SF Olympians

Coeus and Creos are two Titan Stalwarts, enemy combatants, hurled by Zeus into Hell and forgotten. Coeus is a giant whose name means “asking questions.” Married to prophetess Phoebe, father of Asteria and Leto, he rules the northern axis of the earth around which the constellations spin. His twin, Creos, looks nothing like him. Creos, with ram’s horns on his forehead, rules the constellation, Aries, and spring. He is the lord of new beginnings. Only the great playwright Aeschylus never forgot these gods. In the fragments of Prometheus Unbound, he wrote that Zeus, eternally using the forlorn Titans for his own designs, grants the twins clemency so they can plead with the chained, unrelenting Prometheus.

Evelyn Jean Pine centers her play on Coeus and Creos, old, infirm, and forgotten, and able to agree on only one thing: old age is hell, but it does endow one with that most potent of all superpowers — invisibility. Can the twins collaborate to use their superpower to outsmart the magnificent Hades and destroy the god of the underworld’s celebrated magic helmet of invisibility? And if they succeed in this impossible scheme, will any of their brethren recognize them, remember them, and commit to bring down the empire of Zeus and his Olympians?

COEUS AND CRIOS by Evelyn Jean Pine
Directed by Karen Offereins
staged reading December 12, 2012 at 8 PM

Bruce Alvin (Coeus)

Don Hardwick (Crios)

Shane Rhoades (Hades/Prometheus)

Colin Hussey (Pallas/Zeus)

Juliana Lustenader (Athena)

Stacy Young (Phoebe)

Julie Douglas (Hera)

Ronen Sberlo (Dionysus)

Caitlin Evenson (Socrates/Stage Directions)

Evelyn Jean Pine is a five-time Playground Emerging Playwright Award Winner and a recipient of the June Anne Baker Award. She has written two full-length plays for the SF Olympians: Hephaestus and the Three Golden Robots and the musical, Walking the Starry Path, music by Tom Darter. Playground has commissioned three other full-lengths: Altair about the battle between computer hobbyists and Bill Gates in 1976; Astonishment, about the invention of the movies, and The Secrets of the World, about Queen Isabella and the Indians Columbus brought back to her. Her short play, Sweet Dreams, launched the Manhattan Shakespeare Project’s Emerging Voices Festival in New York. Her award-winning short plays have been staged around the country. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State where she teaches performance studies. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

The stunning artwork of Coeus and Crios was created by David van Patten! His work can be seen here!