In 2011, a group of Drama, English, and Classics graduates from Royal Holloway, University of London created a new show based on the ancient Greek myth of Electra. The group wanted to make something about the experience of surviving as a woman in a patriarchal world by playing with the similarities and differences between that mythic world and our own real one. The next year, the show was redeveloped and put on again in London, and the group became By Jove.
Originally conceived as a playful ensemble of myth(re)makers keen to expose the inequities of the present through stories from the past – we were inspired by groups such as Kneehigh and the Théâtre du Soleil – By Jove made eight new shows between 2012 and 2021. We reimagined Shakespearean protagonists to speak to queer, Black lives and the complexities of women in positions of power. We staged new encounters with violent women of myth and history, moving beyond the usual tropes invoked by these figures. And, in our most beloved show, we had a lot of fun with Jane Austen, sending up Pride and Prejudice and its legacy, feminist and not so feminist. (We must have been doing something right: in the years that followed, concepts we explored reappeared in big shows at the Liverpool Everyman, Manchester Royal Exchange, and even in the West End!) Throughout our time making this work, we noticed a change: what began as studio work in fringe theatre venues moved to installations in places that very much weren’t theatres, seeking out those places’ local communities to share in what we made. There were broken toes, wounded cellos, and a near miss with a bailiff coming to call on one of the venues, but we learned a lot on the way.
In 2018 we started making what turned out to be By Jove’s last show. We had returned to Electra and her tragic family, this time to think about their queerness. Our shows take time to make as we develop them between long periods of writing and reflection and bursts of rehearsal room time. On this occasion, a pandemic came along just as the show looked like it was heading to the final stages. All the many bits of writing and music and choreography had nowhere to go, so after some initial experiments we pivoted to the digital, creating an online installation that featured all that work and more. Premiering ten years after our first outing with Electra and co, we realised that in some ways the piece was ten years in the making. When we were seeking a name for that work, one day our brilliant artistic associate Alexander ‘Woody’ Woodward said, ‘you know, I think this is our gentlest piece of work so far.’ And there it was – The Gentlest Work.
The pandemic is far from over, we know, but as lockdowns ended and ‘normal’ life tried to be resumed, we gradually came to the realisation that By Jove’s journey finished with The Gentlest Work – we weren’t the same people we had been in 2011. But we still wanted to make art together. Back then, we were recent graduates, filled with righteous rage and a desire to burn it all down. A decade on and with a little more life experience, plus an identity now fully professional, our rage was still there but transformed by a desire to do something a little more loving, a little more gentle – we still wanted to burn down unjust systems of oppression, but we also wanted to find ways of creating new, kinder worlds.
Electra and her family are haunted by creatures called Furies – feminine spirits of vengeance and guilt who pursue those who’ve murdered their loved ones. At the end of the family’s seemingly endless cycle of violent revenge, these Furies are transformed into something new – although still terrifying, they become a little more gentle. In our shows based on these characters, we echoed the voices of many feminist and queer thinkers who have said this ending is a bad compromise, another way for patriarchy to flourish while women are disempowered. If that was the case in ancient Greece, we hope that in our very different world we can do things differently, pursuing our mission with the same tenacious fury but tempered now by a desire for a world that is a little more gentle.
This is what I predict:
these Terrors will endure but under their gaze there will be a way to thrive;
they may come to offer you a gentleness if, in return, you too treat them gently;
won’t that be glorious?
From The Gentlest Work; text adapted from Aeschylus’ Eumenides