Happy New Year, everyone! As we proceed into 2020, it seems as good a time as any to take a look back at what we achieved as a company in the 2010s. Although we weren’t established at the very beginning of the decade, we produced work in nine of the ten years of the decade, and are pretty impressed with how far we’ve come! Time for a trip down memory lane…
2011
In 2011 By Jove was formed out of a collaboration on the annual Classical Play at Royal Holloway, University of London. With our production Electra-Orestes, a new version of the Oresteia that sought to explore why Electra never got the closure that Orestes did, we proved to each other that our approach to Greek myth went well beyond the traditional.
2012
Sticking with the theme of Orestes, our second engagement with his myths came in 2012, with The Women Screaming Beyond. We were lucky enough to receive the Royal Holloway Next Stage Award to support the production, which was more experimental than Electra-Orestes.
2013
2013 saw the second incarnation of our much-beloved pantomime, Pride & Prejudice the Panto. This image is actually from the 2015 version – the panto proved so popular with our audiences that it was revived twice after the initial run in 2012, each time with updated pop songs and topical jokes. The show was our experiment in whether we could be political and funny at the same time, and the reactions from audiences suggested we definitely could!
2014
Our first engagement with the Shakespearean canon, Othello, was staged in 2014. In order to highlight further the layers of prejudice facing Othello and Desdemona, we cast them as a lesbian couple. The production was atmospheric and powerful, featuring a dialogue between Shakespeare’s text and new writing.
2015
In 2015, we staged our first adaptation of the Bacchae, titled Before They Told You What You Are, at Royal Holloway’s Play! Festival and as part of the Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World conference. This piece sowed the seeds of our methods on our current Orestes Project, in that the text was written collaboratively and the performance devised in a way that became emblematic of By Jove’s ways of working. Also, soil!
2016
Our three-show Season of Violent Women began in 2016 with Margaret of Anjou, a play adapted from Shakespeare, bringing the she-wolf of France out from under the shadows of English kings. The season allowed us to really come into our own as a company and begin working fully in the signature style already visible in the previous year’s work. Margaret employed striking visuals, and was also a key example of our love of working in unconventional spaces – in this instance, the basement of an art gallery.
2017
The season concluded in 2017 with two further shows: Here She Comes and Medea (pictured). Here She Comes was our second engagement with the Bacchae, this time focusing even more closely on Agave and experimenting with the spoken word form. Our new version of Medea saw the title character played by three actors portraying the different facets of a complex character who goes beyond being simply a murderer of children. Lyrical text abounded in both shows, plus: more soil!
2018
After the three major shows of 2016/17, 2018 was a quieter year during which we regrouped, reflected, and planned where we wanted to go next. But we were also able to take part in two poetry events: first Homer’s Women (pictured), an evening of new poetry interspersed with readings from Lattimore’s translation of Homer’s Iliad, giving new space to the women and goddesses of that epic poem. Then later in the year members performed new poetry in Weaving Women’s Stories, an event that was part of the Being Human Festival and focused on the ways in which textile work and women’s narratives mingle in ancient and modern times.
2019
From late 2018 and through 2019 we’ve been focused on developing our latest and perhaps most ambitious work to date: the Orestes Project. A return to our roots in the Oresteia, the project is a crystallisation of the style and ways of working that we’ve developed since 2011, as well as an extension into new modes and experiments. It’s already shaping up to be something really exciting, and we hope to bring you more opportunities to see this work in progress before too long.
2020… and onward!
If you’ve supported By Jove in any way through the 2010s – coming to a show, supporting our Patreon, or even just liking our tweets – thank you! 2020 holds some exciting plans for us, and we’ll be keeping you updated here, so check back for the latest. Until then, run into the woods with us and raise a glass to Dionysus and (nearly) a decade of old stories in new ways with By Jove!
