In Girl on an Altar, Marina Carr takes an ancient story we think we know and asks us to consider it again. She takes the old myth of a king sacrificing his daughter for favorable winds and military glory, and strips away the distance of legend until it feels immediate and recognizable. Suddenly this is not a story about ancient Greece. It is a story about us.
Carr refuses to let this story remain archetypal or symbolic. She drags it out of lore and into the body. What emerges is not simply a retelling of the myth of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, but an excavation of marriage, memory, desire, and rage. Suddenly these mythic people are not statues or names from textbooks, but breathing souls who stagger under the unbearable weight of grief and love.
The play is muscular and lyrical at once. The language moves like poetry, but underneath it is something raw and dangerous. Carr’s characters do not speak in neat arguments or tidy narratives. They messily circle pain. They relive it. They weaponize it. They try and fail to escape it. The result is a world where love, grief, and violence exist side by side, inseparable from one another.
In directing this production, I have been less interested in presenting Greek tragedy as something distant or formal, and more curious about the private lives trapped inside epic events. What astonishes me most about this play is how intimate it is. For all its grand themes, war and sacrifice and vengeance and destiny, it is ultimately about people trying to speak the unspeakable, people trying to forgive, people trying to survive the wounds inflicted upon them by those they trusted most. The battlefield of this play is as much emotional as political.
And isn’t that the way of it always? The great brutal machinery of history grinding away while ordinary hearts crack quietly in kitchens and hallways and bedrooms. We speak of wars in numbers and dates and victories, but every war ultimately lands in a family and echoes within it for generations.
Carr knows this. She knows the old stories are not old at all. She knows this story is not a “fragment from some barbaric age.” She knows that people are still sacrificed every day on the altars of noble causes dressed up as necessity. Women and children and impoverished people are handed over to greed, to pride, to politics, and to the ceaseless hunger for power. This production invites us to consider the cycles we ourselves inherit and forces us to ask what kind of society demands these kinds of sacrifice in the first place.
It has been a privilege to explore this extraordinary work with this company of artists. Thank you for joining us in the theatre. A place where strangers sitting shoulder to shoulder can listen to some of the oldest stories we know because maybe, just maybe, those stories can still help us reckon with our legacy. Or help us forgive. Or help us mourn. Or help us confront what it means to be human in our own moment of humanity.
-Anderson Carr, Director

About the Cast:

Keelie Sheridan (Clytemnestra)

Keelie is an award-winning actor, director, choreographer, filmmaker and the Artistic Director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company. She has performed primarily in world premieres of new plays and devised physical theatre and dance pieces at venues including NYC’s The Public Theatre, 3LD, JACK NY, Teatro Circulo, Classic Stage Company and South Oxford Space.  Keelie’s debut feature film, planet b234, received international acclaim and is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. Recently, she directed Crocodile Fever at ICTC. MFA Acting- Brooklyn College. MFA Directing- Trinity College Dublin/ RADA’s The Lir Academy (US Ireland Alliance George J. Mitchell Scholar). AEA & SDC. KeelieSheridan.com

Jorge Luna (Agamemnon)

Jorge Luna is an actor, director, photographer, filmmaker, and writer born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Directing- A Maze by Rob Handel (Siena College); FLORIDITA, my Love by Javier Antonio González (Union College); papa y yoyo (Phoenix Shorts- WINNER- Best Dance Clip); On The High Road by Anton Chekhov (Universidad de Puerto Rico). Performance- Off-Broadway/NYC Theatre- Breaking The Story (2nd Stage); Deathwatch (Drama League/ New Ohio); FLORIDITA, my Love (IATI/ Caborca); Hamlet (Jersey City Theater Center/ Caborca); by wing, fin, hoof or foot (The Ume Group); Cymbeline (Chashama). Regional- BUST (Goodman/ Alliance- world premiere); Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors (Irish Classical Theatre Company); Baipás (George Street Playhouse- English language world premiere); Constellations (George Lindsey Theatre); SHINKA (Ren Gyo Soh/ Capital Fringe). Film- The Week Of (Netflix); planet b234 (Vail); All the Beautiful Things (Sundance); Break Glass (NYCF); Untitled Fish (UNFIX NYC Film Festival). TV- Zero Day (Netflix); Law & Order; Law & Order: SVU; Elementary; The Blacklist. Training- Universidad de Puerto Rico- BA Theatre; RADA- Shakespeare; Brooklyn College- MFA, Acting. Luna is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Center of the Capital Region (NYS) @jorgelunadj

