Livia: A Roman Tragedy

In Livia: A Roman Tragedy, the late Roman Empire teeters on the brink of collapse under the rule of a corrupt, narcissistic madman. As chaos consumes the nation, Livia longs for her lover, who departed Rome to lead an armed rebellion against the incompetent, debauched emperor. Isolated in her opposition to the demented dictator, who exiles and executes anyone who voices dissent, Livia asks how the once-noble republic succumbed to the tyrant’s hand and resolves to discover what one woman can do to save her crumbling society. While rooted in ancient history, Livia: A Roman Tragedy is an urgent message for today. The play creates a rich intertextual dialogue, integrating passages and themes from classic Roman dramas including Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, as well as works by Corneille, Ibsen, and Dürrenmatt, alongside the philosophical and sociological perspectives of Seneca, Cicero, Epictetus, and Norbert Elias. “America appears to me as fragile as ancient Rome,” says playwright Paul David Young who was inspired to write Livia: A Roman Tragedy following a trip to Rome in 2022. “In my play, Rome is both a real and an imaginary place, the repository of our concerns about civilization and the polity. In their fight for political rights and construction of a new nation, America’s founders idealized Rome and looked to it for models and lessons. Rome’s history also encompasses the struggle between violent Christianity and civil pagan society. The themes of my play are urgent. I look to the lessons of Rome to save us from ourselves.”