15 Heroines E-Book

Various

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 135

Beschreibung

Two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Ovid gave voice to a group of inspirational women – queens, sorcerers, pioneers, poets and politicians – in a series of fictional letters called The Heroines. They were the women left in the wake of those swaggering heroes of classical mythology: Theseus, Hercules, Ulysses, Jason, Achilles… Now, drawing inspiration from Ovid, fifteen leading female and non-binary British playwrights dramatise the lives of these fifteen heroines in a series of new monologues for the twenty-first century. 15 Heroines was commissioned by Jermyn Street Theatre, London, and first performed – online and in three parts – in November 2020, presented in partnership with Digital Theatre. This edition of all fifteen monologues is introduced by directors – Adjoa Andoh, Tom Littler and Cat Robey – and writer, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes. The War tells the untold stories of the Trojan War: Oenone, Hermione, Laodamia, Briseis and Penelope, written by Lettie Precious, Sabrina Mahfouz, Charlotte Jones, Abi Zakarian and Hannah Khalil. The Desert is about women going their own way: Deianaria, Canace, Hypermestra, Dido and Sappho, written by April De Angelis, Isley Lynn, Chinonyerem Odimba, Stella Duffy and Lorna French. The Labyrinth is about the women who encountered Jason and Theseus: Ariadne, Phaedra, Phyllis, Hypsipyle and Medea, written by Bryony Lavery, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Samantha Ellis, Natalie Haynes and Juliet Gilkes Romero.

Leseprobe

Contents

Programme

Introduction

THE WAR

Oenone: The Cost of Red Wine by Lettie Precious

Laodamia: Our Own Private Love Island by Charlotte Jones

Hermione: Will You? by Sabrina Mahfouz

Briseis: Perfect Myth Allegory by Abi Zakarian

Penelope: Watching the Grass Grow by Hannah Khalil

THE DESERT

Deianaria: The Striker by April De Angelis

Dido: The Choice by Stella Duffy

Canace: A Good Story by Isley Lynn

Hypermestra: Girl on Fire by Chinonyerem Odimba

Sappho: I See You Now by Lorna French

THE LABYRINTH

Ariadne: String by Bryony Lavery

Phaedra: Pity the Monster by Timberlake Wertenbaker

Phyllis: I’m Still Burning by Samantha Ellis

Hypsipyle: Knew I Should Have by Natalie Haynes

Medea: The Gift by Juliet Gilkes Romero

Copryright Information

Introduction

Natalie Haynes

Ovid was a magpie of Greek myth, as we see in his epic poem, Metamorphoses. He collects myths and retells them, makes them new for a Roman audience, pegging them to a unifying theme: the act of transformation. But in the Heroides, an earlier collection, I always feel that it is Ovid who has been transformed. This most masculine of poets – Ovid literally wrote the guidebook on how to seduce women, the Ars Amatoria – puts on the persona of one wronged woman after another, and gives them voice.

And what voices they are. This Penelope doesn’t wait patiently for her long-absent husband to return. She writes to him and tells him to hurry, reminds him what she’s been through, how long she has had to endure. The Penelope of Homer’s Odyssey is famously enigmatic: when we first meet her, even her face is veiled. But Ovid’s creation is prickly, hurt, and intensely human.

His Ariadne is full of righteous anger, depicted with Ovid’s trademark sly wit. She is furious that Theseus has abandoned her while she slept on the island of Naxos, terrified of what might become of her if she is attacked by a passing seal. Ovid’s Dido is in silent conversation with her earlier portrayal in Virgil’s Aeneid; his Medea interrogates her earlier incarnation in Euripides’ eponymous play. Ovid doesn’t demand that you know all these other plays and poems, but he does want you to notice that he does.

The women are writing letters (the collection is also called The Epistles) to their absent menfolk. They are trying to achieve reconciliation: Ariadne wants Theseus to sail back and pick her up, Penelope wants Ulixes to stop delaying and come home. Serial bad husband Jason is demanded back by two separate letter-writers: his first partner, Hypsipyle, and then his second, Medea.

The characterisation of each woman tells us a great deal about how her letter will be received (only in a later addition does Ovid gift us a few replies from the absent men). One can only imagine Jason slinking away at light speed to avoid the fury he manages to provoke in each of his wives. Phaedra is so filled with shame expressing illicit emotions, we have no doubt her letter will be read with scorn. Deianira sounds hopeless as she beseeches Hercules to come home: we can guess there will be no happy ending here.

The least-known women provide some of the most intriguing letters. Oenone, the wife of Paris, tries to maintain her dignity when her husband has become the most famous adulterer in history. Canace is full of regret at her incestuous affair, certain it must result in her imminent death. Phyllis doesn’t know what has happened to the missing Demophoon, but she knows that his silence can’t be good news for her.

Ovid’s genius is to bring each relationship into the light and spin it slowly for us to see. We have only one perspective – one voice – and yet we often find we can see the causes of the crisis more clearly than the heroine who shares it with us. There are few happy endings in these poems: Penelope will get her husband back eventually, but Ovid makes us see that the twenty-year wait has been a tragedy in itself: her youth is gone, and with it, her fertility.

