Cambridge
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2024/25 Season on Spotlight on The Odyssey
Arts and Entertainment
August 10, 2024
From: American Repertory TheaterSpotlight on The Odyssey
Placing a Contemporary Lens on the Epic Tale
Acclaimed writer and adaptor Kate Hamill (Sense & Sensibility, Vanity Fair, Dracula) turns a contemporary lens on Homer’s Odyssey. Directed by Princess Grace Award winner Shana Cooper (Julius Caesar, Terra Firma, The Taming of the Shrew), this new play reimagines the stories of both Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, and asks how we can learn to embrace healing and forgiveness in order to end cycles of violence and revenge.
Developing a New Play
Photos from the 2023 Workshop
The A.R.T. held a developmental workshop of The Odyssey last year in Cambridge. See a photos of Hamill, Cooper, and the workshop cast at work on the adaptation in preparation for its world premiere in February 2025.
Homer Wrote the Odyssey; Hamill Rewrote It
Cambridge Day
Hamill says workshops for the epic never fail to draw parallels to contemporary conflicts—as long as there is violence in the world, the Odyssey will be relevant… “There’s lots of swearing in this play, there’s sex in this play, there’s certainly violence in this play, because I want it to feel real to people who are in combat,” Hamill told Cambridge Day in October 2023.
Taming The Taming of the Shrew Under a Tent
Shana Cooper’s 2018 Production
A New York Times Critic’s Pick
Ms. Cooper reorients the play through her psychological framing of the action. Like Waze for Shakespeare, she offers an alternative route through the usual terrain. The key to her interpretation is that Kate and Petruchio are (as she writes in a program note) “radical souls.”