![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Virgil's Aeneid, A Brief History:
29BC - Virgil, a Roman poet who probably didn't deserve any of this, is instructed by Augustus to write an epic glorifying the Romans much in the style of Homer. Homer's great themes being, to whit, a war and then the journey of one man, Virgil includes both. The first words of the Aeneid are: "Arma virumque cano..."
2001 - During the course of my first few Latin lessons, I am introduced for the first time to the twin wonders of Virgil and the unsplittable infinitive. My Latin teacher, Mrs Wadsworth, who is marvellous, quietly despairs. My complaints that it's all right for the Enterprise to boldly go fall on deaf ears. With some help from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
balthaser, I eventually write my GCSE coursework on strong female characters in the Odyssey.
Late autumn, 2005 - Some time during the course of a week involving ice-cream, ridiculous amounts of microeconomics and a brief encounter at a Balliol college bop,foulds and I meet for the first time. The earth shifts slightly in its orbit as somewhere, somehow, Virgil begins to spin in his grave.
Trinity 2007 - I am introduced to the wonder that is the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society. My first play is Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Inanimate Body, in whichfoulds and I both play title roles. During my illustrious career as a corpse, I am punched, kicked, dropped, hit on the head with a baguette and have red wine poured into my eyes. It is probably the best week of my life.
On the last night of the show, I realise that roles so peculiarly suited to my lack of acting talent are likely to be few and far between, and begin to make discreet enquiries as to how exactly one writes one of these script-type things. It is brought to my attention that nowarifirh is about to leave the country, foulds needs a co-writer on the Aeneid.
(The script as it stood at this point had been written by an army of midsummer-mad classicists, geeks and Oules, me included, over seventy-two hours that nearly killedfoulds. It was also at this point still a musical.)
Nevertheless, I raise my hand and say "me, me." This may well prove to be a turning point in life.
Summer 2007 - Packing up my whole life into a couple of memory sticks and a Primark bag, I go to India in search of a spiritual experience. I don't find one exactly, but I do make an epic journey from Delhi to Kalka to Solan to Jammu to Vaishno Devi, on foot and barefoot for the last twenty-eight kilometres, and find myself quite literally on a mountain on top of the world.
Recovering over the days that follow, I sit on a porch swing looking down into the valley and idly scribble on the first draft of the Aeneid I've seen. The days are pleasant and cool and I eat a lot of Himachal cherries whilst writing about Aeneas and Dido. I'm very reluctant to go back down to Delhi, and when I do, I leave the draft behind me.
This became known as the "draft-Iona-left-on-a-mountain-in-Kashmir" version. Not strictly accurate, as I actually left it in Solan, but it did indeed get left somewhere vaguely improbable and even now as we speak there may be a successful production being mounted in Himachal Pradesh.
Michaelmas 2007 - the OULES play for this term is Aladdin, a pantomime featuring a whole bunch of new Oules. My sole role in this production is as Thief No. 7, but in the background, the Aeneid rolls on like a juggernaut. By the end of term, we're on Version 12.0, no longer with any songs, and waiting only for the approval of the committee.
At the Aladdin cast party, I am drunkenly telling somebody about something when I'm suddenly aware that my feet are no longer touching the ground.foulds picks me up and twirls me joyfully around the garden below a starry sky and yells, "We did it, we did it!"
The committee approve. In the morning we are both ludicrously hungover.
Hilary 2008 - By the first week of term, we have the final version, which turns out to be draft 15.0, and by the second week, we have a cast. They are beautiful and ridiculously talented. People read the script and laugh in the right places. All seems well, excluding the part where we don't have a venue.
By fifth week, we have a venue. We also have a cheesegrater costume, a pantomime horse called Monty, a poster design featuring four stick figures and a lot of digital paint, a length of tumble dryer hosing, the Sword of Troy, and an enormous courgette.
The script is still being edited sporadically, but we're pretty much settled on version 15.0, which has more gags than the original, but nevertheless follows the original plot until round about book 3, where Dido does not kill herself but, rather, leads the Carthaginian army over the Alps with an army of elephants. (Said elephant is Monty, only wrapped in grey fur with tumble dryer hosing for a trunk. We got it off eBay.)