Only one woman seems to have an uncomplicated, fully reciprocated love, and that is Laodamia. She pines for her young husband, Protesilaos. And, as Ovid tells it, Protesilaos clearly loves her as much as she loves him. But even this couple will not be happily reunited: he is the first Greek to die at Troy, at the hands of Hector.

Perhaps the most remarkable inclusion among Ovid’s heroines is Sappho, the Greek lyric poet. Although the distinction between mythological characters and historical ones is a relatively modern concern (for the ancients, myth was history which had happened longer ago), there is something quite odd about stumbling over the letter of a poet after letters from women who could call gods their fathers and summon dragons to their aid. But Sappho was so opaque that she feels like a myth: we know almost nothing certain about her at all. It is typical of Ovid that he plays around with her sexuality and its connection with her creativity: she is intensely prolific when she’s in love with women, crippled by writer’s block now she has fallen for a man.

Ovid’s Heroides is one of the most extraordinary collections of poetry to survive from the ancient world. Classicists are used to having to hunt for the women in Latin poems: to infer what we can about Catullus’ girlfriend Lesbia, or Horace’s beloved Chloe. We pounce on details, and try to build a complex portrait from the smallest brushstrokes. And in his love poetry, Ovid is much like his contemporaries, perhaps even more so. His use of irony is so artful that it is virtually impossible to conclude anything very much about the real man from the literary version of himself he presents.

And yet, the Heroides tell us something undeniable: Ovid cares about writing fully rounded, multidimensional women. Although he was a man of his time (a time much more patriarchal than our own), we have this in common with him, at least.

THE WAR

OENONE: The Cost of Red Wine

Lettie Precious

LAODAMIA: Our Own Private Love Island

Charlotte Jones

HERMIONE: Will You?

Sabrina Mahfouz

BRISEIS: Perfect Myth Allegory

Abi Zakarian

PENELOPE: Watching the Grass Grow

Hannah Khalil

OENONE

The Cost of Red Wine

Lettie Precious

Character

OENONE

OENONE

Ann Ogbomo

Director

Adjoa Andoh

Designer

Jessie McKenzie

Lighting Designer

Johanna Town

Composer/Sound Designer

Nicola Chang

OENONE to Paris.

Are all men like this?

Are you all thieves of hearts and monsters who crush them: savages put on this earth to make a mockery of love?

Tell me, Paris, don’t look away, I want to see your eyes.

Beat.

(Tenderly/pleading.) Please…

Beat.

What is it about her that is so different from me? So enticing?

Her bed cannot be warmer than mine, surely? Mmh?

Her arms?

Her meals cannot dance better on your palate, or mix well with that red wine you love so… red wine rich with flavours and history, or have you changed that too?

Scoffs.

Beat.

Of course you have, you now drink white wine, don’t you? You drink her…

I hope you know her grapes and spices will not leave you drunk with a passion as deep as ours.

I’m woman enough, aren’t I?

…full-breasted, thick-thighed and curved in the right places? What is it about her?

What does she have that I do not? Ah,

I know.

We know our men well, men dark as us, born from the same roots.

They change when they get a little success, a little status.

We know that look in your brown eyes, the gaze over the horizon that sees greener grass.

Itchy feet

Fluttering hearts.

Cock hard for her skin tone, Cock hard for her pale eyes, Cock hard for a new status,

A fetish born from your enslaved minds.

Your prize,

Your, your, your trophy.

All eyes on you!

All eyes on you!

Isn’t that right, Paris?

She is a measure of your success in the world.

You have finally made it to the stars.

You, you, fuckwit!

Are you just going to sit there and not say anything? Mmh?

Are you?

I know why you love her

She erases your past.

You fool.

You hate yourself don’t you Paris?

Some people from the tribe think you do,

‘Nymphs belong with creatures who look like them’, they say; And they do say it, Paris, they really do, In their houses,

Around dinner tables, Around campfires,

And yet here you are, Paris, mixing with the types of Helen.

What sort of name is Helen anyway?

Is my name not good enough

Too strange on your tongue now; an outcast to what is accepted as normal in the category of names?

You make me sick!

Beat.

Shit, sorry, sorry, I don’t mean that. Fuck.

Don’t give me that look. That look.

Yes,

That one…

I get it.

(Rhetorical question.) You see yourself reflected in me, don’t you, Paris?

You see what society tells you to see.

Perhaps that is why you left.

Is it?

Men like you leave for the horizon, turn your backs on the nests we’ve built you with our bare hands.

Our callused hands, Tired hands…

I’ve seen the children she bears, they are beautiful, a concoction of you and her…

Perhaps when you closed your eyes while we slept, you imagined how ours would look; perhaps the thought gave you nightmares. Perhaps because you don’t see the beauty in you, you assumed the world would not see the beauty in our children.

Is that why you’ve left me for her?

