by Adam Bakst. @AdamBakst_WUSF.
CHICAGO - After the enormous success of Hadestown, a musical adaptation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, aspiring playwrights have been scrambling to follow that lead by pushing out as many plays adapting Zeus’s strange sexual history as they can think of, sources confirmed.
“I’ve been reading tons of textbooks all about Greek mythology,” claimed Justin Carey, a theater arts major at DePaul University. “I am currently looking into the story of when Zeus turned himself into a swan and then seduced King Tyndareus’s wife, except in mine, Zeus turns himself into general Ulysses S. Grant and it’s set during the Civil War. It’s actually pretty easy, I already have one song titled ‘KaKAWWW,’ and it’s the big love ballad.”
Kayla Richardson, a senior on the playwriting track at DePaul, was upset that her and Carey’s play were so similar in concept.
“This is unbelievable. I had this whole plan for this play,” Richardson said. “I had the outline done for the story of Zeus gettin’ freaky and turning himself into an eagle and then abducting Ganymede, except mine was set during the Stock Market Crash of 2008! Why did Zeus keep turning himself into birds? This is so frustrating. I had Jesse Tyler Ferguson on call to play Ares and everything.”
Joanne Frant, a freshman in theater management, did not seem to understand how her play was at all like the work of her classmates.
“Look, my play is called A Natural Love, okay? It is the tale of when Zeus saw Europa picking flowers in the field, and then he turned himself into a cow, or something, and then had like a lot of sex with her,” noted the freshman with almost too much excitement. “My play takes that exact story, but then I put it during the first Thanksgiving, and Zeus turns himself into a pilgrim, or maybe I’ll keep him a cow…I think, I don’t know. I don’t have it all written down yet. All I know is, dude was nasty.”
Professors at DePaul are advocating for a break in the current playwriting curriculum, encouraging students to be inspired by different mythologies, or at least something less gross than Zeus getting nasty as various different animals.