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Home , Alcyone and Ceyx, Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses, Metamorphoses (play), Psyche (mythology), Shapeshifting

Wurtele Thrust Stage / April 13 – May 19, 2019

Metamorphoses based on the of written and directed by from the by DAVID R. SLAVITT

PLAY GUIDE Inside

THE PLAY An Introduction to • 4 Synopses, Setting and Characters • 5 Responses to Metamorphoses • 7 Notable Excerpts • 8

THE ADAPTER/DIRECTOR Mary Zimmerman • 10 Comments By and About Mary Zimmerman • 11

CULTURAL CONTEXT Water: Nature’s Element • 15 Myths and Oral Tradition • 16 The Greek Olympians • 17

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Reading and Understanding • 18

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Guthrie Theater Play Guide Copyright 2019

DRAMATURG Jo Holcomb GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves CONTRIBUTOR Jo Holcomb

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2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER “I pray you, change me; make me something else; transform me entirely; let me step out of my own heart.”

– to the gods in Metamorphoses PHOTO: SANGO TAJIMA AND FELICITY JONES LATTA (DAN NORMAN) About This Guide

This play guide is designed to fuel up on a play before you see it your curiosity and deepen your onstage. Or perhaps you’re a fellow DIG DEEPER understanding of a show’s history, theater company doing research If you are a theater meaning and cultural relevance for an upcoming production. company and would like so you can make the most of your We’re glad you found your way more information about theatergoing experience. You might here, and we encourage you to this production, contact be reading this because you fell in dig in and mine the depths of this Dramaturg Carla Steen at love with a show you saw at the extraordinary story. [email protected]. Guthrie. Maybe you want to read

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 3 THE PLAY

PHOTO: ALEX MOGGRIDGE AND LOUISE LAMSON (DAN NORMAN)

An Introduction to PRODUCTION HISTORY

Metamorphoses 1996: An early version of Metamorphoses, entitled Six Around a pool of water, a woman (1904), adapter and director Mary Myths, is produced at the talks of how bodies can assume Zimmerman theatricalizes the Theatre and Interpretation new shapes, and her words spark stories using language and images Center of Northwestern stories of transformation — from familiar to the 21st century to reach University. the creation of the world to human back to tales as old as civilization. bodies changed into animals and A Therapist helps Phaeton put 1998: Lookingglass Theatre trees — that take place in and psychological language to his Company presents the world around a water’s edge. An ensemble fraught relationship with his father premiere of Metamorphoses of 10 actors transforms again and . and at Chicago’s Ivanhoe Theater again to embody figures from Greek acknowledge the many variations on October 25. mythology, from the well-known of their story that have arisen over stories of ’ golden touch and more than 2,500 years of repetition. 2001: Making its off-Broadway the self-involved to the debut, Metamorphoses opens lesser-known stories of ’s “Everyone changes. Change is so at on grief and Erysichthon’s punishment. necessary, yet so painful,” says October 9. Monarchs and sailors and heroes Zimmerman. “It’s the condition and peasants make choices, good of human life. There will be 2002: Metamorphoses opens and bad, that trigger a physical transformation, and you will grow on Broadway at Circle in the transformation that may turn out old.” In telling its stories of change, Square Theatre on May 4. to be a gift, a curse or something Metamorphoses celebrates the very else altogether. essence of theater — its words, 2002–2019: The play continues humanity, community and ability to to be produced at theaters Basing her play on Roman poet create space for alteration. across the country, including Ovid’s masterwork Metamorphoses, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the story of and Psyche in Edited from the Metamorphoses description Seattle Repertory Theatre, Mark Lucius ’ Metamorphoses for the Guthrie Theater by Dramaturg Carla Taper Forum, Arena Stage and and ’s classic Steen, 2018 Guthrie Theater. poem Orpheus, Eurydice,

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Synopses, Setting and Characters

