Athene

About the Project

Athene by Michael Fenlason
Athene is loud, bitter, and hilarious.. She’s an unstoppable force of nature. She also happens to be uncomfortably famous and watched by the paparazzi. Arrested for drugs and public indecency, she is ordered to attend psychiatric sessions with Dr. Elliot Anderson. Michael Fenlason’s play charts Athene’s progress through her sessions with Elliot. Through medications and analysis,wWill she get better? Should she?

First developed by Arizona Theatre Company under the direction of Walter Schoen, the play was next performed at The Unlikely Theater Company and eventually had a showcase run at New York’s Raw Space A comic meditation on fame, personality, and the nature of what it is to be human, Athene attacks everything and everyone including herself:

On herself
My father said I should be a role model for young women around the world. Yeah, kids, if you grow up rich, entitled, and with more opportunities than most people ever born on the planet Earth, you should be better behaved.

On her father and family:
You never had children, you stupid, insidious asshole, you had employees! Can you understand how difficult it is for me to look at mom knowing she’s a trophy wife and not even a first place trophy? Can you understand how difficult it is to watch you whine about a capital gains tax when you took home forty-eight million last year? You buy and sell people every day. Throw my ass up to Sotheby’s. See what you can get for it. I don’t match the curtains and the rug. There are daughters for sale all over the five boroughs. You can get one to kiss your ass. I’d try the Gagosian.

On her doctor
What do you find attractive in a woman? Breasts? Legs? Liberal pretensions? I healthy concern for the Yankees chances? What? A Brandeis University flutist with double joints and bowed legs? Do psychiatrist’s analyze their own erections? Hmm, she does look like Mom a little. Do you ever do anything impulsive? Chrsit, Elliot, even our phones have a personality.

On therapy:
You realize when I don’t come here I’m rocked. You say cigarettes, crack cocaine, heroin, it’s all bad for me. But if I miss a day here and don’t get my “medicine” I’m rocked. I’m lost. I’m ashamed. You see a difference/? I don’t. Who gets to pick the good drugs? Glaxo Smith Kline?

 On dying:
Oh f**k, no. I don’t want to do anything that would make me more famous.

Funny, frightening, and honest, Athene is the new millennial woman: unafraid, unadorned, and uncompromising. Though honestly, she would probably hit you if you called her a “millennial.”