UC Santa Cruz

Maria - a Telenovela for the Stage is more than an adaptation of Euripides’ Medea. It is multi-media, transtemporal conversation between a variety of literary and cultural works, framed and within a contemporary context. From The Tempest, with stagings that reverse the gender and race of the characters, to the Latin American telenovela, with the genre’s objectification of the female body through media imagery that reproduces ideals of femininity in el mundo latino, Maria challenges the canonical character of Medea and attempts to make her actions / motivations sympathetic to a contemporary audience. This thesis is an extended translator's note to Maria - a telenovela for the stage and a paratextual commentary for our times, examining Medea's various permutations across time, genre, media, and technologies. It is my intention to point out how a story that has endured over 2,800 years of cultural variation continues to speak to our present moment and to ask what it means to digitize and adapt Euripides’ Medea as a Latin American Telenovela for the stage.