The cast are glorious, and gloriously genderbent. Aeneas and Dido are both women, Juno and the Sibyl are played by men. The Trojan army is composed of women in corsetry, with swords. Turnus, prince of the Latins, is a woman and says "woof!" a lot, there is a deathless romance between a cheese and a cheesegrater in the Underworld. We also make a lot of people out balloons. Both Lavinia and Helen are made of balloons and string (and dresses from Primark). Storing both inflatable people and cuddly sheep in his room is, by this point, givingfoulds the sort of reputation he probably doesn't want.
One of the stage directions reads "omnes exeunt, and take everything off." The cast are inclined to take this far too literally.
The weekend between sixth and seventh,amchau comes to visit, and she, Maria, shimgray and I spend a joyously odd day walking the eight miles to Abingdon in search of pick 'n' mix. In the evening, there is rum, six square metres of fabric, and a lot of marker pens. I sit and drink as Maria depicts (a version of) the ancient Mediterranean in primary colours: complete with the Frog of Doom, a Cyclops, a Minotaur, a half-pig-half-man monster eating Margaret Thatcher.
Seventh week: the dress rehearsal, which is not remotely in the right order. We are working on swordfights and beginning to buy props. We now have a Carthaginian blogosphere - a football with "LJ" on it - and a bottle of almond wine which I insist on labelling "[K+][CN]-", because I have no sense of humour.
The first performance is on Wednesday of eighth week. Unlocking the theatre is an impressive moment. I think we were all very much taken by it.foulds admitted later that he'd taken to declaiming lines from the Iliad off the stage in the low lights, and I eventually found myself lying flat on my back on the stage looking up at the lights and the beams and absorbing, and being absorbed by, silence and space. Directing, I said at the time, lying there with absinthe_shadow in my peripheral vision, is new for me. I'm wary of, impressed by, people who can draw and direct and take pictures, take their tools and map out the world in visual arts, because for me only prose is easy, it's the only thing that really draws the world around me into easy shapes, easy lines to follow. (This might be why I feel particularly crazy when I haven't written for a while.)
But, I said. This is not an artistic endeavour. OULES' twin noble objectives - making money for charity and making people laugh. This is not something I have ever done before, or may perhaps ever do again. But right here, right now, in this dark space, with the lights above me and the man-made resonance around me, I get it. I get why people do this. I get why it's important.
absinthe_shadow, who had been cast as every non-speaking part in the play - Dido's handmaiden, the entire Latin army and Agamemnon and his Enormous Courgette - treated this monologue with much more patience than it deserved.
Thursday of eighth week, the second performance.lilka sends me to inform my esteemed co-director that she got the Euripides joke with Helen being inflatable. I have never seen him so happy.
Friday night, the last performance. The audience is filled with people I know.arifirih is back in the country, and keen to be in the play. I put him in as the middle head of Cerberus. Looking at them all standing there together, Maria demands to make up the three-headed guard-dog of the Underworld as the members of Kiss. Armed with eyeliner, she disappears. There are ominous growling sounds from the direction of the green room.
About ten minutes in, after I've played my own bit-part ("I am Diana, goddess of plagues, chastity and animal rights!") I have a sudden realisation and bounce barefoot on top offoulds. He looks somewhat startled. "It's out of our hands!" I said, with complete lack of profundity. Hiding in the wings, we sat and watched the show.
And you know what? It was delightful. The audience laughed in all the right places, the cast went off on gleeful impromptu speeches about bananas, ad-libbing their way around such disasters as Lavinia's head bursting, we hid and took pictures and laughed.wadiekin was a truly delightful Aeneas, as we always knew she would be. In the last scene of the play, Virgil stumbled forwards with several hundred plastic swords through her, and from the audience, sebastienne's voice drifted clearly up: "The author really is dead!"
At the end, the walkdown went without too many hitches - the last page of my script was pinned with instructions to the back of a flat - and somehow or other,foulds and I were being called up to take a bow and accept the gift of two bottles of gin from our grinning, gleeful cast.
