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Directing Thesis: "Phaedra's Love"


  • Flexible Performance Space (map)
woman and man standing in red room

by Sarah Kane
directed by Danica Selem

Columbia University School of the Arts presented Phaedra’s Love, a directing thesis production by current student Danica Selem.

Experience the haunting intensity of Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love, a gripping theatrical masterpiece that flips inside out the very abject nature of the most elemental epitome of human relations – a family. In Kane’s blunt and vulgar adaptation of Seneca’s Phaedra, a seemingly joyous birthday celebration descends into a harrowing tale of passion, delusion, domination, and the tangled webs of human brutality.

Showtimes

Thursday, February 22 @ 8pm
Friday, February 23 @ 8pm
Saturday, February 24 @ 2pm
Saturday, February 24 @ 8pm
Sunday, February 25 @ 2pm

Run Time

75 minutes, no intermission

Content Warning

Graphic and strong language, sexual acts, portrayal of sexual violence (including rape), use of stage blood, violence, portrayed death, and usage of strobing lights and flashing lights.

Featuring

Ben Milliken – HIPPOLYTUS
Ino Badanjak – PHAEDRA
Charlotte Peartree Moon – STROPHE
Sean Hoagland – THESEUS / DOCTOR / PRIEST

Production Team & Crew

Director Danica Selem (current student)
Assistant Director Emma Denson
Line Producer Ruby Wang (current student)
Production Stage Manager Hannah Yankowitz (current student)
Assistant Stage Manager Emily Wasenda (current student)
Dramaturg Siting Yang ‘22
Scenic Designer Kate Chen
Sound Designer Liam Bellman-Sharpe
Lighting Designer Shane Hennessy
Costume Designer Nuzzi Li
Props Designer Jacqueline Brockel
Company Manager Jared Harbour (current student)
Video Designer Vivienne Shaw ‘23
Graphic Designer Bernardo Garcia Valencia
Intimacy and Fight Director Jacqueline A. Holloway

About the Director

Danica Selem is a theater director and filmmaker with a background in architecture, education and performance. Born in Split, Croatia, Danica is the founder of Bodies Intersect Buildings, a working group exploring the intersection of architecture, performance art, and ecology. Danica spent three years as a Visiting Professor at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture. Her teaching and self-designed seminars, including Body, Space and the In Between and Spatial Choreography, emphasized the social and political dimensions of spatial design and the interplay of architecture with theater. Her work has been supported by Cornell University, LMCC, and Columbia University, and has been showcased at venues such as Pioneer Works, IPADÉ - A Prelude to the Shed, AIA, Dixon Place, and Theater at the 14 Y.

Danica holds a BA in Architecture and Urban design from the University of Zagreb, an MA in Architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and she is nearing the completion of her MFA in Theater Directing at Columbia University.

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February 22

“If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis”

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February 23

Legacies: Pema Tseden & New Tibetan Cinema – “Balloon”