On Friday 26th July, we hosted two sharings from the work we produced during a week of research and development. This work was generously funded by the Arts Council England, the Institute of Classical Studies, William Jackson Food Group, and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. This work was written and devised collaboratively by the company. Cast: Storyteller 1/Electra/Artemis – SJ Brady Storyteller 2/Orestes – Marcus Bell Storyteller 3/Pylades – Alexander Woodward Storyteller Read more

Way back in October we announced our new project in development: a retelling of the story of Orestes and Pylades through a queer lens. Since then, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to get the project on its feet, from narrowing down themes and concepts, through beginning to generate text, to seeing the shape of the final production begin to form. In mid-April, we held two days of research and development where we brought together Read more

To celebrate LGBTQ+ history month, we’ve thrown the spotlight on the ancient world, showcasing stories and figures that resonate with queer identities and life experiences today. True, it is impossible to exactly map our contemporary world onto the past – particularly when the gap is pushing at least two thousand years – but these little gems prove that queerness in all its iridescent spectrum is as old as human history. L: The OG Lesbian When Read more

Now we’re in January 2019, it seems like the perfect time to look back at what By Jove did over the last 12 months. 2018 was an exciting year for us, and despite not staging any full shows last year, we still made a lot of exciting creative work and took steps towards what might be our biggest project yet… Homer’s Women Our first event of the year was ‘Homer’s Women’, held in March at UCL. Read more

On Friday 16th November, members of By Jove took part in a spoken word evening, which was part of a series of events called ‘Weaving Women’s Stories’, organised by Dr Emma Bridges and Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts as part of the Being Human Festival. For this event, our poets wrote new works engaging with women in ancient myth for whom weaving was an intrinsic part of their stories and a way that their voices could Read more

After a long time with our lips sealed, we’re really pleased to let you in on something we’ve got in development. We’re bringing you an entirely new show that takes a look at queer identities, community building, and the politics of storytelling – all via the Greek mythological story of Orestes and Pylades. We’re very excited (if that’s the right word) to be returning to Orestes’ slightly complicated family after Electra-Orestes (2011) and The Women Read more

We’re happy to be taking part in a special one-off event as part of the 2018 Being Human Festival of the Humanities! Organised by the Institute of Classical Studies, Weaving Women’s Stories is a series of three events exploring the connections between storytelling and textile-making in women’s lives from ancient Greece to modern London. On Friday 16th November at St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green, By Jove will host a performance of poetry and spoken word Read more

On Friday 22nd June, David Bullen and I attended the launch of the Art of Fragments network, a group promoting and exploring collaborations between artists and academics around the theme of (particularly ancient) fragments, hosted by Dr Laura Swift of the Open University and Russell Bender of the theatre company Potential Difference, and funded by the British Academy. The day was a great opportunity to share ideas and experiences around collaborations of this type, as Read more

Last night I went to see the National Theatre’s production of Macbeth. It has been described as “the worst Shakespeare production at the NT for at least a decade” (see a roundup of reviews here) – and, having now seen it for myself, it’s got me to thinking. The National Theatre has perhaps the highest profile of any single theatrical institution in the UK – the clue is in the name. That exceptional profile has Read more

In January 2018, I began teaching a course on the Homeric poems in translation at UCL. The course was designed around a lecture and seminar per week; the students learned about the background and reception of the poems in the lecture with my colleague, then were split into two groups to study the books of the Iliad in detail. The course requires a large amount of reading and interpretation of the original poem in translation, Read more