LILY JANIAK’S THEATER PICK

Talk to Bay Area artistic directors, and one recurring theme you’ll encounter is the importance of putting the classics in conversation with new plays and of finding new ways to frame that conversation. But that dialogue needn’t be limited to the upper echelons of regional theater. With San Francisco State University’s “Medea” and “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” one of our most fecund local university theater departments has devised an invigorating juxtaposition of the canonical and the contemporary.

Rhonnie Washington directs a music-driven production of Euripides’ Greek tragedy, about a woman who avenges her husband’s philandering. Playing in repertory is a 21st century update, “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” written by Luis Alfaro, and first performed at San Francisco’s own Magic Theatre under the title “Bruja.”

In “Mojada,” Alfaro fashions gorgeous images that make his immigrant characters into timeless myths. “I feel like a bird who has lost her feathers,” says one. “I am eating his heart and he knows it,” says another.

“Medea”: 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Dec. 7-8, and Dec. 13.

“Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles”: 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8; 7 p.m. Dec. 12 and 14.

$15. Little Theatre, San Francisco State University Creative Arts Building, 1600 Holloway Ave., S.F. 415-338-1341. http://theatredance.sfsu.edu

Sreang Hok / San Francisco State University Gabrielle Trejo (left) and Weslei Thomas in “Medea” and “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles.”