...and we're done.
2001 - During the course of my first few Latin lessons, I am introduced for the first time to the twin wonders of Virgil and the unsplittable infinitive. My Latin teacher, Mrs Wadsworth, who is marvellous, quietly despairs. My complaints that it's all right for the Enterprise to boldly go fall on deaf ears. With some help from
balthaser, I eventually write my GCSE coursework on strong female characters in the Odyssey.Late autumn, 2005 - Some time during the course of a week involving ice-cream, ridiculous amounts of microeconomics and a brief encounter at a Balliol college bop,
foulds and I meet for the first time. The earth shifts slightly in its orbit as somewhere, somehow, Virgil begins to spin in his grave.Trinity 2007 - I am introduced to the wonder that is the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society. My first play is Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Inanimate Body, in which
foulds and I both play title roles. During my illustrious career as a corpse, I am punched, kicked, dropped, hit on the head with a baguette and have red wine poured into my eyes. It is probably the best week of my life.On the last night of the show, I realise that roles so peculiarly suited to my lack of acting talent are likely to be few and far between, and begin to make discreet enquiries as to how exactly one writes one of these script-type things. It is brought to my attention that now
arifirh is about to leave the country, foulds needs a co-writer on the Aeneid.(The script as it stood at this point had been written by an army of midsummer-mad classicists, geeks and Oules, me included, over seventy-two hours that nearly killed
foulds. It was also at this point still a musical.) Nevertheless, I raise my hand and say "me, me." This may well prove to be a turning point in life.
Summer 2007 - Packing up my whole life into a couple of memory sticks and a Primark bag, I go to India in search of a spiritual experience. I don't find one exactly, but I do make an epic journey from Delhi to Kalka to Solan to Jammu to Vaishno Devi, on foot and barefoot for the last twenty-eight kilometres, and find myself quite literally on a mountain on top of the world.
Recovering over the days that follow, I sit on a porch swing looking down into the valley and idly scribble on the first draft of the Aeneid I've seen. The days are pleasant and cool and I eat a lot of Himachal cherries whilst writing about Aeneas and Dido. I'm very reluctant to go back down to Delhi, and when I do, I leave the draft behind me.
This became known as the "draft-Iona-left-on-a-mountain-in-Kashmir" version. Not strictly accurate, as I actually left it in Solan, but it did indeed get left somewhere vaguely improbable and even now as we speak there may be a successful production being mounted in Himachal Pradesh.
Michaelmas 2007 - the OULES play for this term is Aladdin, a pantomime featuring a whole bunch of new Oules. My sole role in this production is as Thief No. 7, but in the background, the Aeneid rolls on like a juggernaut. By the end of term, we're on Version 12.0, no longer with any songs, and waiting only for the approval of the committee.
At the Aladdin cast party, I am drunkenly telling somebody about something when I'm suddenly aware that my feet are no longer touching the ground.
foulds picks me up and twirls me joyfully around the garden below a starry sky and yells, "We did it, we did it!" The committee approve. In the morning we are both ludicrously hungover.
Hilary 2008 - By the first week of term, we have the final version, which turns out to be draft 15.0, and by the second week, we have a cast. They are beautiful and ridiculously talented. People read the script and laugh in the right places. All seems well, excluding the part where we don't have a venue.
By fifth week, we have a venue. We also have a cheesegrater costume, a pantomime horse called Monty, a poster design featuring four stick figures and a lot of digital paint, a length of tumble dryer hosing, the Sword of Troy, and an enormous courgette.
The script is still being edited sporadically, but we're pretty much settled on version 15.0, which has more gags than the original, but nevertheless follows the original plot until round about book 3, where Dido does not kill herself but, rather, leads the Carthaginian army over the Alps with an army of elephants. (Said elephant is Monty, only wrapped in grey fur with tumble dryer hosing for a trunk. We got it off eBay.)