Orpheus must not look back at The Roman poet Ovid wrote Eurydice until they reach the living his epic poem Metamorphoses world — a test he may be unable to endure. between 2 and 8 A.D. In 15 books, he retold around and 250 stories from Greek and (with Narcissus interlude) The love story of Pomona and that Vertumnus begins with a cameo shared a common theme of by Narcissus, who is so enthralled transformation. Below are by his own reflection in the water that he freezes. Then we jump to brief synopses of the stories Pomona, a wood who is so featured in Mary Zimmerman’s passionate about gardening that Metamorphoses. she ignores her suitors. So the shy, smitten Vertumnus disguises himself in different ways just to Cosmogony be near her. To win her affection,

A woman, a scientist and the god PHOTO: ILLUSTRATION OF MIDAS BY WALTER CRANE, 1893 Vertumnus tells her the story of discuss and speculate on the Myrrha, which helps Pomona creation of the universe. spirit Hunger to give Erysichthon see through his ruse and open an insatiable appetite that yields her heart. Midas disastrous and devastating results. After doing a good deed and being granted any he desires by the gods, the greedy Midas asks that On her way to marry Orpheus, everything he touches turns to Eurydice steps on a and . gold. But his wish quickly becomes Distraught, Orpheus travels to the a curse, and he sets off on an underworld and begs to free impossible journey to find a pool of her. Hades agrees on one condition: water that could potentially reverse his fate. PHOTO: DETAIL FROM ORPHEUS LEADING EURYDICE FROM THE UNDERWORLD BY JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE COROT, 1861

Alcyone and Ceyx When King Ceyx embarks on a sea voyage that Queen Alcyone begs him to forgo, he dies in a shipwreck. Overcome with grief, Alcyone goes to the shore and sleeps in the shallow pools — a mournful act that moves the gods to show empathy and transform the couple’s future.

Erysichthon Erysichthon scorns the gods and holds nothing sacred, so he has no problem chopping down a tree that belongs to . In an act of retribution, Ceres commands the

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PHOTO: BY GENELLI, 1801

Myrrha Baucis and Philemon CHARACTERS King ’ daughter Myrrha Zeus and his son Hermes dress habitually refuses her suitors, as beggars and come to earth to Woman by the water so curses her with an discover what human beings are Scientist Zeus, king of the gods intense lust for her father. With like, but no one welcomes them Three laundresses the help of a nursemaid, Myrrha except for Baucis and Philemon. Midas and his daughter has three sexual encounters with Because of the elderly couple’s Bacchus, god of festivity her blindfolded father, who tries to kindness, the gods grant their wish Bacchus’ companion , drown his daughter in rage when to die at the same moment and Ceyx, a king Alcyone, Ceyx’s wife the truth is revealed. spare their grief. Hermes, god of travel and trade Phaeton Aphrodite, of love Apollo’s son Phaeton is a spoiled Erysichthon and his mother brat who spends his time whining Orpheus Eurydice, Orpheus’ bride to his Therapist about his life, his Vertumnus, god of spring many demands and his adventures Pomona, a wood nymph setting the world on fire. Cinyras, a king Myrrha, Cinyras’ daughter Eros and Psyche Nursemaid, Myrrha’s nurse Apollo, god of prophesy On a mission for Aphrodite, Eros Phaeton, Apollo’s son sets out to punish Psyche for her Therapist great beauty. But in a twist of fate, Eros, god of sex Eros falls madly in love with Psyche Psyche instead. Lies from Psyche’s sisters Q and A Baucis, a poor woman and her own disobedience cause Philemon, Baucis’ husband suffering until the gods intervene and help the lovers’ story end happily. SETTING

All scenes take place in and around a pool. Shifts between settings are indicated by light, the actors’ orientation or musical cues.

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Responses to Metamorphoses

product of an era of uncertainty and a shaken empire, Ms. Zimmerman gives physical life to the forms that grief assumes. These include the insistence on re-remembering that which causes most pain: the final glimpse of a loved face, the moment that swallows a life.

