Iphigenia is not one. She is multiple. Central to Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding's opera titled …(Iphigenia) is the layered multiplicity of Iphigenias who are sacrificed/martyred, time and again, for the cause of Grecian nation building. Unlike other stage and filmic renditions of the opera that tell Iphigenia's story once, emphasizing the psychic drama of what it means to give one's blood for the ideological cause of nation building, …(Iphigenia) repeats the story piling up bodies on stage. Dressed in pink, red, white, silver, fur and more (Fig. 4), Iphigenia's body becomes multiple, becomes collective, becomes sisterhood, becomes interspecies.

Speaking by phone to a critic several weeks before the premiere of …(Iphigenia), director Lileana Blain-Cruz announced: ‘esperanza challenges the absurdity of this myth… Men must kill a young woman so they can go to war. Why repeat what does not work? What does it feel like to be a young woman thrust into this absurd story?’ In fact, the Wayne Shorter-esperanza spalding production exaggerates the myth's absurdity, minimizing the pain of Agamemnon and flattening the familial calamity at the heart of Euripides’ play until it becomes a conflict between aggressive men and suffering women. It is easy to judge these toxic male warriors with their Wagnerian helmets and hints of white nationalism. It is also easy for the female members of the audience to identify with Iphigenia, and with the series of Iphigenias whom the warriors put to death. Yet, at our moment, Shorter and spalding's reimagining of a myth about the sacrifice of a virgin to power a fleet invites us to consider our own implication in an urgent calamity, one in which we are both warrior and virgin.

The opera begins with a burst of applause as the conductor enters the pit. He bends, bowing to the audience, then turns, lifts his arms, and the music begins. From here, for the remainder of the performance, we can barely see him (although one of us will turn around in the third act to watch him on the video screens that hang behind us). Or, the opera begins before that with an usher in the audience, asking people what they know of the myth, and warning them that this story will not end well.

The title of Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding's opera—not simply Iphigenia, but rather …(Iphigenia)—invites reflection on its programmatic punctuation: Iphigenia dwells between parentheses, supplemented by an ellipsis.

Helen Morales:

We were blown away by the production of …(Iphigenia) that we saw in Berkeley and have had so many discussions after it since and it's great to be able to talk to you about it, so thank you.

the stage-set for each sacrifice-cycle is disassembled.