Los Angeles, California Oct 22, 2026 (Issuewire.com) - Jessie Holder Tourtellotte’s new stage adaptation of The Trojan Women is set for official release on Nov. 8. The script revisits Euripides’ ancient tragedy through an expanded cast and driving plot, while retaining and honoring the poetic text and the conventions of Greek tragedy. New choral chant, original music, movement storytelling opportunities and extended dialogue scenes draw in audiences and create a powerful theatrical experience. The play’s world premiere in 2025 won Best Play at the Cappies of the National Capital Area.
Set on the beach outside fallen Troy, the narrative follows surviving royal women as Greek soldiers patrol their prison encampment. Queen Hecuba, the prophetess Cassandra, Helen of Sparta or of Troy, and the widowed princess Andromache await their fates alongside the myriad huddled women of the decimated city.
Holder Tourtellotte’s development process utilized text from Gilbert Murray’s rhyming verse translation, expanding classical references into full onstage confrontations between the captives and Greek leaders Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus. The script adds focus to the moral burden placed on lower-ranking soldiers who execute wartime commands, showing how personal choices accelerate destruction. Production notes call on artists to use specific visual elements to connect the ancient tales with modern-day warfare across the centuries. Drawing on documentation from Amnesty International regarding violence against non-combatants, and specifically women in conflict zones, the adaptation uses the deeply personal losses of individual characters to expose painful universal truths about war, patriarchy, sexual violence and the cycle of violence itself.
“This play is an expansion of Euripides’ episodes into a cohesive story that demands of its audience and its characters that they do more after the lights dim than bear witness to suffering,” Holder Tourtellotte said.
In addition to the expanded cast of characters, this version of the story enlarges the role of Talthybius, taking its cues from the ways that Euripides’ original already altered the messenger trope in the text. “When Euripides placed empathy for the women of fallen Troy in the heart and words of a footsoldier messenger, he opened the door to expand upon what he created,” said Holder Tourtellotte. This version deepens its focus on the impending tragedy awaiting Andromache and the change that witnessing her experience causes in the soldier tasked with taking her infant from her arms in one central, devastating sequence.
The performance soundscape invites creativity, combining vocal chants, backstage wind instruments and foley percussion with offstage sounds of gunfire, bombs and ocean waves. Production notes specify flexible ensemble casting and offer the ability to expand the ensemble or use double casting to create a leaner company. The sacking of Troy itself plays out in movement, the generals argue for their atrocities, and forces of immense power face off in expanded scenes between Hecuba and Helen, and Agamemnon and Odysseus.
“This is a play that begs to be heard aloud, on the biggest stage possible. Broadway works. So does a bombed-out amphitheatre in the middle of a war zone. The Trojan Women is a symphony made for the gods, which is to say that it is a play for us, today,” wrote Nicole Starrett of Jubilee Productions in her review for the script, featured on its back cover.
The script received its world premiere at Lake Braddock Theatre under director John Tourtellotte, starring Murphy Finnegan as Andromache, Nathaniel Howard as Talthybius and Sofia Terpak as Hecuba. That staging earned 16 nominations and six awards at the Cappies of the National Capital Area, including Best Play and individual honors for acting, costume design and special effects. Subsequent productions include stagings at the Bay School Theatre of San Francisco last year and the VCU Arts Shafer Alliance Laboratory Theatre this month.
PUBLICATION & FACT SHEET
- Title: The Trojan Women (A Tragedy Adapted from Euripides)
- Playwright: Jessie Holder Tourtellotte
- Pre-Order Date: Oct. 8, 2026
- Official Release Date: Nov. 8, 2026
- Content Advisories: Depictions of war and its aftermath, including violence, violence against women and children, child loss, sexual violence, grief and captivity.
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