Each month, I will be sharing a roundup of the coolest classics events happening across the UK, with a focus on arts and culture.
If you'd like to include an event, exhibition, or something similar in a future roundup, please email me at [email protected].
Ruination
Royal Opera House, London
1 – 31 December 2022
Nothing says Christmas like a Greek tragedy. Lost Dog returns to the Royal Opera House with a new witty and irreverent take on the Greek myth of Medea as an alternative festive show.
The company that charmed audiences with their award-winning Juliet & Romeo in 2019 returns to the Royal Opera House. Melding dance, comedy and theatre, Lost Dog’s Artistic Director Ben Duke is known for his witty and inventive reinterpretations of the classics. This season they re-tell the Greek myth of Medea and her relationship with Jason – he’s much shorter than you’d expect and it's possible she didn’t murder her children – as an alternative festive show about how love and forgiveness are not always the answer.
Shakespeare and Plutarch: Roman Plays, Roman Lives
The Agora Foundation - online only
3 December 2022
This seminar series explores Shakespeare’s Roman plays alongside Plutarch’s Lives, from which Shakespeare drew his inspiration. To read these four plays, interspersed with the corresponding Roman lives found in Plutarch, may afford an illuminating perspective on some fascinating Romans and the ways in which they have come down to us.
The reading of the lives and plays will circle back after Titus to the early Republic to follow the historical chronology of the stories they tell. There are seven seminars (four on Shakespeare, three on Plutarch) in the series: Titus Andronicus, Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus, Coriolanus, Plutarch’s Lives of Caesar and Brutus, Julius Caesar, Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Antony and Cleopatra.
Welcome to The Chorus with Clare Pollard, Classics for All
Zoom - online only
7 December 2022, 6pm
Join us for the first online gathering of The Chorus – Classics for All’s network of young classicists.
The student-led steering committee is delighted to welcome members new and old, as well as any student or young person interested in the classical world. Join us on Zoom to connect with other young classicists up and down the country!
At our inaugural gathering, you will have the opportunity to:
- hear from our guest speaker, the author and poet Clare Pollard, and participate in the Q&A
- connect with like-minded young classicists from across the UK and share your experience
- find out more about The Chorus, its mission, and how to get involved
Free tickets are available for all students.
Imagined Authors: Reading the Homeric Question in Joyce’s Ulysses, a talk by Dr Sophie Corser
Goldsmiths, University of London
8 December 2022, 6pm
Our series on the social, political and cultural relevance of the classics to our times continues with a talk on Joyce and the Homeric question and an informal book launch.
From the ancient reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey to the present day, the name ‘Homer’ has triggered questions about the identity, or even existence, of the author.
In this talk, Dr Sophie Corser will explore how the presence of Homer in the background to James Joyce’s Ulysses provokes and engages these same questions. A recent increased interest in modernist classical reception studies has caused a timely (if contained) revival of discussions dealing with the intertextual relationship between the Odyssey and Ulysses – a topic that had, for a few decades, become pretty unpopular within Joyce studies.
iShowmanism!
Ustinov Studio, Bath
Until 10 December 2022
Spend an evening in the company of stage and screen legends – Ian McKellen, Peter Sellars (renowned theatre director, not the actor!), Fiona Shaw and many more – as you have certainly never seen or heard them before. Channelling actors, lecturers, journalists, impressionists, and other enchanting voices from the shadowlands of performance, the uniquely talented Dickie Beau guides us on an off-road journey through theatre and its history.
Dickie cuts up and then "re-members" this compelling collection of voices to trace a path through the world of performance itself in all its permutations, from Greek theatre to nightclub drag queens; from politics to puppetry.
Ongoing events
- Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth
British Library, London
Now booking until 19 February 2023
- Seshepenmehyt: Into the Afterlife
The Great North Museum
Now booking until 19 February 2023
- Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt
British Museum, London
Now booking until 19 February 2023
- Burnt City, Punchdrunk
One Cartridge Place, London
Kitty is currently doing an MPhil in Classics at Cambridge. She is focusing on travel narratives and cultural identity in Roman Greece, particularly in the work of Pausanias, Apuleius and the extant Greek novelists. She is an active member of The Chorus and sits on the student steering committee.