(Irritated.) Will you stop for a second!

Enlighten me, you son of a bitch! man whore!

I hate you!

I hate you!

(Gently.) But, but, I love you…

For fuck’s sake!

I suppose I sound bitter. Do I?

Do I sound bitter, Paris? You know what?

(Childishly.) If that, that Helen was here,

I’d wring her neck, pull at her hair, the very hair I imagine you stroke in tender moments, while you cudd–

(To herself.) Why am I torturing myself?

You have turned me into this, this, person I do not recognise.

I just want to let my fists have a field day on your chest, beat it with all my might and leave bruises I know will heal, unlike the ones you’ve left in me.

No, no! (Warning.) DO – NOT – touch me!

Prolonged silence.

I gave you that on your last birthday, No, take it, I have no use for it,

It’ll only serve as a reminder… (Sigh.)

Does she know I built you piece by piece? carefully, delicately,

Tell her next time you enjoy a couple’s dinner, Tell her,

Tell her you are the fruits of my labour she now enjoys. You disgust me!

You motherfucker!

You motherfucking fucker! Do you feel pity for me?

Well don’t alright.

Don’t.

Prolonged silence.

We bought that together on our third anniversary,

God we talked all night about everything and nothing. I miss our conversations…

Do you remember them, Paris? Our conversations?

Perhaps your high status has stolen your memories, and buried them in roasted quail and fish eggs.

I wish I could hear you speak now…

Does your tongue curl differently because you sit around a bigger table with the rich?

Do you pronounce your Ts and Rs now? I bet you bathe in milk too; too good to dip your hands in river waters because the white of the milk makes your skin smooth.

Isn’t that right, Paris?

(Dismay.) Oh my, you want to take that too? Wow, you know what?

Take it, No, no, no! Take it…

After all, I made you that coat, remember? Stayed up all night…

(Scoffs.) What, what if I, I iron my mane to look like hers, stop eating to look slender, hide from the sun so my skin pales, and, and with enough lemon juice on my green-coloured blue-black skin, anything is possible,

I can be just as pale, so, my kinfolk say.

Would you come back then?

Pause for thought.

I hate myself.

I hate me!

I hate (Quietly.) Men.

Perhaps women are better suited for me now?

I don’t think I could ever go through this again.

You wept and saw my eyes filled with tears:

The elm’s not smothered, by the vine, more closely than I, your arms entwined with my neck we both mixed our grief and tears together how your tongue could scarcely bear to say, ‘Farewell!’ our last dance.

I didn’t imagine that, did I?

Come, sit with me for a minute, sit with me on our hammock like we used to, Just one last time,

(Vulnerably.) Please…

You know, Momma used to tell me, I come from gods and goddesses,

Tribes and music way deep in Africa’s lands.

She would say my forest-green skin means I belong to the earth, to the rivers.

I, nymph, I, Oenone, wounded, complain of you.

Pause for thought, deep sigh.

I’m leaving,

Don’t act so surprised,

My bags are already packed,

I’m leaving the chaos for the sand dunes of the Kalahari, You know I’ve always wanted to go

Oh, I wish you’d come…

We’d lie under the stars as they brighten the darkness of the night.

You’d love it, Paris… you really would,

I’d let you suckle on my naked breasts to comfort you, to protect you like how my sisters have protected men like you when they have shot you down like animals, enslaved you, when they have beaten you down, killed your spirit.

Do you remember that, You dumb arsehole!

God, I love you so much, You piece of shit.

Kiss me,

This one last time, It isn’t betrayal,

I was your wife first, (Desperately.) Kiss me… (Dismissively.) Fine, Don’t!

I’m just…

Part of me wants to burn all your clothes, your home then, after destroying everything you own, cradle you sweetly as if you were a newborn child, (Pleading, whispers.) Please come back home.

Don’t tell me, you don’t want to hear it, You owe me this!

After everything I have sacrificed, you owe me closure, I trusted you…

I healed you…

Alas for me, that love’s not curable with herbs!

Should I blame my mother?

Should all women blame their mothers for what they let men do to them?

Lessons my mother passed on to me from hers… generation to generation…

Is her heartbreak therefore not mine?

Heartbreak from all the men who have loved and left her; as you have left me, Paris?

If so, then she bears the cross of both teacher and villain, all mothers do, and we follow faultlessly in their footsteps, matching every footprint left behind in the sand.

Pause for thought.

I don’t know what I’ll do now, or when I’ll leave,

But I do know,

After you have gone, Closed the door behind you,

I’ll scribble these words on scrolls, In notebooks,

My hands will be mine and hers, My pen will be mine and hers, When I say her,

I DO – NOT – mean Helen

I mean every woman who has ever lived,

I mean every woman whose heart has ever been broken,

I will write the words spoken by many women who have cried into their hands, felt unworthy when men like you left, women who have given their all and wept under covers while night became day and day became night,

Yes, those women who have received less from the men they have loved,

I will heal. They will heal.

We will hold men like you accountable,