Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2007/08/05/ovid_on_the_green.php
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Two Fridays ago, on July 6th, seven Dartmouth sophomores acted along with professional actors from Zimbabwe, Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles in an outdoor performance of a few myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The players drew a sizeable audience to the center of the Green where they benefited from the first hour without rain in days. In this idyllic setting, the production seemed spontaneous to the surprised passersby who chanced upon the show, but a whirlwind week of auditions, creative collaboration, and long rehearsals actually led up to the realization of “The O Myths.” The project had long been planned by the College’s Leslie Center for the Humanities in collaboration with the Northern Stage theatre company and the British company, Developing Actors, as part of the Summer Arts Festival.
Brooke Ciardelli of the Vermont-based Northern Stage adapted a longer script based on twenty of the myths of the Metamorphoses, selecting the ten myths she thought would most best fit into the setting at Dartmouth and the context of the College’s art festival. Ciardelli held auditions, cast the roles and began all-day rehearsals the weekend preceding the show. From then on, everyone involved put their lives (and classes) on hold to fully immerse themselves in the play. The result was an impressively cohesive and flowing representation of some of the world’s best-known stories, enhanced rather than restricted by the limited facilities available on campus during the summer.
Without a stage, the team of actors made a platform resembling the ruins of an ancient temple behind whose columns actors would linger, thus decorating the set-up with living caryatids. This kind of creative detail, inspired by the lack of a stage’s amenities, helped create the magical aura that characterized the show: it was as if the stage descended from a clearing between the rain clouds and the play graced campus’ agora with a momentary glimpse into the talent that remains hidden during our daily, mundane lives.
To refer to the staging of the play seems less accurate than to comment on its choreography: the myths were brought to life without special effects, without a backstage in which to prepare, with no artificial lighting, and without a soundtrack. The nimble movements of the actors’ bodies played with the stylized choreography to replace these assets of a permanent stage, and to tell the gripping tales of Gods and Goddesses as they transformed before our eyes. Many in the audience, familiar with Ovid’s canonical myths, anticipated the changes dramatically performed by the actors; nevertheless the show continually induced the viewers’ awe when, for example, Courtney Davis ’09, transformed into Arachne (a spider) as the other players each pulled scarves, or her new-formed legs, from the waist of her skirt.
The most notable successes of the production were the result of charming touches that stimulated the audience’s imagination while shocking its eyes. For instance, the birth of Hermaphroditus stands out for this reason when Hermes and Aphrodite suspend the audience’s expectation of realism and form a single body in a tin bathtub full of water.
Though “The O Myths” recount ancient tales that have long been inscribed into the Western imagination, the play did not lack the eminence of today’s modern world: Ciardelli’s diverse cast, which combined international professional actors with Dartmouth student actors, thematically shaped her vision of “The O Myths.” Ciardelli had adapted the ancient Roman text for a previous performance her company staged, but morphed it once again to bring it to Dartmouth. Dartmouth English Professor Jonathan Crewe approached Ciardelli as a representative of the Leslie Center for the Humanities. Crewe wished to include a production of “The O Myths” in the series of arts events on campus, all of which addressed the theme of change, or transformation.
Ciardelli emphasized the universal nature of the myths not only through her selection of an international cast, but also by including dialogue in various languages in the opening and closing of her play, and by making explicit the distinct regions of the Roman world in which Ovid sets his tales. For better of for worse, this artistic choice aligns the production with the campus’ most recent and notorious artistic acquisition: the Wenda Gu installation in Baker Berry library [see page 10].
Above all, the play contributed to the Summer Arts Festival’s focus on change as an inspirational concept not only in the cultures of the ancient world, but also in the cultures of today. Overall, this pleasant production recreated some of Ovid’s most essential myths while simultaneously nodding to their vast influence on cultures worldwide.