Ben Brantley, “How Ovid Helps Deal with Loss and Suffering,”The New York Times, October 10, 2001

… an enchanting reminder of Zimmerman’s power as a theatrical PHOTO: THE CAST OF METAMORPHOSES (DAN NORMAN) storyteller. And what stories they are: sacred and profane, filled The stories of classic are that immoderation. We cannot with love, loss and longing, these better. They just are, whatever your long tolerate “a monotony of are the myths that tell us what basis for comparison is. They’re happiness.” We must create ripples we’re capable of — for better and simpler yet stranger. They’re — or tidal waves — in a tranquil for worse. Transformation is the stripped of everything but earth, pool. That’s both our downfall thread that connects them all. … wind, fire and — inMetamorphoses , and, in Zimmerman’s vision, our But the water dominates. Shallow the most important — water. Yet redemption. enough to walk across, deep from those forces — and enough to perish in, it contains the pride, resentment, lust and grief Lily Janiak, “Review: Berkeley Rep’s shipwrecks and illicit embraces, that stir them — myth expands ‘Metamorphoses’ a quenching revival,” San moments of great folly and what humanity is and what we Francisco Chronicle, February 8, 2019 immortal connection. The changes might yet become ever outward in “Metamorphoses” are as varied, into the infinite. … and as unpredictable, as any ocean. The images of loss repeat, distort, From the opening moments, as a freeze and transform. Orpheus, Georgia Rowe, “Ovid’s myths flow in string instrument gets plucked, a a prisoner of his own memory, Berkeley Rep’s ‘Metamorphoses,’” San character breezes in, a match gets makes his famous mistake again Francisco Examiner, February 1, 2019 struck and a chandelier ascends, and again, looking backward as Zimmerman as director has such his bride slips, unreclaimable, into precise timing that it’s as if she lives the underworld. A sad, hopeful inside your brain, knowing before wife stands at the ocean’s edge, you do when the next stimulus or scanning the horizon for the return reveal would most delight, how of her long-dead husband, just it might make you wade a step as she did on the day his ship set further into her pool of wonders. … sail. A girl, torn from her lover in the night, is evoked by words said In Metamorphoses, we humans softly three times by a narrator: warn fruitlessly or proceed “She’s going to suffer.’’ … heedlessly. We insist on extremity over balance and get both In portraying Ovid’s tales of punished for and ennobled by transformation, themselves the

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 7 THE PLAY Notable Excerpts

PHOTO: RODNEY GARDINER AND SANGO TAJIMA (DAN NORMAN)

Excerpts From deal escapes us and we no longer was producing leaves and bark. understand our own actions. So They were turning into trees. They Metamorphoses: it remains important and salutary stood there, held each other, and A Play by Mary to speak not only of the rational called, before the bark closed over Zimmerman and easily understood, but also their mouths. of enigmatic things: the irrational and the ambiguous. To speak both Narrator One: Walking down the Bodies, I have in mind, and how privately and publicly. street at night, when you’re all they can change to assume new alone, you can still hear, stirring in shapes — I ask the help of the – Therapist in the story of Phaeton the intermingled branches of the gods, who know the trick: change trees above, the ardent prayer of me, and let me glimpse the secret Baucis and Philemon. They whisper: and speak, better than I know how, The soul wanders in the dark, until of the world’s birthing, and the it finds love. And so, wherever our All: Let me die the moment my creation of all things, from the first love goes, there we find our soul. love dies. to the very latest. – A in the story of Eros and Psyche Narrator One: They whisper: – Woman at the water All: Let me not outlive my own Baucis: Having spent all our lives capacity to love. Myths are the earliest forms of together, we ask that you allow us science. … It has been said that the to die at the same moment. Narrator One: They whisper: myth is a public dream, dreams are private myths. Unfortunately we Zeus: And Baucis noticed her All: Let me die still loving, and so, give our mythic side scant attention husband was beginning to put forth never die. these days. As a result, a great leaves, and he saw that she, too, – From the story of Baucis and Philemon

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A woman so loved that from one lyre there came more lament than from all lamenting women; that a whole world of lament arose, in which all nature reappeared: forest and valley, road and village, field and stream and animal; and that around this lament-world, even as around the other earth, a sun revolved and a silent star-filled heaven, a lament- heaven, with its own, disfigured stars — So greatly was she loved.

