villa Theater Lab, which was named in 10 Best Plays by LA Weekly, as well as winning a Best Adaptation Award from the LA Drama Critics Circle, LA Weekly and Arts In LA.

Showtimes include Friday, November 12, and Saturday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m., as well as Saturday, November 13, and Sunday, November 14, at 3 p.m. General admission to the show is $7, and all performances take place in the Villa Auditorium.

Those who visit the museum through September 5 of next year are invited to see the “Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq” exhibition, which is on loan from the British Museum. It offers “masterworks of ancient relief sculpture from Iraq preserve scenes of royal lion hunts, battles and banquets,” according to the Getty Villa website.

For more information or to purchase tickets to “After Iphigenia,” visit getty.edu.