The Divorce Scene from Medea's Children

The scene from Medea’s Children that I chose to adapt is the divorce scene. The dramatic conflict that I chose to focus on is Little Jason’s want to understand what’s going on, but not being given any straight answers, if any answers at all. In this scene, Little Jason asks Jason and Medea what divorce is, but they pay no attention to him. He asks Little Medea, who gives him an assortment of situations that she describes as “divorce”, including divorcing one’s spit, running back and forth between a doll and herself, or splitting up space and possessions. This scene is very important to the overall story, because it starts to build the characters’ foundations, as well as sets up Little Jason’s dramatic conflict over the course of the play. Little Jason wants to know what divorce is, but Jason and Medea ignore his attempts to understand, and Little Medea fills his head with nonsense.
The first thing I did to start to demonstrate the parents’ inattentiveness is through the staging and costumes. The nurse and children’s rooms are relatively ordered, and their clothing is clean. This begins to demonstrate, from the very moment that the curtains open, that things on the modern side try to stay ordered and logical. When something falls out of place, it is put back where it belongs. On the contrary, the classical staging is a bit of a mess. It isn’t a mess that appears uninhabited, but rather a mess stemming from a distinct lack of effort. It is clear that people still live in the classical staging, but it is equally clear that the people living there don’t take the time to take care of their things. This trend of neglect continues to their interaction with Little Jason, when they completely ignore his questions on divorce, and don’t tak...

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...e Medea’s misinformation have made Little Jason’s attempts to understand divorce so difficult. On its face, divorce is a simple concept, which is how Little Medea attempts to explain it. The problem is that she oversimplifies it, to the point of ambiguity. At the same time, Jason and Medea’s way of coping with the complexities of divorce is by not even attempting to explain it. Little Jason, in his search for understanding, gets trapped between the lack of information from his parents, and the misinformation from his sister. My adaptation highlights these differences, which lets the audience experience the rest of the play with a new filter. As the play progresses, the clarity of Little Jason’s conflict would allow the audience to see Medea’s Children through the eyes of a confused boy, rather than observing all of the characters and not connecting to a single one.