A new performance of stories from Ovid’s famous poem.
A new translation, written and performed by Richard Spaul.
Tales of miraculous change and transformation, by turns charming and terrifying, and astonishingly modern. Transgressive sexualities, ghosts, incest, tragedy and the Occult all feature in an evening of fascinating storytelling.
From Shakespeare to Titian to Ted Hughes, Ovid’s extraordinary stories have influenced artists through the ages.
He wrote them at a time of social and psychological turbulence on the threshold of Roman and Christian eras, when new cults, philosophies and religions were changing old ways of thinking and disrupting the old order.
Perversity and violence were ever present.
This is the background to Ovid’s weird tales of supernatural transformation. People overwhelmed with emotion – grief, lust, anger – become animals, flowers, birds and stones. Intense and memorable poetry, unlike anything else.
Ovid is a poet of Postmodernity – a poet for our troubled times of shifting insecure identities and uncertain futures.
Richard Spaul’s hard-hitting and experimental new translation and his extraordinary powers of vocal shapeshifting bring out the compelling modernity of Ovid’s poem in a way not heard before.
“Brilliant storytelling… Magical… Engaging”
“Scared the living daylights out of me”
Metamorphoses
Directed and told by Richard Spaul
Dates:
Friday 12 – Saturday 13 July, 2024
Friday 9 – Saturday 10 August, 2024
Time: 8:00pm
Venue: The Leper Chapel, Cambridge | Map
Tickets: £18 available in advance and from 7.30pm at the venue.
“Enrapturing”
“Spellbinding”
“Enjoyed it”
