Greek To Me
Classic Greek Myths retold with originality and insight
Grades 6-12
Each performance will include Theseus & The Minotaur. The rest of the program
will consist of a changeable selection of stories such as the race of Atalanta and Hippomenes; Arion the Harpist and his adventure with the dolphins; the quest of Perseus; the heart-longing of Tithonus; the pride of Arachne; the all-consuming greed of Erysichthon; the folly of King Midas and others.
Theseus & the Minotaur Video:
The collection of stories we now refer to as the Greek Myths were born of the spoken word and gained a lasting form with the invention of writing.
Before they became the property of the literary tradition they were the product of the oral tradition.
For thousands of years these stories lived on the breath of storytellers being composed afresh with each retelling.
The culture of the spoken word is fleet-footed as Hermes and as protean as Proteus. This living chaos of many voices and localities begat the cosmos of the enduring Greek opus. Ever since they were captured in the written form, scholars and philosophers
have examined them and sought to unravel their meaning. Unlike Theseus in the labyrinth, however, they were never able to follow the thread back through the mercurial era of the spoken word. In that time stories flew on the wings of the muse and migrated throughout the Mediterranean. From the seaports of Crete to the courts of Mycenae to the valley of Arcadia, the stories gathered in size and complexity. Rolling through all the local deities of the scattered Greek city-states they formed the larger pantheon of Olympian Gods and Goddesses and told of the coming together of many disparate peoples.
Although their original purpose or ritual significance rests with their first tellers, they continue to offer new insights on the human condition.