My film Lucretia follows the ledgend as told by Ovid and Livy. It is in two parts: The rape and the aftermath.
Tarquin, son of the Roman king, hears Collatinus proclaim the incomparable chastity of his wife, Lucretia. Later seeing the woman in the presence of Collatinus, Tarquin is smitten with her beauty, but for the time being hides his passions. While staying in Collatium at Lucretia residence, however, Tarquin creeps into her bedroom and rapes her, ignoring her desperate appeals for mercy. After Tarquin has fled, Lucretia sends a messenger to find her husband and her father, who arrive with Brutus, the Republican leader. Lucretia tells the men what has happend to her and makes them swear revenge on her attacker, then stabs and kills herself. Witnessing this, the men vow to exile the Tarquin family from Rome, and in so doing overthrow the monarchy and institute a government of consuls.
Part one: The rape scene:
I chose Lucretia because of its strong connections to gender, voice and power. I wanted to understand Lucretia’s choice in the context of the familial structure of Roman society, the huge burden of cultural obligation to protect her family, especially her children from the shame of the assult. The rape was not only a personal assult to her but also a pressure to maintain the status of the family name on which Roman culture and society was based.
I use puppets and live action to tell this part of her story. I chose black and white to give some weight to the imagery. A mix of raw sounds and Italian opera to suit.


Part two: The aftermath.
I am also interested in the view that the legacy of Lucretia’s death represented a radical change in Italian perception at the time, a shift occurred in the power structure from an outdated chivalric monarchy, represented by the deposed Tarquins, to the political exchange of the new consular government formed by Brutus. Ovid slautes Lucretia as the ‘matron of manly courage’ that by her death she acts as speaking emblem of republican viture.
For this part I wanted to show the radical move from Roman times to the present day so I used colourful animation cutouts and images of contemporary Italian culture to get a feel for Italian contemporary life today. The music is lively and is from live buskers on the side of the Itilian streets.
Lucretia does have critics some say suicide and vengeful acts are not proper behavour, rather silence and submissivness were more the order of the day and seen as edivence of chastity, the keystone of female honour.
Joyce Green MacDonald sees Lucretia in terms of Helen of Troy in her powerful sexual desirability that actually invite men to transgress in order to posess her, as Mieka Bal suggests the “victim is responsible for her own destrucrion”.
I invite the viewer to make of it what they will, to make up their own mind and see what they see.

Directed and edited by Trisha McCrae.
Puppet direction by The Puppeteers.
Performance artist Patricia Ramshaw
Sound by Trisha McCrae and Adam Bohman.
2011
Length 9min 55sec