Sellars and USC to do Euripides

Though nominally based in Los Angeles, Peter Sellars rarely manages to get his work seen locally these days. Los Angeles Opera considered the gripping production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” he did at England’s Glyndebourne festival for next season’s opener, but the company was discouraged by its Wagnerian length. Unlike most productions of the opera, Sellars’ includes the half-hour concluding ballet.

But now USC has decided to present next fall the political project currently closest to Sellars’ heart. Working together, a number of schools at the university will present his elaborately contextualized version of an obscure Euripides play, “The Children of Herakles,” at the Bing Theater, Oct. 12-15.

In the play, Herakles is turned away from the gates of Athens because even the fabled first democracy won’t let in refugees during a time of war. For Sellars, he serves as a powerful symbol of the international crisis of refugeeism 2,500 years later. Plans call for each performance, consequently, to begin with a public policy symposium on refugees, immigrants, exiles and/or the homeless, led by an eminent journalist who will then become the Chorus in the play. The journalist will also interview refugees with whom Sellars and his troupe will have worked for several months in advance. After each performance, Sellars will screen a different film, such as “A Time for Drunken Horses,” which is about Kurdish refugees.

Sellars created this play/symposium/film festival/social work event for the RuhrTriennial in Germany two summers ago. It has toured Europe widely and was presented last season at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. The USC production, Sellars says, will be its last.

-- Mark Swed