Metamorphoses Play: A Play - Softcover

"With its emphases on love, loss and the transforming powers of memory and the imagination . . . the production has been reducing calloused New Yorkers to sobs." --New York Times "Writer-director Mary Zimmerman's lovely, deeply affecting work . . . recaptures the primal allure of the theater. . . . It shows that theater can provide not just escape but sometimes a glimpse of the divine." --Time "Funny one moment, achingly sorrowful the next, Metamorphoses somehow manages both to lift you out of the moment you're living in and speak to it with piercing directness." --Wall Street Journal

This play is based on Ovid's 15-volume work of transformation myths. Positioned in and around a large pool on the stage, the characters enact Zimmerman's adaptations of Ovid's tales, juxtaposing the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image. The tone of the drama likewise echoes the themes of change and contrast, from the humour of Phaeton's therapy session to the tragedy of Midas and his daughter. The volume contains a production history, the play script, and, because the visual aspect of the play is important, photographs from some of its past productions.