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].
Phaedra
National Theatre, London
1 February – 8 April 2023
Writer-Director Simon Stone (Yerma, Young Vic) reimagines Seneca’s famous tragedy in this striking new play.
After years of fierce focus on her political career, Phaedra turns her attention to her personal life. The reappearance of her step-son shakes the foundations of her house and the beliefs that have underpinned her power. As buried lust and loneliness surge to the surface, Phaedra’s actions threaten to destroy everything she has built.
UCL Greek Play 2023: Plato’s Symposium
Bloomsbury Theatre, London
8 – 10 February 2023
A heartbreak spanning centuries. What is love? Do soulmates really exist? Join Alcibiades in crashing one of the most famous dinner parties you’ll ever come across as Plato redefines what it means to be beautiful.
Evening performances on 9 and 10 February will include a pre-show talk from Dr Frisbee Scheffield (Cambridge) and Professor Edith Hall (Durham).
Medea
Soho Place, London
10 February – 22 April 2023
What could turn a woman from a lover into a destroyer of love?
Medea tells the story of a woman laid bare by grief and rage, and her terrible quest for revenge against the men who have abandoned her.
Sophie Okonedo brings her visceral, mercurial brilliance to literature’s most titanic female protagonist, whose complexity and contradictions have kept audiences on the edge of their seats, unable to look away, for almost 2,500 years.
The Iris Project: ‘Phaethon: Myth and Voice’ Workshop
Iris Classics Centre, Cheney School, Oxford
4 February 2023
In collaboration with the Myth and Voice Initiative run by Dr Efi Spentzou from the Classics Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, the Iris Project is delighted to announce a workshop where people can explore the themes in the ancient Greek story of Phaethon.
The workshop will be informal, friendly and fun, encouraging participants to think about how these stories speak to us, and what relevance these themes have in today’s world, and for our own lives. The workshop is aimed at ages 16+.
Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth and Reality
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
10 February – 30 July 2023
According to legend, an elaborate labyrinth was built at Knossos on the island of Crete to hold a ferocious Minotaur. Discover the palace of Knossos, and the search for the labyrinth, in this major exhibition. The palace of Knossos, discovered and excavated over 100 years ago, was the centre of a Bronze Age civilisation of people we now call the Minoans, named after the legendary King Minos.
This will be the first UK exhibition to focus on Knossos and will include over 100 objects which have never left Crete and Greece before, alongside discoveries from the Ashmolean’s Sir Arthur Evans Archive.
Votes for Medea: The British Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Classical Franchise
A talk by Michael Simpson and Barbara Goff
Goldsmiths, University of London
2 February 2023, 6pm GMT (in person)
As classical civilisation lost its hold on the commanding heights of the British cultural economy in the early 20th century, it conversely developed a new profile as a resource for progressive movements.
Our presentation takes the form of an introduction to our research on the classics in the British Left, followed by a more detailed look at a case study, the classical references in the activist press of the suffrage movement.
Recovering the Women of the Trojan War
A talk and reading by award-winning writer and classicist Emily Hauser
Goldsmiths, University of London
16 February 2023, 6pm GMT (online)
There has never been a better time to be a woman in Homer.
Fictional retellings of the women of the Trojan War have been flooding onto the market in recent years. This talk explores why women are turning to the Trojan War now more than ever, to retell stories from thousands of years ago in their own voices – and in their own ways.
It will also include a reading from For the Most Beautiful, and a Q&A with the author.
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.