But now she walked beside the graceful god, Her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience. PHOTO: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE BY , 1510 She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy Excerpts From Orpheus, Eurydice, with child, and did not see the man in front Hermes by Rainer Maria Rilke or the path ascending steeply into life. Deep within herself. Being dead (translated by Stephen Mitchell) filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, That was the deep uncanny mine of souls. she was filled with her vast death, which was so new, Like veins of ore, they silently she could not understand that it had happened. moved through its massive darkness. … She had come into a new virginity There were cliffs there, and was untouchable; her sex had closed and forests made of mist. There were bridges like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands spanning the void, and that great gray blind lake had grown so unused to marriage that the god’s which hung above its distant bottom infinitely gentle touch of guidance like the sky on a rainy day above a landscape. hurt her, like an undesired kiss. And through the gentle, unresisting meadows one pale path unrolled like a strip of cotton. She was no longer that woman with blue eyes who once had echoed through the poet’s songs, Down this path they were coming. no longer the wide couch’s scent and island, and that man’s property no longer. In front, the slender man in the blue cloak — mute, impatient, looking straight ahead. … She was already loosened like long hair, Sometimes it seemed to him as though it reached poured out like fallen rain, back to the footsteps of those other two shared like a limitless supply. … who were to follow him, up the long path home. But then, once more, it was just his own steps’ , And when, abruptly, or the wind inside his cloak, that made the sound. the god put out his hand to stop her, saying, with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around — He said to himself, they had to be behind him; she could not understand, and softly answered said it aloud and heard it fade away. … Who? If only he could turn around, just once (but looking back Far away, would ruin this entire work, so near dark before the shining exit-gates, completion), then he could not fail to see them, someone or other stood, whose features were those other two, who followed him so softly: unrecognizable. He stood and saw how, on the strip of road among the meadows, The god of speed and distant messages, with a mournful look, the god of messages a traveler’s hood above his shining eyes, silently turned to follow the small figure his slender staff held out in front of him, already walking back along the path, and little wings fluttering at his ankles; her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes, and on his left arm, barely touching it: she. uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 9 THE ADAPTER/DIRECTOR

Mary Zimmerman

PHOTO: LIZ LAUREN

Growing up in Lincoln, , originated when she was still a with parents who were professors student but went on to Broadway AWARDS, NOMINATIONS at the local university, Mary and won Zimmerman a Tony Award AND FELLOWSHIPS Zimmerman dreamed of being for Best Direction of a Play. an actress. She originally started 1994 Drama Desk Award her undergraduate career at Her interest and skill in depicting nominee for Outstanding as a oral folk tales and Director of a Play Composition and Literature major, remains apparent in her work (The Arabian Nights) but it didn’t take long for her to today. Zimmerman’s rehearsal switch to Performance Studies. processes are unique because she 1998 Grant from the At Northwestern, she discovered develops the script in the rehearsal MacArthur Foundation that there were opportunities room where she can be influenced to participate in theater without by the cast, improvisation and 2002 Tony Award for being onstage as an . So she movement. She focuses on keeping Best Direction of a Play focused on movement, lighting her imagination open, providing a (Metamorphoses) and sound design while creating visually clear play and ensuring the adaptations with her peers and story is being told. 2002 Tony Award nominee laying a foundation for her for Best Play and Best later success. Zimmerman has adapted and Scenic Design of a Play directed a number of works, (Metamorphoses) Zimmerman graduated with including The Jungle Book a B.A. and then pursued her (), Argonautika, 2002 Drama Desk Awards M.A. and Ph.D. at Northwestern, Metamorphoses (Lookingglass for Outstanding Director of ultimately stepping up to work Theatre Company, Seattle Rep, a Play and Outstanding Play as a Performance Studies faculty Berkeley Rep, Mark Taper Forum, (Metamorphoses) member. From her student Second Stage Theater, Broadway), days, Zimmerman fostered a The Notebooks of Leonardo 2002 Outer Critics Circle Award relationship with Chicago’s Vinci (Berkeley Rep, Second Stage for Outstanding Director of a Goodman Theatre and was an Theater, Goodman Theatre, BAM, Play (Metamorphoses) asset in developing Lookingglass Seattle Rep), Journey to the West Theatre Company, which produced (Goodman Theatre, Huntington 10 Jeff Awards, including Best many of Zimmerman’s creations, Theatre Company, Berkeley Production and Best Direction including Metamorphoses. The play Rep), The (Lookingglass

