Tethys

Tethys is a Titaness, goddess of the deep and unexplored seas, and wife of her Titan brother Oceanus. The Ancient Greeks were familiar with saltwater seas such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, but they also believed that beyond those lay a huge, freshwater ocean that encircled the whole known world. This was the realm of Tethys and Oceanus. Together, they had 3,000 daughters, the Oceanids (freshwater nymphs), and 3,000 sons, the Potamoi (rivers and river gods). The couple refused to take sides in the war between the Titans and Olympians; perhaps one reason for their neutrality is that they had served as foster parents to the Olympian goddess Hera in her youth. Later on, when Hera’s rival Callisto was transformed into the constellation Ursa Major and placed in the heavens, Tethys and Oceanus refused to “receive” Callisto in their home, out of respect for Hera. This was the Greeks’ explanation for why Ursa Major remains visible all year round and never touches the ocean’s horizon.

Of her play inspired by Tethys, Marissa Skudlarek writes, “When you grow up in Oregon, it’s impossible to think of the ocean as benign. Yes, it can be beautiful, but it’s also freezing cold, prone to rip currents, and has so many shipwrecks that it’s known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. You go to the coast to match yourself against elemental forces, not to relax on a sandy beach. And when you do, you also understand why the mighty ocean has become a frequently-invoked metaphor for love or rage or grief, emotions that surge and swell and batter at and overwhelm us like ocean waves. Set in a coastal town in this bleak but majestic part of the world, Tethys is a cross between a myth, a fable, a drama, and a Decemberists song — those Oregon troubadours of the shipwrecked and the drowned.”

TETHYS or YOU’LL NOT FEEL THE DROWNING by Marissa Skudlarek
Directed by Marissa Skudlarek
Staged Reading on November 20, 2015

Alan Coyne (Greg)

Kendra Webb (Laura)

Janice Wright (Susan)

Marissa Skudlarek is thrilled to return for a sixth year with the San Francisco Olympians Festival. After serving as box-office manager for the 2010 festival, she wrote the full-length drama Pleiades in 2011, the screenplay Aphrodite, or the Love Goddess in 2012, and the short plays Teucer and Laodike in 2013, and The Dryad of Suburbia in 2014. Pleiades received a full production in San Francisco in summer 2014 and has been published in Heavenly Bodies, an anthology of Olympians Festival plays. Marissa’s other full-length plays include Deus ex Machina (Young Playwrights Festival National Competition winner, 2006), Marginalia, and The Rose of Youth (Marilyn Swartz Seven Award and Vassar College production, 2008; staged reading at the EXIT Theatre, 2013). Her shorter plays have been produced by San Francisco Theater Pub, Un-Scripted Theatre, Wily West Productions, and the San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. Theater Pub also produced a reading of her new translation of Jean Cocteau’s play Orphée in spring 2013. Marissa writes a twice-monthly column called “Hi-Ho, The Glamorous Life” for San Francisco Theater Pub’s blog, and manages the @SFTheaterPub Twitter account. She can also occasionally be found writing about the arts at marissabidilla.blogspot.com, or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.

The image for Tethys, You’ll Not Feel The Drowning, was created by Brett Grunig!