Satyrs

Remember that boring high school field trip to the fine arts museum when you stumbled upon a vase from ancient Greece in a dusty case? Black and tan with half-naked women getting chased around its curves by half-goated men with really huge— Yeah, that’s the one! And thus you were abruptly introduced to the original, the ancient, the classical…party animal. Then, as you surreptitiously circled the vase pursuing your discovery, you began to wonder… Are the scantily clad women enjoying the attention? Or genuinely trying to escape the hairy hybrid men? And if they get caught…what next?!

Tragedy and comedy, the main two forms of Greek drama, are familiar to anyone who has seen a play. In the first, things end up worse than they started out; in the second, better. But the ancient Greeks had a third type of play, tragicomedy, exemplified by bawdy satyr plays, similar to modern day satirical burlesque, and complete with phallic props. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of these raucous satyr plays have survived. Our play might not reach the obscene heights of these ancient romps, but focuses on the same main characters—the satyr and the nymph. To explain the vital statistics of these magical creatures and their place in Greek mythology, let’s just say that if a satyr ran a personal ad, it would look like this:

Home: Ancient Greece: wilderness, forest glens, mountains
Friends: Pan: the God of fertility, spring, and sheep; Dionysus: the God of wine, ritual madness, and ecstasy
Body type: Half-man, half-goat (ears, tail, haunches, cloven hooves, and manly parts)
Hobbies: Playing pan pipes, drinking, orgies
Personality: Child of nature, lover of wine, women, and song. Also sex.
Turn-ons: Playing hard to get, nudity
Turn-offs: Not much
Perfect First Date: I chase you through the forest and catch you.
You: A hot nymph, any type: Oread, Dryad, Nereid, Naiad, Oceanid, or Lampade

And if a nymph ran a personal ad, it would look like this:

Home: Ancient Greece: in the sky, a body of water, the land, a tree (literally in the tree), or the underworld
Friends: All the coolest outdoorsy gods: Dionysus, Hermes, Pan, Artemis
Body type: Voluptuous, ethereal
Hobbies: Tending the body of water, plant, or place that I am the spirit of,
seduction, dancing, singing, healing, magic, driving humans mad with my beauty
Personality: nature spirit, free spirit, homebody
Turn-ons: adoration, sacrifices
Turn-offs: loggers, miners, developers, travel
Perfect First Date: Running over hill and dale as you try to catch me.
You: persistent, somewhat hairy, musical, licentious

Of their play about Satyrs, Annette Roman and Bryant Turnage writer, “In ancient Greece, the satyr and his counterpart the nymph were sexual icons… Since when did “horny as a goat” and “nymphomania” become a bad thing? What if a creature whose very soul is the embodiment of wild and raucous passion finds himself caught in our modern-day sterile predicament? What does it take to release the beast? And should we…? This play explores taboos and social norms—past and present, real and mythic—in an attempt to answer the question, “What is so dirty about sex anyway?”

“Our hapless satyr, Peter, has lost his mojo. In a world of manscaped, owl-glassed, metrosexual hipsters, Peter’s back hair, frumpy sweaters, flute playing, and goaty body odor just isn’t attracting the ladies. He pines for a time when he and his kind’s raw animal sexuality was all that was needed to trigger nights and days of sensual pleasure. Desperate, he seeks guidance from a human pick-up artist to learn some modern tricks of the trade. And then he runs into a frustrated nymph with a coach and agenda of her own…”

SATYRS or SATYR NIGHT FEVER by Annette Roman and Bryant Turnage
Directed by Greg Young
Staged Reading on November 6, 2014

Tony Cirimele (Peter)

Annabelle King (Lumina)

Keith Larson (Dalton)

Indiia Wilmot (Daphne)

Annette Roman is the writer/performer of the solo show Hitler’s Li’l Abomination, which has toured 7 fringe festivals in the US, UK, and Canada. Her writing credits include 1 World Manga: Passages, a graphic novel series translated into six languages. Her play Menelaus was a part of the 2013 SF Olympians: Trojan Requiem.

Playwright Bryant Turnage has written over 80 plays. Recently, he co-authored Hamlet vs. Zombies: Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark, performed at the 2011 San Francisco Fringe, among other venues. His short play Shattering Crystal was turned into an independent film in 2009. He currently has numerous projects in the works.