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Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, Comments By and About Seattle Rep), Mirror of the Invisible World, Silk, The Arabian Nights Mary Zimmerman (Lookingglass Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, BAM), The Secret in the Wings (Lookingglass Metamorphoses started at school. that I thought leaned into the Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, It was always myths and water. It water, benefitted from it or gained McCarter Theatre Center), Eleven was a simultaneous idea. Originally, symbolic resonance from it. Change Rooms of Proust (Lookingglass it was to be the Odyssey in water, — often unwanted radical change — Theatre Company, About Face and when that production was happens to us in our lives. Theatre) and S/M. postponed, I decided to try it with [Ovid’s] myths. It’s the same When Metamorphoses ran at She has directed Pericles and All’s maritime world. The water is not Lookingglass Theatre Company in Well That Ends Well (Goodman incidental to the show. … The Chicago, it was supposed to run for Theatre) and Henry VIII and myths I chose for it are myths six weeks, but it ran for eight months. Measure for Measure (New York Shakespeare Festival). Zimmerman PHOTO: BENJAMIN T. ISMAIL AND SUZY WELLER (DAN NORMAN) and created a new in 2002 entitled Galileo Galilei (Goodman Theatre, London’s Barbican Centre, BAM). She made her directorial debut at the in 2007 with and has since directed both and . During the 2011–2012 Season at Goodman Theatre, she adapted and directed Leonard Bernstein’s .

Zimmerman is an ensemble member at Lookingglass Theatre Company and artistic associate at Goodman Theatre, and she holds the Jaharis Family Foundation Chair in Performance Studies at Northwestern University.

Edited from the play guide for the Guthrie Theater’s production of The White Snake and The Berkeley Rep Magazine, 2018–2019, Issue 4

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it’s just prosaically the thing that it is.

When Joseph Haj reached out about doing Metamorphoses [at the Guthrie], I had very recently said that I was done with it. … I was a little hesitant about remounting it — would it still have the same effect? But it received the same responses it always has. It speaks to the eternal problem of the fact that our bodies age and we become something else and how we cope with that and experience change is sometimes punishment, sometimes escape and sometimes

PHOTO: LISA TEJERO (DAN NORMAN) an evolution. It is just a constant. Catastrophe happens, but life pushes through and persists; it After Lookingglass, it went to into their house not knowing they ties us to life and it ties us through Second Stage Theater in New York. are gods. They lay the table and the years and across countries to While we were in New York, 9/11 bring out a basket of ripe apples something we all have to happened, and our first preview and say, “Remember how apples contend with. was 9/17. I realized that catharsis is smell?” There was a rhetoric at the an actual thing. I felt it so strongly. time that everything in the entire Edited from Mary Zimmerman’s comments In the story about Ceyx setting out world had changed. But what that on the first day of rehearsal at the Guthrie on a beautiful sunny day before really meant was that everything Theater, 2019 a terrible storm comes up, his in human geopolitics and human prayer before he is drowned is anxiety and human consciousness that his body would be found. And might change temporarily, but the [S]he is a scholar and a director, that search was going on [in New natural world was there. The natural a professor and an artist; her York]: it was in the streets, it was world persists. The natural world domains are academia and show everywhere, it was in my building. saves us. Apples smell the same business. She succeeds in both, and way that they did 2,000 years ago, she boldly brings them together in There’s another line in the play and they will hopefully smell the her work. As a director, she doesn’t where Eurydice dies suddenly, and same way 2,000 years from now. go in for conventional plays so we use lines from a Rilke poem: And we are part of that natural much as she invents idiosyncratic, She was filled with her vast death, world. That’s where we come from. almost weird concoctions from her which was so new/She could not well-read, intelligent mind. … understand that it had happened. I The water is so elemental. It felt this knife-scraping edge during helps us exaggerate emotion; Indeed, Zimmerman is very smart that line. But the show reminded when someone is crying, they put — anyone who knows her uniformly us there is this eternal, violent water on their face. It amplifies mentions that quality first. But hers change — bodily change that movement; there are big splashes is an intellectualism that does not happens gradually. As heretical as when people are angry and threaten, a contagious ease with the idea might be, it also produces fighting. It stands in for the sea, it erudition that makes her reassuring something new. stands in for lust and desire and rather than intimidating. She has a then comically it’s a swimming pool way of making you feel smart, the Throughout that experience, I when someone brings in a little manner of a born teacher. … came to believe that the most raft. It gets a big laugh because important line in the play is when it’s been used so poetically and “I love working with her because the poor people invite the gods metaphorically, and then suddenly she’ll come over when I’m working

