A Conversation with Writer/Director Christopher William and Fight Coordinator Jen Albert, "Hellas," The Broadwater Mainstage, by James Scarborough

April 23, 2025

"Hellas" resurrects ancient Greek theatrical traditions with ambition and vision. Christopher William Johnson's production, with fight coordinator Jen Albert's combat sequences, follows the Greek tradition of a single-day performance. This world premiere honors classical roots while testing modern audiences' appetite for immersive storytelling.

Twenty-three performers portray the birth of Western democracy, showing both social change and personal conflicts. "Hellas" stands out through its authentic form—verse, mask, rhythm, dance and combat create an experience beyond typical historical drama.

The production team strongly supports Johnson's direction. Sara Gorsky's lighting, Ryan Beveridge's compositions, and movement work by Jen Albert and Esther Mira complete cohesive storytelling. The physical language must solve a particular challenge: depicting epic battles within the Broadwater Mainstage's limited space.

By using Aeschylus's perspective, "Hellas" shows us theater's birth through its founder's eyes. This self-reference lifts the production from historical reenactment to a study of drama's lasting power.

Below follows an email conversation with Christopher William Johnson and Jen Albert. Both are founders of The School of Night.

JS: How did your initial talks with director Christopher Johnson shape the physical language for "Hellas" and your approach to choreographing combat for this historical narrative?

JA: The division of labor is basically Christopher doing action chorography, for example where people move, when, and how we tell the story. Once that is clear, I work with the logistics of the specific movement in fighting, battles, and how characters safely accomplish those dramatic effects with weapons, hand to hand, or during battle field confrontations – like how people get killed.

JS: With twenty-three performers depicting battles, what technical challenges did you face in staging combat within the Broadwater Mainstage's space?

JA: Traffic control. Definitely a challenge but we specifically picked the Broadwater Mainstage because of its stage layout and sightlines. Last year we used the Hudson Theatre for the Battlesong of Boudica, which had a concrete floor. It was not great for fights and Celtic dancing. During rehearsals, my back was in pain by Sunday nights. We knew that going in, but we loved the space and they had the availability we needed. With the Broadwater, the wooden floor is ideal for fights and dance. Our bodies are much happier. The space is beautiful and large enough for the battles we wanted to create. So, there were no really difficult technical challenges for us. We designed the show for the space.

JS: How does your fight choreography work with Esther Mira's dance to create movement that serves both the story and the production's visual style?

JA: During our last production, Battlesong of Boudica, they were interlaced. In Hellas they are separate but we are pulling from the exact same artistic influences. I’ll hand this one off to Christopher for an answer that is more detailed regarding story and visual style.

CJ: All battles, and the theatrical production, are presented virtually the same way. We pulled from actual historical images that present characters in dance and theatrical poses and used those as a starting point for the kind of physical language that people would use for movement and fights. The dances reflect those same kind of poses, which Esther worked into the individual choreography as well as the group choreography, as in the Aeschylus choral ode. And then for the fight choreography, you see lots of striking exaggerated poses, creating dramatic effect with these positions while coming into and out of moves in a certain way that is reminiscent of that history.

JS: The production uses "verse, mask, rhythm, dance and stage combat" as key elements. How does your combat design honor Greek theatrical traditions while connecting with today's audiences?

CS: What it’s doing is giving contemporary audiences a taste of what ancient theatre is, because ancient theatre is in orders of magnitude more dramatic and interesting than contemporary theatre. In my personal opinion, contemporary theatre sort of shot itself in the head about 150 years ago, by accident. Theatre had been working for millennia toward this idea of doing the most realistic of human life and the human experience, so it finally got there with Stanislavsky, which is anti-theatrical. That style is much better suited to film when trying to achieve this photo realistic “we’re in the room with the people” slice of life thing. In the theatrical medium, the stage wants theatrical techniques, which Stanislavsky isn’t. The medium of the stage wants masks, first language, heightened presentation, spectacle. It wants magic. If you are going to make best use of the theatrical medium, those are the things that you are going to employ. The modern theatre, except for maybe Broadway musicals with extravagant sets, employs almost none of that. Occasionally, you get something like Julie Taymor’s The Lion King and everybody thinks it’s so innovative because they used puppets but that’s an ancient technique. This is why I think that it doesn’t have so much to do with connecting a modern audience to it as it does in showing the modern audience what the theatrical art form really is, because many people have never been exposed to it.

JS: How did you balance spectacular battles with the personal stories throughout the narrative?

CJ: It really wasn’t something that needed a lot of planning because they just come in when it is necessary, when they are needed. It’s telling the story within their actual timeframe in history, the battles are interspaced pretty much as they occurred. If I needed three more battles, there would have been that many more regardless of the personal stories, but because that’s how it would have happened, historically.

JS: How did the single-day performance structure affect your approach to pacing combat sequences across both parts?

