Q&A with Sara Farrington about A Trojan Woman

This December, King’s Head Theatre presents A Trojan Woman, a modern adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women. Written by Sara Farrington and directed by Meghan Finn, this one-hour, one-woman production reimagines the original anti-war protest play for contemporary audiences. Performed by Albanian actor Drita Kabashi, the story is anchored by a mother’s grief in the wake of modern warfare, propelling her into a visceral retelling of the ancient tale.

Mixing biting satire with raw emotion, the play explores the enduring cost of war, particularly on women and children. With Farrington’s sharp, unacademic style and Kabashi’s extraordinary physical performance, this adaptation brings timeless themes into sharp focus for today’s audience. We spoke to Sara about the production:

A Trojan Woman brings a modern lens to an ancient Greek classic. What inspired you to adapt The Trojan Women for today’s audiences?

In late summer 2022, director Meghan Finn brought her two boys (who are the exact same ages as my two boys) over to my house to hang out and said my favourite sentence ever: “I need you to adapt any Greek play you want for a theatre festival in Athens.” I had a true Pavlovian response. As a playwright, I live for the ancient Greeks—they invented theatre, playwriting, actors, bringing more than one actor on stage (revolutionary at the time; Thespis was annoyed), dramatic structure, sets, literally everything. But because I’m a bit mad, I chose the one Greek play I’ve always struggled with: Euripides’ The Trojan Women. I’d read it, seen it, was even in it once. I didn’t get it. To me, it felt like hours of women lamenting to uncaring gods and strangely very little happened onstage. But I knew I was wrong—it had to be me, not Euripides, obviously.

So I spent the rest of that year and into summer 2023 challenging myself with every translation and then ran the story and characters through my personal tragicomic processor. Once I excised the ancient Greek references I couldn’t relate to and de-museum-ified the tone and language I always found so off-putting, once I made it sound and feel like me, a contemporary powerless mum witnessing horrors in this world the human mind is not programmed to witness—I got it. Of course, it’s a lament to uncaring gods! Of course, nothing happens! That’s Euripides’ whole point! In one unexpected theatrical gut-punch, he sums up war: it’s pointless, no one cares, nothing happens, no one wins, and the civilian poor, women and children suffer the most.

Do audiences need to be familiar with Greek tragedy to understand the play? For those not familiar, can you tell us a bit more about what it’s about?

Not at all! A personal artistic mission of mine is breaking down the classics for a modern audience. I’m in no way a scholar or an academic; I just love the Greeks and the classics so much—I feel them so strongly. And the cool thing is that the basic story of A Trojan Woman is one most people actually do already know—the story of the Trojan Horse. Basically, the Greeks were in a war with the city of Troy (modern-day Turkey), and it looked like the Trojans might actually win. So in the middle of the night, the Greeks delivered a giant wooden horse to the gates of Troy as a gift. Grateful, the Trojans wheeled it in, thrilled the war was finally over. And, as we know, that gift horse was filled with Greek soldiers who ambushed everyone, murdering and enslaving every Trojan citizen. A Trojan Woman is the reckoning from that horse.

But again, even if you don’t know that bit, I dig into it inside the play too. You shouldn’t have to know anything going into any play—again, elitist. That’s the playwright’s job.

Euripides’ original play was a protest against war in 415 BC. Why do you think its themes remain relevant centuries later?

Because for some reason, en masse, human beings often slide into the same behaviour over and over again. We seem to instinctively slip into this tribalist mode—me versus them. And this is how not only wars start but also social unrest, income inequality, loss of civil rights, violence, everything bad. And as long as we are divided into tribes and the tribes are in-fighting, the rich and powerful can keep control of us.

In the US, where I live, it’s always been this way, although as an American, it feels so painfully acute right now because of our election on November 5th. We were so eager, so convinced by the rich to turn against each other, that we developed a wilful amnesia and elected Trump again. We fell for it. Again. But this has all happened before—same playbook, same outcomes. And it’s all in the classics, especially my A Trojan Woman, which is why seeing, reading, and internalising the classics is so important to evolving us. So that’s the major reason why A Trojan Woman is so relevant now. And although the play doesn’t end well, I think we could, if we tried.

You’ve described your adaptation as “wholly unacademic” and accessible to all audiences. How did you ensure the story feels both timeless and contemporary?

Definitely unacademic, delightfully unscholarly. I identify as an artist first and foremost and instinctively feel everything out, rather than think it out or make sure it’s accurate. If I’m going to interpret something as heavy as Euripides, it has to be in the contemporary vernacular, not in dusty, reverent-sounding language and pace—again, elitist, in my opinion. Euripides wrote for his audience’s ears and brains, as did Shakespeare, Molière, Chekhov and as should we, at least if we want to send a powerful message home.

So for example, the classic Greek Messenger is a customer service rep, which tracks with Euripides’ view of messengers, I think. Poseidon is a casually depressed surfer dude/sea god lamenting the loss of Troy, his favourite resort town (which again, I am interpreting through Euripides’ creation of him as a fickle being). The Chorus have a sort of naïve Hollywood starlet vibe, and so on.

But the one big contemporary device is that my version of the play is framed by an act of modern warfare (which could be any war happening around the world today) where a mother may or may not have lost her child. In that moment, that flash of violence, time is compressed, and she performs The Trojan Women. Once she gets through the entire play, she recognises what’s happened in real-time. So there’s a modern magic in that structuring, too. And also, it’s an hour long (my favourite play length). Most importantly, you’ll want to experience performer Drita Kabashi. She doesn’t just play every role—she is possessed. She surfs them effortlessly and with an astonishing realness. It’s both an out-of-body experience for her and the audience.

War and its impact on women and children are central to A Trojan Woman. How did you balance the play’s grief and rage with moments of humour?

There has to be humour, or else I’m just clobbering people over the head with my message of sadness, and no one likes that and picks up what I’m putting down pretty quickly. Not fair to a captive audience. When I was a much younger artist, I worked at The Wooster Group, an iconic experimental theatre company here in New York, and I learned something that has stuck with me for twenty years: It must be funny, and it must be moving. “Funny” first, “moving” trailing right there behind it.

In A Trojan Woman, the characterisations are often funny, yes, but I think the real humour comes in the shifts from one moment to another. There is no ceremony or gravitas between moments, something Drita nails really well. So emotional residue from one character’s big moment doesn’t drag into the next—it can’t; only one person is doing it. There is something really funny (and true-to-life) about this.

What do you hope audiences will take away from the experience?

Meghan and I have toured this show around the east coast of the US for about a year now. We’ve performed it for progressive, theatre-going communities but also even right-wing, conservative audiences. The result, astonishingly, is always the same. People seem to temporarily forget the cesspool of politics that tend to brainwash Americans and react to this ancient clarion call from 2,400 years ago. There is this humanistic response across the board—a feeling of compassion and a collective revelation like, oh, right, we shouldn’t be arseholes to each other. I hope that’s also the response in London. I am so honoured to be performing in your beautiful, iconic city and thank you in advance for the welcome.

A Trojan Woman at the King’s Head Theatre from 3–9 December  kingsheadtheatre.com