The cast are glorious, and gloriously genderbent. Aeneas and Dido are both women, Juno and the Sibyl are played by men. The Trojan army is composed of women in corsetry, with swords. Turnus, prince of the Latins, is a woman and says "woof!" a lot, there is a deathless romance between a cheese and a cheesegrater in the Underworld. We also make a lot of people out balloons. Both Lavinia and Helen are made of balloons and string (and dresses from Primark). Storing both inflatable people and cuddly sheep in his room is, by this point, giving
foulds the sort of reputation he probably doesn't want.One of the stage directions reads "omnes exeunt, and take everything off." The cast are inclined to take this far too literally.
The weekend between sixth and seventh,
amchau comes to visit, and she, Maria, shimgray and I spend a joyously odd day walking the eight miles to Abingdon in search of pick 'n' mix. In the evening, there is rum, six square metres of fabric, and a lot of marker pens. I sit and drink as Maria depicts (a version of) the ancient Mediterranean in primary colours: complete with the Frog of Doom, a Cyclops, a Minotaur, a half-pig-half-man monster eating Margaret Thatcher.Seventh week: the dress rehearsal, which is not remotely in the right order. We are working on swordfights and beginning to buy props. We now have a Carthaginian blogosphere - a football with "LJ" on it - and a bottle of almond wine which I insist on labelling "[K+][CN]-", because I have no sense of humour.
The first performance is on Wednesday of eighth week. Unlocking the theatre is an impressive moment. I think we were all very much taken by it.
foulds admitted later that he'd taken to declaiming lines from the Iliad off the stage in the low lights, and I eventually found myself lying flat on my back on the stage looking up at the lights and the beams and absorbing, and being absorbed by, silence and space. Directing, I said at the time, lying there with absinthe_shadow in my peripheral vision, is new for me. I'm wary of, impressed by, people who can draw and direct and take pictures, take their tools and map out the world in visual arts, because for me only prose is easy, it's the only thing that really draws the world around me into easy shapes, easy lines to follow. (This might be why I feel particularly crazy when I haven't written for a while.)But, I said. This is not an artistic endeavour. OULES' twin noble objectives - making money for charity and making people laugh. This is not something I have ever done before, or may perhaps ever do again. But right here, right now, in this dark space, with the lights above me and the man-made resonance around me, I get it. I get why people do this. I get why it's important.
absinthe_shadow, who had been cast as every non-speaking part in the play - Dido's handmaiden, the entire Latin army and Agamemnon and his Enormous Courgette - treated this monologue with much more patience than it deserved. Thursday of eighth week, the second performance.
lilka sends me to inform my esteemed co-director that she got the Euripides joke with Helen being inflatable. I have never seen him so happy.Friday night, the last performance. The audience is filled with people I know.
arifirih is back in the country, and keen to be in the play. I put him in as the middle head of Cerberus. Looking at them all standing there together, Maria demands to make up the three-headed guard-dog of the Underworld as the members of Kiss. Armed with eyeliner, she disappears. There are ominous growling sounds from the direction of the green room. About ten minutes in, after I've played my own bit-part ("I am Diana, goddess of plagues, chastity and animal rights!") I have a sudden realisation and bounce barefoot on top of
foulds. He looks somewhat startled. "It's out of our hands!" I said, with complete lack of profundity. Hiding in the wings, we sat and watched the show.And you know what? It was delightful. The audience laughed in all the right places, the cast went off on gleeful impromptu speeches about bananas, ad-libbing their way around such disasters as Lavinia's head bursting, we hid and took pictures and laughed.
wadiekin was a truly delightful Aeneas, as we always knew she would be. In the last scene of the play, Virgil stumbled forwards with several hundred plastic swords through her, and from the audience, sebastienne's voice drifted clearly up: "The author really is dead!"At the end, the walkdown went without too many hitches - the last page of my script was pinned with instructions to the back of a flat - and somehow or other,
foulds and I were being called up to take a bow and accept the gift of two bottles of gin from our grinning, gleeful cast....and we're done.
no subject
We did it! You missed out all sorts of twirling!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
The only bit of the Aeneid that I've read is most of Book IV, where unfortunately, Dido does kill herself.
no subject