Current Season (2025-2026)

The Trojan Women
by Euripides, translated by Paul Roche
Directed by Tea Alagić
October 16-18, 2025

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The Trojan Women – Director’s Statement

The core of The Trojan Women revolves around the devastating aftermath of war: the fall of
Troy. As the women of Troy are captured by the Greeks, they grapple with loss, exile, and
uncertain futures. Our production at Barnard will be set in a modern-day, juvenile detention or
refugee center. We will draw a direct line between ancient suffering and the current refugee
crisis, particularly among young people.

The women of Troy are not only losing their homes but their autonomy, identities, and futures.
In modern refugee crises, young people often experience similar displacements—losing not
only their homes but also their families, communities, and safety. A refugee camp or juvenile
detention facility serves as a modern-day version of this liminal space where these young
individuals have no control over their fate. The allegory is powerful: both the Trojans and
modern refugees are victimized by forces far beyond their control (war, geopolitical conflict,
systemic violence).

In The Trojan Women, the majority of the characters are women, and their grief is both
individual and collective. This is echoed in the experiences of young women refugees or
detainees, who often bear the brunt of sexual violence, loss of family, and trauma. This context
will allow us to explore the gendered dimensions of grief, as well as the solidarity that can
emerge among women facing similar fates. Contemporary refugee narratives often emphasize
the resilience of women, and this theme can be drawn out in the chorus, where each member
represents the grief of an individual while collectively embodying the suffering of all displaced
people.

Wolf Play
by Hansol Jung
Directed by Gisela Cardenas
November 20-22, 2025
 

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Wolf Play Director's Statement

Jeenu, a young Korean boy initially adopted by a couple and then re-homed online to a new family, is wild, untamed, and determined to survive in a world that uses and discards him like an object. He brings chaos into his new home, but also a “rewirement” of the idea of belonging and the meaning of finding your pack.

We often like to believe that family is the last refuge of intimacy, a place where a child is protected from the brutal logic of the market. However, Wolf Play confronts us with the obscenity of this belief. At the beginning of the play, the child is literally treated as a commodity on the Internet, as if Amazon now offered next-day delivery of human souls. The boy, imagining himself as a wolf, acts out the animality that our polite symbolic order tries to tame. He breaks through –claws and all— to shatter his new family’s ideals, who are themselves attempting to rewire traditional notions of family and identity.

Wolf Play invites us to examine accepted ways of understanding identity, family, masculinity, and community. In this play, those who question heteronormative and patriarchal lenses carry the stigma of being othered –seen as wild creatures who must fight, whether in a real boxing ring or at court, to have the right to find their pack in this world.

This play explores the animal side within all of us. On one side, the fiery nature of those who refuse to be tamed and strive to create a more open world; on the other, the darker instincts of self-centered individuals who exploit more vulnerable subjects, treating them as objects, and stripping our world of its soul.

I once heard the phrase that a parent does not own a child but only guards the child’s soul. Wolf Play extends this idea beyond genetics and into adoptive parenthood. Robin and Ash –the nonbinary couple fighting their way into a binary world— become Jeenu’s soul-guardians: three wolves, one pack.

-- Gisela Cardenas, Director

Fefu and Her Friends
by María Irene Fornés
Directed by Alice Reagan
March 5-7, 2026