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on a set model and play with it with able to apply what they have to the object — it’s not yet me for hours, as if we were little say at different times of your life. fully uncovered. kids,” [scenic designer Dan] Ostling They address the eternal human continues. “She’s a brilliant woman, condition, which is a permanent Mary Zimmerman, quoted by Madeleine and that’s clear in her work. But if it state of change and loss, and in Rostami, “Creating Visual Poetry: An ended there, I think her work would some ways renewal as well. The Interview With Mary Zimmerman,” The be very cold. But it’s anything but themes in these old texts always Berkeley Rep Magazine, 2018–2019, Issue 4 cold. It’s steaming. It’s passionate strike differently. I’m not sure and sensual. Sometimes, you work what will suddenly be the most on a show and you see it over and important line in the play this time. “I’ve always loved tales. I think over, maybe 12 times, and you get That always seems to change they perhaps led me to theater tired of it. I work on a show with for me. … rather than the other way around. her and after 20 times, I’m still As a child I wanted to invent a brought to tears.” I start a show with no script, but machine that could record my I start with a group of actors, an dreams, so I could watch them in Sid Smith, “Director, Actor, Artist, Scholar,” opening date and a set design. I the morning; or hire someone to Chicago Tribune, November 22, 1998 think that something is inevitable draw the things I had in my head, in my process. We’re just trying to because I knew I didn’t have the find an object that’s buried under skill to do it myself. Theater is One thing I really like is to try the ground, that already exists in a that machine. I can actually make to stage the impossible. … I like way through virtue of the people these images come to life and walk to include multiple locations or we are. I think of the process as around inside them for a while.” … transformations or a pool of water, being archaeological because in sea voyages, adventure — things an archaeological dig, they’re not Her hope is to have a child’s happening in a plot as opposed to really swinging axes — they’re openness and imagination, for — married people or angry relatives more like brushing carefully. If we to paraphrase one of her favorite sitting around a table getting into hurry and panic and try to move quotes by Willa Cather — “I’ll never an argument. I don’t mean in any too fast when we’re developing be the artist I was as a child.” way to disparage naturalism and something, we’ll damage the object what it takes to do it, because that’s under the ground. On the “I love that quote,” Zimmerman it is thrilling when it’s done well. other hand, if we’re lazy and slow says. “It is a statement of my own But I love ancient oral tales. … My and inattentive, we might arrive at belief that I’m at my best when I’m parents were both professors, so opening night with dirt still on unselfconscious and using what’s in we spent significant time overseas when I was a child. … When I came across this rehearsal, at the end of PHOTO: SUZY WELLER, LOUISE LAMSON AND BENJAMIN T. ISMAIL (DAN NORMAN) the scene, Oberon ran off, and they all started laughing, and I think the joyfulness and seeing adults play like that was as galvanizing to me as the enchantment and the fairy world. I was absolutely fascinated by it.

