Duration 55 Mins
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Tell me, Muse, about that man ‘who was driven wide, thrown far…’ Irish playwright Gavin Kostick is the latest writer to take on the daunting task of translating one of the oldest and most influential texts in Western literature, Homer’s narrative of Odysseus’ adventures at sea. Its 12,000 lines describe all that Odysseus survives on his circuitous journey of homecoming from the Trojan War – the reversals of fortune, the storms, transformations and deceptions.
Join us to watch new episodes from Gavin Kostick’s dynamic adaptation of Homer’s epic take shape, performed by dance artist Megan Kennedy, composer Andrew Synnott on piano and Gavin Kostick, working with director Conall Morrison. These excerpts, from Books Six and Seven, explore one of the poem’s great themes: the code of hospitality towards strangers, or xenia in Greek, as the shipwrecked Odysseus is welcomed by the Phaeacians and princess Nausicaa to their tranquil island.
Gavin Kostick
‘The Odyssey 2025. With fellow artists Andrew Synnott, Janet Moran and Megan Kennedy, it has been a great pleasure to share The Odyssey over a number of years at ClassicsNow. This year myself, composer Andrew Synnott and dancer-choreographer Megan Kennedy are joined by director Conall Morrison to give you a taste of Books Six to Eight – In The House of Alcinous. There are themes – hospitality, seeking refuge, love and jealousy, but really we've picked this section for 2025 to look at an island of kindness, beauty and warmth in a chaotic and dangerous world.'
Gavin Kostick is a multi-award winning playwright, whose works have been produced nationally and internationally. For 2025 he hopes to continue working on the development of The Odyssey with ClassicsNow and Kilkenny Arts Festival, as well as The Leap, a play for children with Fishamble, Fight Night with Aonghus Óg McAnally, and The Overcoat (after Gogol) for Bewley's Café Theatre.
As Literary Manager for Fishamble theatre company, and independent dramaturg and tutor at Trinity College Dublin and The Lir, Gavin works with a very wide range of new plays and playwrights for the stage.
Andrew Synnott is a Dublin-based composer, arranger, conductor and pianist. As a boy he was awarded a scholarship to the Schola Cantorum in St Finian’s College in Mullingar and from there he went on to become organ scholar in the Pro-cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral while studying Music at Trinity College Dublin. He has conducted for Irish National Opera (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), Wexford Festival Opera (Dubliners, Le Docteur Miracle), Opera Theatre Company (The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Il mondo della luna, Orfeo [Alcorn], Bastien and Bastienne, Xerxes, Acis and Galatea, Diary of Anne Frank, Orfeo [Monteverdi], La Voix Humaine, Dubliners, among others); for Co-Opera, Glasthule Opera, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Andrew is a former Artistic Director and conductor of Crash Ensemble, a group he co-founded in 1997. He has conducted many orchestras and choirs, including the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTE Concert Orchestra and National Chamber Choir of Ireland. In 2015 he conducted the premiere of his first opera, Breakdown, in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. His second opera, Dubliners, was premiered at Wexford Festival Opera in 2017 and was nominated for an Irish Times Theatre Award in the Best Opera category. His opera, La cucina, became the first opera by a living Irish composer to be premiered on the main stage at Wexford Festival Opera, 2019. His opera, What Happened To Lucrece, was filmed and broadcast digitally as part of Wexford Festival Opera, 2020, followed by the staging of his opera The 47th Saturday at the 2021 festival. He holds a PhD in composition from Dublin’s Conservatory of Music and Drama.
Megan Kennedy Megan trained at Alvin Ailey Dance Center in New York City and received a B.A. Honours from Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. Megan is Co-Artistic Director of multi-award winning dance company Junk Ensemble, previous resident artists at The Tate and creators of Dances Like a Bomb and Powerful Trouble. Choreography and movement direction for live performance includes The Jesus Trilogy (Dublin Theatre Festival, dir: Annabelle Comyn), The Last Return (Druid Theatre, dir: Sara Joyce), Portia Coughlan (Abbey Theatre, dir: Caroline Byrne), What Did I Miss (The Ark, dir: Sean Dunne), Villette (West Yorkshire Playhouse, dir: Mark Rosenblatt), Town is Dead (The Abbey Theatre, dir: Phillip McMahon), Red Lines (Monika+Sean Aerial Company), Tasting Blue (Live Collision, dir: Megan Kennedy), Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades Opera (Edinburgh Festival Theatre, dir: Adrian Osmond), Marble & Bread (Dance Limerick, dir: Megan Kennedy).
Choreography and performance for film include Wildfire (Samson Films, dir: Cathy Brady), It Is In Us All (dir: Antonia Campbell Hughes), The Tower (dir: Jesse Jones), In Velvet & Fallow Table (Junk Ensemble), 6SKIN (dir: Alice Maher & Aideen Barry), Five Letters to the Stranger Who Will Dissect My Brain (dir: Oonagh Kearney), The Wake (dir: Oonagh Kearney), Óiche Nollaig na mBan (RTÉ), Wonder House (Dublin Film Festival), Her Mother’s Daughters (Winner Best Actress Capalbio Festival Italy/dir: Oonagh Kearney).
Megan has performed with Retina Dance Company (UK), Brokentalkers (IRL), CoisCéim Dance Theatre (IRL), The Abbey Theatre (IRL), Blast Theory (UK), Loosysmokes Aerial Company (IRL), Tanz Lange (DE), and productions for The Ark and The Pavilion (IRL). She is a Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar.
Conall Morrison is a theatre director and playwright. He has directed thirty plays for the Abbey Theatre and has directed for the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Co., the Globe Theatre, English National Opera, Cameron Mackintosh Productions, and for many leading independent companies.
He has twice won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Director, and twice won Best Production. He has directed premieres of plays by Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness, Marina Carr, Gary Mitchell, Declan Hughes, Neil Flynn, Colin Murphy, Janet Moran.
As well as several original plays, he has done numerous adaptations. His work as writer-director includes Tarry Flynn, Abbey Theatre and Royal National Theatre; his own adaptations of Antigone and The Bacchae; Gulliver’s Travels, Peacock Theatre, The Travels of Jonathan Swift, inspired by Swift’s works, for Blue Raincoats TC - Best Ensemble, Irish Times Theatre Awards; Woyzeck in Winter, his fusion of Buchner’s Woyzeck and Schubert’s Winterreise, for Landmark TC/Barbican Theatre, London.
Recent work includes co-directing Afterwards by Janet Moran, A Handful of Stars, by Billy Roche, Quake by Janet Moran, Joyce’s Women by Edna O’Brien for the Abbey, Strauss’s Elektra for INO, The Treaty by Colin Murphy for Fishamble, and Backwards up a Rainbow, by Rosaleen Linehan, for Landmark. His Once Off production of The United States versus Ulysses by Colin Murphy will travel to the Irish Arts Centre, NYC, in April this year.
