Written by Save the date: 28 and 29 June, 2021
After the success of 2020’s experimental Dionysus in the Underworld, performed only a few weeks before the UK went into national lockdown, the King’s Greek Play 2021 will be a little different. Students from across the college will create an entirely new play, mostly in English, which draws on extant and fragmentary Greek tragedy. Led by Dr David Bullen and Professor Edith Hall, the project explores how the Trojan War cycle speaks to present concerns about responsibility, sacrifice, and intergenerational tension. Young adults both west and east suffer acute isolation and despair caused by their irresponsible parents’ abuse, neglect, and endless international disputes. Is this the 21st century or the Bronze Age? The group has drawn on texts with lonely young adults at their heart, including Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and Orestes, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and Aeschylus’ now fragmentary trilogy about the central figure of Homer’s Iliad, Achilles.‘
Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, the Annual King’s Greek Play reinvents itself yet again, with a bold new online production, combining highlights from extant and fragmentary Greek tragedies to provide a brand-new play about the Trojan War. The King’s Greek Play once again fashions something radically new out of some of the world’s oldest tales.’ (Dr Daniel Orrells, Head of Department of Classics, King’s College London)
This year’s performance will be online rather than live. Further communications will follow with information about how to book.
