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This film is based on a play with the same title by Italian play writers, 1997 Nobel Price winner, Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Fo's and Rame's Medea is adapted from the Greek tragedy by Euripides. My film tells the story of Medea in modern day. It focuses on Medea's thought process which leads her to realize her subordinate condition as a woman and ultimately to murder her children for the purpose of spawning the creation of a new woman. Fo's and Rame's play takes Euripides tragedy and creates a reading of it through the microscope of European feminist theory, such as Luce Irigaray and her feminist theories based on language. According to Irigaray, at some point, in the development of language, the masculine gender became the more valorous. In turn, the role of the female, and that which she engages in as a woman, is deemed menial to that of a man's endeavors. Therefore, motherhood is looked upon as a non-valuable activity, an act which is seen as non-productive according to today's social construct based on economic value. Medea, in her act of killing her children, shatters the idea of mother as servant to man's needs, and as overseer of his goods.
Photo by Rene Cascia