Argus
Argus or Argus Panoptes as he is often referred to is a hundred eyed giant featured in Greek Mythology. As the son of Arestor and the servant of Hera, Zeus’s wife, Argus’s role is that of the watchman and he is best known for two things: slaying the ‘mother of all monsters’ Echidna and keeping watch over the white heifer Io. Hera had tasked Argus to guard the heifer Io from Zeus after finding out that she was one of the nymphs that Zeus had been coupling with. After Zeus discovers this, he has Hermes slay Argus by putting him, and all his eyes, to sleep with a spoken charm, hereupon he kills him with a stone. Argus’s death is important because it marks the first act of bloodshed among this new generation of gods.
Peter Hsieh’s Argus is hyper stylized reimaging of the story of Argus, Hera, Zeus, and Lo set against a backdrop of sex, scandal, and high tech surveillance. It is a dark comedy that explores the difficulties of celebrity status and living a lifestyle of unrestricted wealth and power when you have the media and millions of eyes watching your every move, waiting for you to slip up. Zeus and Hera are the super rich and powerful husband and wife team and heads of the all powerful Olympus Corporation. After one near miss of a swan rape media catastrophe super scandal, Hera activates Argus, a sentient surveillance android, to monitor Zeus. When Argus informs Hera that Zeus picked up a girl from a night club and brought her back to his penthouse, it sets off a chain of events involving black mail, murder, kidnap, private jets, board meetings, Ryan Gosling, and Lars Von Trier’s entire filmography.
ARGUS by Peter Hsieh
Directed by Rory Strahan-Mauk
Staged Reading on November 13, 2014
Patrick Barresi (Argus)
Mary Cait Hogan (Stage Directions)
Carl Lucania (Zeus)
Sunil Patel (Hermes)
Danielle Perata (Io)
Leer Relleum (Gnat)
Maggie Ziomek (Hera)
Peter Hsieh is a playwright from San Jose, California and is super excited to be returning to the festival for a second time. Recent credits include his play Interstate at the Fine Arts Association of Ohio , Tree at SF Theater Pub, and A Room with Modern Furniture, which was a finalist for the Playwright Cage Match at Douglas Morrisson Theatre. Additionally, his works have been produced and developed by Hollywood Fringe Festival, Piney Fork Press, Nylon Fusion Collective, Actor’s Company, Brooklyn College, North Park Playwright’s Festival, Viaduct Theatre, SPROUT, San Francisco Olympians Festival, World Premiere Weekend, City Light’s Theater Company, GI60, San Jose Rep’s Emerging Artist Lab, West Valley College, and Fringe of Marin. Peter is the co-founder of City Light Source, New Play Development Series at City Lights Theater Company and a member of Asian American Theater Company’s New Works Incubator. Peter is a graduate from the University of California, Irvine. He is a professional music teacher, rides motorcycles, and drinks a lot of coffee. For more information you can visit www.peter-hsieh.com or find him on Facebook because he doesn’t sleep and is always online.
The image of Argus was created by Cody A. Rishell. You can see more of his work at here and here.