No prior engagement with or knowledge of the myths is required or expected.
Workshops
The Girl with the Loud Voice: Arachne and her Tapestry
Come, role play, listen to each other, make and share your story! A striking character – but so many questions! Righteous? Arrogant? Brave?
- What can we make of this special girl with the strong voice?
- What does she care about?
- Who does she speak for?
- Does Arachne owe Athena/authority respect?
- Is Arachne a celebrity?
- Does she have a famous voice?
- Do you like her tapestry and her voice?
- Are there Arachnes in our life today?
- How do they use their voice to make it clear and loud?
- What might they want/have to say that matters to them?
- Who – or what – might be stopping them from speaking up?
The choice of voice: saving Eurydice
A character without a voice: there are things we will never know about Eurydice.
How did she feel about:
- Orpheus?
- about being robbed of her second chance?
- about only being remembered as part of his story?
- about her life in the underworld?
- about her life lost in the world above?
Come, role play, listen and support each other as you make and share your story.
- Do you ever feel isolated, angry, frustrated, sad for not getting your point across?
- Have you ever witnessed friends struggling to be heard, understood, validated?
- Have you ever tried to get into ‘someone else’s shoes’?
- What did that involve?
- Are some people/some groups more vulnerable to having their voice denied than others?
Let’s choose a voice/find a voice with (and for) Eurydice!
The Boy that Reached for the Stars: Phaethon and his chariot
But the boy cannot control the chariot and the world is in flames.
Is this a story about:
- Responsibility?
- Accountability?
- Privilege?
- Something else?
What is your take on the story?
- Who are the key characters?
- Which characters have the biggest impact on you?
- Who do you care for?
- How do the actions of each character impact on other characters?
- Who makes the biggest mistake in the story?
- Who is to blame?
- What went wrong?
- Was this an inevitable series of events?
Echo and Narcissus or Death in the Mirror – a story of a girl who could not speak and a boy who could not see
Is this a story about:
- Passion?
- Sadness?
- Obsession?
- Rejection?
- Social Media?
- Other things?
What would your flashcard include?
- What would your Narcissus be thinking and feeling?
- What can he not ‘see’ in others?
- What does he like doing after school?
- What (or who) makes him happy/unhappy?
- Does he believe in himself?
- What would he write about in his diary? In his Instagram account?
- Are you happy with the way Echo, the silent girl, is written in the story? Can we trust her voice?
King Erisychthon and the Giant Oak: Nature’s Wound; Nature’s Vengeance; Nature’s Regeneration
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there lived a powerful King, whose name was Erisychthon. Close to his palace, there was a sacred grove of trees in the midst of which stood proudly a giant, ancient oak united by strong bonds of love and affection with the residents of the kingdom…
- Would you like to be the voice of the tree so it could be a witness of the life inside the sacred garden?
- Do you want to tell what happened to the giant oak, your own way?
- And decide what should happen to the King as a result?
And if you could plan an urban forest in your school or local area what would it look like?
- Where would it be and why? What would you give up to make space for it?
- What would living with the trees look like: for you, for the various others you can think of or you care about, for the trees themselves?
Come and play act, be a map reader, design and plan, doodle and draw together, debate and compromise, write a story or a poem about a new tree that came to live with you.
Use your voice to let your school leadership team or your local council know what reforesting your part of the town would mean for your friends, your family, and for you.
The Women of Troy: war, violence, displacement, new beginnings
For many across the centuries, the Trojan War has meant…
- Deadly clashes in the battlefield between strong men
- The Greek warrior Achilles (who liked to be) first amongst all men in strength and glory
- the Trojan Horse as a trick that led to the fall of Troy
But what about the women of Troy?
What would their Trojan War be like if the voice of the story was theirs?
In this workshop we engage with war and its violent impact on the most vulnerable in society.
- We build soundscapes and other sense-scapes to try and get in the shoes of the captured women.
- What do they see and hear around them? What do they hold in their hands? What do they miss most? What do they fear most?
- We try to stay loyal with them – and try to imagine their changed lives – in the months and years after the moment their ordeal started and when the world may have moved on from them.
There is round robin storytelling and patchwork making as we work together to give justice to the women and create portraits of those that the story kept in the margins.
Dancing against the King: Pentheus and the women of Thebes
Pentheus, the proud King of Thebes, was leading his city with a firm hand, until one day, Bacchus, the god of wine and wildness, arrived and gave people permission to indulge in daring speech and unconventional behaviours. Wives and daughters gathered outside the city walls wild with excitement and keen to celebrate their togetherness and newly found freedom.
In this workshop we reflect on communities; what holds them together and what can tear them apart. Through role play we try to build a common understanding of:
- The joys and dangers of self-expression
- Breaking with conventions and stereotypes
- Change as power and change as threat to those in positions of authority
We follow in the steps of Pentheus, and we try to mingle with the women. We use immersive storytelling to explore and debate:
- civil disobedience,
- surveillance in society
- rage as a positive (or negative) force.
Come visit Thebes in this time of unrest: this is a chance for you to practice active listening, compromise, debating, oracy and, through these, engage in the making of a community that you can call your own.