A strike against violence: Spike Lee’s powerful film, Chi-Raq, set in Chicago in 2015, is an impassioned plea to end gun crime. With dialogue incorporating rap and hip-hop, it is a flamboyant version of ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes’ comedy, Lysistrata, from 411 BC, in which women go on a ‘sex strike’ in protest against a prolonged war, the Peloponnesian War. The title is an amalgam of Chicago and Iraq, with Lee furiously presenting the shootings between black gangs in Chicago’s South Side as part of a cycle of poverty, inequality and pervasive machismo.
‘All that social outrage clearly demanded similarly outsized treatment, and Lee and co-writer Kevin Willmott have found a remarkably accommodating vessel in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, whose tale of an ancient Greek heroine leading an anti-war sex strike has been updated here as an alternately soulful and scalding, playful and deadly serious 21st-century oratorio.’ Variety review, Justin Chang (2015)
The cast includes Teyonah Parris as the voice of reason, Lysistrata; Samuel L. Jackson as a one-man Chorus, and John Cusack as a priest campaigning for social justice.
The screening will be introduced by Dr Kerry Phelan, Lecturer in Ancient Classics, Maynooth University.
Irish Film Institute, Sunday February 2nd, 3.40 pm.
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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.'
Award-winning dance-theatre artist Luke Murphy presents excerpts from his enthralling series of installations, The Prometheus Project. Reimagining the myth of the fire-stealing god, Prometheus, it becomes a drama of power dynamics, power-cuts and the earth’s shrinking resources.
With video images, music and an evocative soundtrack, choreographer and dancer Luke Murphy explores his ideas behind this exciting new work-in-progress, bringing a powerful Ancient Greek myth into the present day.
Lighting design: Stephen Dodd
Set design: Amy Pitt
Sound design: Rob Moloney
Producer: Gwen Van Spÿk for Attic Projects
www.atticprojects.com
About The Prometheus Project (Episode One) Dublin Dance Festival 2023
‘An impressive beginning to the series, with its combination of narrative, immersive installation and use of movement as emotion, saying what words can’t express.’
****
Michael Seaver, Irish Times
Join us for a guided tour of the Classical Museum, and an introduction to the fascinating collection with Museum Curator, Dr Joanna Day, as well as to the contemporary fine art print works currently in situ, created by Hungarian-British artist, Zsuzsanna Ardó.
The Classical Museum in UCD holds the largest collection of Classical antiquities on display in Ireland. The collection was started early in the twentieth century by Professor Henry Browne and has been added to through donations and loans over the past century. Artefacts include Roman and Greek coins, magnificent Greek pottery ranging from the Neolithic period to the first century BC, glass, jewellery, inscriptions and funerary sculpture, Cypriot ceramics and a small Egyptian collection. Thematic exhibitions change regularly.
Admission free; early booking recommended as places are limited.
Classical Museum,
School of Classics
Room K216, Newman Building
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4
In his documentary play, It was Paradise, Unfortunately, Jordanian playwright Raphaël Khouri travels to Greece in a three-year search for the ancient roots of theatre and the mystery of Dionysos. In this specially condensed presentation of the original production, Raphaël Khouri tells intertwining stories: his own as a trans Arab playwright, and his investigation into the cultural significance and multiple interpretations of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and theatre.
Presented by Raphaël Amahl Khouri and Greek visual artist, Myrto Stampoulou.
Original commission by Outburst Arts, Belfast, with support from The Collective for the research and development of this performance.
Set in 412 BC in Sicily during the Peloponnesian war, Ferdia Lennon’s début novel, Glorious Exploits, explores the bonds forged between local out-of-work potters, Lampo and Gelon, and a group of starving Athenian prisoners of war, held captive in a quarry in Syracuse. This brilliantly boisterous novel culminates in their staging of Euripides’ tragedy Medea, a performance that they will never forget, as it becomes difficult to distinguish between friends and enemies. ‘It’s poetry we’re doing,’ Gelon says. ‘It wouldn’t mean a thing if it were easy.’
Ferdia Lennon will be in conversation with poet and playwright Clare Pollard, whose captivating début novel, Delphi, reads between the lines of ancient prophecies. In London in 2020 during the pandemic, the novel’s sharp, witty narrator, a Classics scholar, is attempting to write a book about prophecy in the ancient world and becomes fixated on our many forms of divination and prediction. ‘To write anything requires this ludicrous confidence in the future – that it exists, and contains a person who might read my words with interest.’ (Delphi)
Join us for a conversation that will touch on Greek tragedy, myth, war, death and more. It will be chaired by academic and dramaturg, Tanya Dean.
Renowned Classicist Edith Hall’s latest book, Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World, looks at the Iliad through the lens of climate change. She discusses this, her work on Greek tragedy and her recent memoir, Facing Down The Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me, which intertwines autobiography and philosophy with close readings of ancient Greek tragedy and myth.
On Epic of the Earth: ‘In this timely book, Hall reminds us that the violence of war is made possible by the violation and exploitation of nature. She shows us how to read the Iliad more urgently and face our relationships with the earth and each other with more wisdom.’ (A. E. Stallings)
Edith Hall will be in conversation with eminent Greek-British cultural critic and social psychologist, Yiannis Gabriel, author of the newly published Greek Myths for a Post-Truth World. Using ten ancient myths as his points of departure for creative re-interpretation, Yiannis Gabriel invites readers to think mythologically, and to examine what ancient Greek myths can teach us about the troubles and challenges of our times.
Join us for a wide-ranging conversation, chaired by writer and broadcaster Vincent Woods.