JA: We built the show that way, just by telling the entire history. So, the pacing of the combat sequences reflects the historical conflicts within the actual timelines that they occurred in the story. It turned out to be quite effective for dramatic purposes because the audience can clearly see why, through the narrative between sequences, each battle was being fought.

JS: How does your fight choreography help explore the theme of "the strength and fragility of democracy"?

CS: Well, the fight choreography doesn’t so much as what is being explored in the scene work. For example, during the battle of Marathon, the Persians are forming up on the beach going through there regimentation. Across the beach the Greeks are having a giant argument about whether or not they should fight. So, you see that the Persians are like a well-oiled machine that just runs the playbook and the Greeks are practically having a fist fight about whether they should engage or not. Once the Greeks finish their fist fight and decide to partake in battle, then the battle becomes a story about the techniques of combat and forms of organization against one another. The thing about strength and fragility of democracy is “how do we make the decision to go to war, fight the battles and who is really in charge, what are the ramifications of a military system that is Fascist? There’s a general belief that it doesn’t comport with democracy. Can we reconcile those two ideas? Those are huge decisions and considerations that are explored within the scenes. Once we get into the battles, it’s more about ways of fighting and war.

JS: Working on a piece about Western theater's birth, what have you discovered about the historical relationship between combat and storytelling?

CS: The reason that it’s a story about the birth of theater is because Aeschylus, credited to be the first playwright, fought in this war, actively participating in the military during the Greco-Persian Wars. He fought in the battle of Salamis, the Battle of Marathon, and the Battle of Plataea depicted in this play. The politically important Athenians were actually the theatrical producers of that time, because producing theater was considered to be a civic thing to do, just like in Ancient Rome, where the higher ups in politics and the wealthy people produced theater, to express their political views or to wield influence. It was a no brainer to place Aeschylus as a character because if you’re going to tell the story in the theatrical medium, it absolutely follows that he should be in the throughline because he was there for all of the events. What I have done is to keep him in the action with everybody else, and with another principal character who is his theatrical producer. During the course of the war, he becomes inspired to take the craft of theater further, and to go from just a choral system to a system where chorus backs up a “bunch of individuals,” a type of character system. His first play “The Persians” was about this war but people didn’t write about contemporary drama then, they wrote about the Trojan War, the Gods, and the Myths, about the Bronze age that happened centuries before. They pulled from Homer. In this case, it’s about how Aeschylus cooked up the first contemporary play. We have included the historical relationship of the combat within the storytelling.

JS: The production explores "flawed but resilient humanity" through "vendetta and great battles." How does your choreography reveal the emotional aspects of conflict beyond physical spectacle?

JA: All good choreography furthers the story, whether it be dance or fight choreography. There’s always two characters or groups opposing one another and they have traits as characters or groups that the audience can get to know. You are always telling a story through good or bad decisions made, the battles that are won or lost, and the resilience of civilizations in the aftermath of it all.

JS: What do you hope audiences will take from these ancient stories of democracy's emergence through the physical language you've created?

C: First of all, aesthetically I hope audiences see how ancient theatre techniques are more suited to the stage, more visually interesting, more entertaining, and better able to convey more information. Since the characters are masked and performing in a non-realistic style, they actually convey more details about motivation, feeling, and conflict. Next, I would hope that the audience enjoys this experience of the time travel in that we recreated an era where they not only are watching the style of an ancient production but that they are also seeing the historical wars with the Persians depicted accurately. You can see how democracy, though it is a flawed system, came about to solve a very immediate problem, and that because it is such a dynamic, flexible system, it has these inherent advantages that allow it to triumph. During the entire play, it seems like democratic Athens is going to fall and lose because the super violent Fascist Spartans are more powerful and capable, and the rigidly organized monarchal Persians know what they’re doing, but unfortunately their whole system is rooted in familial dysfunction, and when the person on the thrown has personal issues, it trickles down through the entire mechanism of the state. So, even though the Greeks are fighting within, arguing with each other, and are motivated by what each of them want instead of the good of the group, it’s a more successful system. So, the take away is that a flawed democracy is inherently better because of its flexibility. Fascism and monarchies are capably better, being run more rigidly and more organized, but that makes them inherently flawed. As Shakespeare found when he explored - people making individual decisions out of their damage and past trauma, their current pain and desires, those individual decisions ultimately add up to how history is shaped.

"Hellas" runs with the complete saga at 2pm (with 3 intermissions) on Saturdays and Sundays through May 11, 2025. Friday evening performances at 7:30pm offer Part I on April 25 and May 2, while Part II runs on Friday, May 9. If viewers wish to see Part I on a Friday at 7:30pm and Part II during the complete saga performance they should arrive by 4:15pm on a Saturday or Sunday. The Broadwater Mainstage is at 1076 Lillian Way, Los Angeles, CA 90038. Tickets cost $25-$30 with $5 off for students with ID and group discounts available. For reservations, click here.