Tabitha Raithel (Cassandra)

Tabitha Raithel is so excited to make her ICTC debut in Marina Carr’s Girl on an Altar. Growing up in Buffalo, NY, she left in 2020 to complete her undergraduate degree in Marketing at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH), and currently resides there as a proud member of the CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program (Class of 2028). Most recently, she has been seen onstage as Morkan in the CWRU/CPH MFA production of Epiphany. Other regional credits include #25 in The Wolves and Emmy in A Doll’s House Part 2. Locally, she was a part of the 2025 SDP touring production of Romeo and Juliet as Juliet and Benvolio. She is so incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to pursue acting and have so much support from her friends and family. She’d also like to thank ICTC for this experience and sends her love and hugs to everybody involved in this production. She hopes you enjoy the show, and Go Bills!

Darryl Semira (Aegisthus)

Darryl is thrilled to be returning to ICTC after last appearing here as Victor in Noël Coward’s Private Lives. A professional actor since 1998, Darryl’s Broadway credits include: Mamma Mia! (2001 production), Monty Python’s Spamalot (first national tour, Mike Nichols director), & Bombay Dreams (original Broadway cast). He has appeared on TV and at regional theatres nationwide. Select regional credits include Rent at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; the For the Record series in Los Angeles; Love’s Labour’s Lost (Berowne) and As You Like It (Orlando) at Shakespeare in Delaware Park; Guards at the Taj (Babur) at Road Less Traveled Productions; Next to Normal (Dan) and Camelot (King Arthur – voted Best Male Actor by Buffalo Spree magazine’s Best of WNY 2022) at MusicalFare; Equivocation at the Kavinoky; White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Alleyway; Trinity Rep, Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse. Darryl has also worked with eminent theatre director Anne Bogart and SITI Company, training in Viewpoints / Suzuki Method of Acting while directing and acting in developmental stages of The Three Sisters.

Paige Batt (Cilissa)

Paige Batt is over the moon to be making her ICTC debut with this powerhouse cast and creative team. Having discovered her love for performance at an early age, she made her official foray into theatre more than a decade ago. Favorite roles include Emily (I F*cked You in My Spaceship), Mary Debenham (Murder on the Orient Express), Suzanne (Dearly Departed), Vera Claythorne (And Then There Were None), Ronnette (Little Shop of Horrors), and Fairy May (The Curious Savage). Paige is eternally grateful to her friends and family for their unwavering support. Love always to her husband Adam and daughter Nora.

David Marciniak (Tyndareus)

David Marciniak is a Buffalo actor and has appeared on stages across the region. Recent credits include The Book of Will (Henry Condell), Witch (Sir Arthur – ARTIE Nomination), Mysterious Circumstances (Dr. Watson et al), and Tribes (Christopher – ARTIE Nomination), all at Road Less Traveled Productions, where David is a member of the ensemble. David has been in several Shakespeare in Delaware Park productions, most recently The Tempest (Prospero), Much Ado About Nothing (Leonato), and King Lear (Kent). He’s been in productions at Desiderio’s Dinner Theater, Jewish Repertory Theatre, and Shea’s 710 among others. David performs as Santa Claus at events across the region and is represented by Pickering-Hummert Casting. He is finishing a four-year run as Co-President of the Association of Regional Theatre Artists (ARTA), the trade guild for theatre artists across WNY.