Persephone and Demeter to premiere at St John’s

A powerful new play featuring passages from Ovid and a Homeric hymn will be staged at St John’s this month.

The ancient story of Persephone and Demeter will be given a new lease of life in a dramatic staged production, directed and produced by Professor Patrick Boyde, at the Old Divinity School this month. The audience will be able to experience the multi-layered myth exactly as it was first told, in the original Greek and Latin, and there will be English surtitles. Professor Boyde, Fellow of St John’s and Emeritus Professor of Italian, has been organising semi-staged plays in Ancient Greek for the last 10 years.

Persephone and Demeter is a moving drama which tells of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, King of the Underworld, and the grief and pain of her mother, Demeter, as she desperately tries to find her daughter. The story is told in verses taken from Ovid’s poems Metamorphoses and Fasti and from an anonymous Greek poem, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dating from the sixth century BCE. In ancient Greek religion and myth, Demeter is the goddess of crops who is responsible for the harvest. The play explores the eternal cycle of sowing, growth, harvest, withering and dying back, and raises many other questions as to the nature of human life and death, including the possibility of resurrection from the tomb to eternal life.

The dramatisation will be accompanied by live instrumental music; and images of paintings and statues from classical times and from the Renaissance will be projected during the course of the play.

The two performances of Persephone and Demeter will take place on Wednesday 18 February and Thursday 19 February at 7.30pm in the theatre in the Old Divinity School.

The play is open to all and admission is free, but you are strongly recommended to make a seat reservation (which will be held for you until 7. 20) by clicking here.