Our next mainstage production is Kore written by Gabrielle Orcha. A modern telling of the Persephone myth which runs July 9th - 24th, 2021. Our dramaturg for this show, Katie Jones, give us a bit more insight into the original Persephone myth.
The original myth of Persephone focuses mostly on her mother, Demeter, who is helpless as she sees the Lord of the Underworld, Hades, kidnap her daughter. It’s about the lengths a mother would go to save a child and the grief that comes with losing such a battle.
In this depiction, we see Demeter, on the precipice of hell, stepping her foot over the edge as she follows her the captured Persephone into the depths. As the legend goes, Persephone eats three pomegranate seeds – a staple food in the underworld – and is doomed to live there for half of each year. According to the Greeks, this is why we experience Seasons the way we do – during the Fall and Winter, Demeter is grieving, because her daughter is living with Hades. In the Spring and Summer, Persephone lives with her mother again and the sun shines, giving us warmth and beauty and food to harvest.
In Kore, the story is told from the daughter’s perspective and is set in our modern day. Her given name is Kore (which translates to young maiden in Greek) and, as she is on the precipice of change and becoming a real adult, she asks to individuate from her mother – to be called Persephone, a name of her own invention. In this story, Persephone is not a helpless victim, but a young woman deciding her own fate. There is still the conflict with her mother, Demeter, who is absolutely still willing to follow her to the ends of the earth – but the shape of this conflict is very different and is about the beauty and grief of the separation and rejoining that so many mothers and daughters experience in their lives.
Perhaps the most delightful addition to Kore is the inclusion of the witch, Hecate, played alternately by the actors portraying Demeter and Kore. Hecate is a crone, completing the archetypal cycle of this play, and she is also a healer, an instigator, a meddler and a clever witch. In the original lore, Hecate often appears as having three heads and multiple arms – a symbol that she is the maiden, mother and crone in one. She is also usually depicted carrying lanterns to light the way. Hecate appears in many Greek stories and frequently serves to present characters with a pair or trio of possible pathways, weaving her magic so that these confused souls can come to a decision by answering finding their own truths.
We hope you enjoy this modern adaptation, celebrating the universal aspects of this old myth, while asking the questions: How can this myth serve us now? What can we learn from these archetypes, about our inherent human patterns and relationships? And what does it mean when some of the core elements change?
Grab your tickets for KORE here: https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?show=124802