Medea/Media: a glitchy counterfactual.

This article analyzes James Ijames's 2023 play *Media/Medea*, a reimagining of Euripides' *Medea* that premiered at Bryn Mawr College and the Community College of Philadelphia. Ijames situates Medea within a contemporary Black family engaged in social media culture, notably subverting the traditional narrative by denying the iconic infanticide, which serves as a "glitchy counterfactual" disrupting expectations and exploring themes of queer authenticity, acting, and mothering. The play employs digital and theatrical metaphors to interrogate identity, survival, and deindividuation in an anti-Black world, using the concept of the glitch to challenge normative narratives and capitalist repetition. Ultimately, *Media/Medea* offers a complex reflection on Blackness, grief, and relationality, emphasizing the ethical and affective possibilities opened by refusing the scripted violence central to Medea's myth.