Scylla
The origin stories for Scylla vary, but the common thread is that she was once a beautiful woman (usually a nymph) who got caught in a love triangle (usually against her will). These soap opera scenarios often cast the goddess Amphitrite or the sorceress Cire as the jealous woman. Whoever she was, this rival had supernatural powers which were used to poison the waters that Scylla bathed in. This mutated the innocent beauty into a deadly, grotesque monster: a terrifying creature with six reptilian heads that swayed on long, snake-like necks and bared gaping jaws, each filled with three rows of sharp teeth.
And she preferred her meat alive, and human.
The most famous account of Scylla is in Homer’s “The Odyssey”. Scylla resides on a crag on one side of a narrow channel in the sea. On the other side of the channel is her counterpart, the monster Charybdis, who lives underwater and creates a whirlpool that is large enough to sink a warship. Homer’s hero Odysseus knows that the only way he can prevent losing his entire ship is to sail closer to Scylla’s crag, and in effect sacrifice six of his crew to her hungry heads.
The harrowing course between Scylla and Charybdis is one of the first – and best – illustrations in Western Literature of the dilemma of having to choose between the lesser of two evils.
“Scylla, or Death by the Half-Dozen” takes place after the Trojan War, as told in The Odyssey, on the upper deck of Odysseus’ warship at the narrow Scylla - Charybdis channel
The homesick and battle-weary Odysseus tries to prepare his crew for what awaits them; that six among them are about to be devoured alive. But what Odysseus, his crew (and anyone who has ever read The Odyssey) don’t realize, is that the monster Scylla still retains her nymph-like telepathy from her former, happier existence. In the last few seconds of his life each one of her victims sees, not the gaping jaws of a monster, but a vision of the one person in his life who had inflicted - or received - the most pain.
Are a woman’s tears REALLY sharper than a serpent’s tooth?
SCYLLA or DEATH BY THE HALF-DOZEN by Christian Simonsen
Directed by Melinda Marks
Staged Reading on November 22, 2014
Andrew Chung (Sailor #2)
Ben Grubb (Sailor #6)
Abhi Kris (Sailor #4)
Dan Kurtz (Sailor #5)
Will Leschber (Sailor #7)
Charles Lewis III (Sailor #1)
Adam Magill (Odysseus)
Tonya Narvaez (Circe/Mother/Girlfriend/Wife/Teenage Girl/Trojan Woman)
Allison Page (Stage Directions)
Nicky Weinbach (Sailor #3)
Christian Simonsen’s scripts have been produced by such renowned San Francisco theatrical institutions as PianoFight Productions, 5by5, Please Leave the Bronx, The Darkroom, and SF Theater Pub, as well as Eat Street Players in Minneapolis and Obsidian Art Space in Houston. His previous contributions to the SF Olympians Festival were the plays “Cassiopeia” and “Io: A Sequel to Prometheus Bound” in 2011, and “Chronus” in 2012.
The image of Scylla was created by Lacey Hill Hawkins!