Mary Zimmerman, quoted by Jenniffer Weigel, “Mary Zimmerman: Theater Director,” Chicago Tribune, May 18, 2014

Big, old, classic texts always remain new. That’s how they earn their keep and stick around for so long — you seem to always be THE ADAPTER/DIRECTOR

PHOTO: LOUISE LAMSON, FELICITY JONES LATTA AND STEVEN EPP (DAN NORMAN) the room. They don’t call it a play fantastical, epic, full of or swallowed by a or a for nothing. We think of ‘play’ as a people turning into birds and so on. person turned into a bird or a noun. ‘I’m going to see a play.’ We It isn’t realism. It isn’t naturalism. pool of water, often using some forget that it’s also a verb. Children The characters are often archetypal of the simplest things a theater play in order to survive. They’re with names such as “The Merchant,” can provide and relying on the practicing at life in order to cope “The Boy” or “The Princess.” audience to complete the image. and survive later in life. Plays do the same thing. They’re teaching It is the realm of the impossible, the I believe that this presentational us how to cope with situations, like imaginative. But it is human beings style unites audiences and the advent of our death. And we who create these imaginative performers in a symbolic language can sit back and observe.” worlds — I find that act really that creates intimacy. I like great mysterious and moving, and I have sweeps of time and place, and I somehow found myself in these like obsessive love and unrequited “Mary Zimmerman’s Life in the Theater” by texts. The texts I’m interested in, for love. Very, very often, the stories Laurie Sales, McCarter Theater Centre’s play all their epic adventure and surface I do conclude with an image of guide for The Secret in the Wings, 2005 sparkle, speak to the fundamental transcendence or transfiguration facts of what it is like to be a at the moment of death; the person: to experience unwanted dissolution of the self into the I’m interested in beauty and I’m and unlooked for change, to love whole; an image of reunion. interested in joy and in manifesting and to die; to try to behave well both onstage. I believe that to be and to fail at that. To forgive. … Mary Zimmerman, quoted by Jamil Khoury persuasive, it is sometimes a good in “Mary Responds: My Interview With Mary strategy to beguile, to charm. I like to stage the impossible — I Zimmerman,” www.silkroadrising.org, June Almost everything I do has not very like the challenge of that: How 14, 2013 much to do with naturalism. It is to do sea voyages or a boat

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Water: Nature's Shapeshifting Element

PHOTO: ALEX MOGGRIDGE, STEVEN EPP, LOUISE LAMSON AND RODNEY GARDINER (DAN NORMAN)

We are all made of water, making In ancient cultures, water was you feel is a caress. Water is not it one of the basic elements sacred and symbolic of the a solid wall, it will not stop you. necessary for life. Water is also passage from life to death. The But water always goes where it transformative, both in a practical ancient Britons believed that water wants to go, and nothing in the and a symbolic nature. Water provided a doorway to a realm end can stand against it. Water is cleanses; it nourishes and washes closer to the gods. In the Taoist patient. Dripping water wears away our bodies, our clothes and tradition, water is considered an a stone. Remember that, my child. our world. aspect of wisdom because it takes Remember you are half water. If on different forms and moves in the you can’t go through an obstacle, It is also symbolic of new life. path of least resistance. The ancient go around it. Water does.” Baptism by immersion or pouring is Greeks understood the power of a transformational rite of passage transition that water holds. Moving Sourced from The Berkeley Rep Magazine, and a first step toward eternal life from liquid to solid to vapor, 2018–2019, Issue 4, and www.whats-your- in many Christian religions. In water, water is the perfect symbol for sign.com there is a universal symbolism metamorphoses. of purity and fertility. Water is often viewed as the source of life As Margaret Atwood writes in her itself, evidenced by the countless novella The Penelopiad, “Water creation myths in which life does not resist. Water flows. When emerges from primordial waters. you plunge your hand into it, all

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Myths and Oral Tradition

PHOTO: FELICITY JONES LATTA, LISA TEJERO AND SANGO TAJIMA (DAN NORMAN)

“Myth has two main beginning in the Bronze Age, an from nothingness and to functions. The first is to era lasting from approximately being and details the network of 3,300 to 1,200 B.C. Stories were elements, gods and who answer the sort of awkward told from the natural human emerge from chaos and become questions that children ask, speculation around the origins of one with earth, sky, water and such as ‘Who made the the universe and humankind. Those the underworld. stories were then passed down world? How will it end? Who from generation to generation, From ’s framework, later was the first man? Where embellished and developed over Greek writers included these sources in their own work. do souls go after death?’ the years. Embellishments to the stories were often reflective of Mythological figures and events … The second function of current events, both from natural also appear in the 5th-century myth is to justify an existing and human forces. Eventually, the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and

social system and account stories appeared in the writings of Euripides. In the 8th century B.C., poets and historians. both ’s and Odyssey for traditional rites and relate the mythical story of the customs.” , although 19th-century Much of oral mythology centers archaeological findings indicate on the origin story (also known – Robert Graves, , 1958 that there may have been more as cosmogony). Around 700 truth than fiction about the story. B.C., Hesiod provided the first In Homer’s epic tales, the stories written origin story with his As with many myths from other explore the struggles and conflicts poem Theogony, which tells the world cultures, the earliest Greek of both the human and the divine. myths came from oral tradition story of the universe’s journey

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The Greek Olympians

• (): Goddess of wisdom and defense

• (Ceres): Goddess of agriculture and grain

• (Bacchus): God of wine, pleasure and festivity

• Hephaistos (): God of fire, metalworking and sculpture

• Hermes (): God of travel, hospitality and trade; Zeus’ personal messenger

• (): God of the sea

Other sometimes included in the Olympians roster are:

• Hades (): God of the

PHOTO: STEVEN EPP AND RAYMOND FOX (DAN NORMAN) underworld

At the center of Greek The twelve Greek Olympians • (): Goddess of mythology is the (and their Roman names) are: home and family of deities who lived on • Zeus (): King of the • Eros (): God of sex; , the highest gods and father to many; god minion to Aphrodite mountain in Greece, and of weather, law and fate There are also stories of human ruled every aspect of • (): Queen of the courage and frailty in Greek human life. They often gods; goddess of women and mythology, such as , took on human form when marriage the first woman whose curiosity interacting with humans, brought evil to mankind; • Aphrodite (): Goddess , the king who fell in love but they could shapeshift of beauty and love with an ivory statue; Narcissus, who into any number of beings. fell in love with his own reflection; • Apollo (Apollo): God of Much to their own dismay, and Midas, the king who unwisely prophesy, music, poetry and chooses the gift of golden touch. the deities easily fell prey knowledge to human passions and Sourced and adapted from www.history.com/ • (Mars): God of war weaknesses, often resulting topics/ancient-history/greek-mythology in the need to be rescued by • (): Goddess of their divine peers. hunting, animals and childbirth

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For Further Reading and Understanding

SCRIPT Zimmerman, Mary. Metamorphoses: A Play, based on David R. Slavitt’s translation of The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Northwestern University Press, 2002.

STORY VARIATIONS Apuleius. The Story of , translated from by Charles Stuttaford, London: David Nutt, 1903.

Holzberg, Niklas. Ovid: The Poet and His Work, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.

Hughes, Ted. Tales from Ovid, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

Humphries, Rolfe, trans. Ovid Metamorphoses, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955.

Slavitt, David R. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

ARTICLES Cirico, Miriam M. “Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses: Mythic Revision as a Ritual for Grief,” Comparative Drama, Vol. 42, No. 2.

D’Souza, Karen. “Mary Zimmerman’s Shimmering Classic Returns to Berkeley Rep,” The Mercury News, San Jose, California, February 7, 2019.

Farrell, Joseph. “Metamorphoses: A Play by Mary Zimmerman,” The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 123, No. 4.

Garwood, Deborah. “Myth as Public Dream: The Metamorphosis of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 25, No. 1.

Jones, Chris. “The Power of Transformation,” Chicago Tribune, November 22, 2018.

Whitworth, Julia E. “Re-Thinking the Real,” Theatre Journal, Vol. 54, No. 4.

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