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Ever since I first read Homer’s The Odyssey, I was instantly fascinated by the scale and depth of it, the sheer richness of the characters and landscapes. Three characters, in particular, kept troubling me. Not the usual suspects! Scylla, Charybdis and the Sirens—or the Monsters—only appear briefly in Book 12 of The Odyssey and in various other myths. But the more I was reading about them, the more I felt like they had such a thrilling story to tell.
And this was the start of Fabulous Creatures. A show about these mythical female monsters: their transformation, their punishment, their sisterhood, their survival instinct… and their murderous instincts.
In this hybrid of a play we not only get to meet these creatures and hear their stories, but also get to go on a journey with them. I won’t disclose too much about what their top secret mission is (they are after all some of antiquity’s most renowned killers!), but they will meet another famous female killer along their way: Clytemnestra.
I do believe in theatre’s power to tell new stories (or old stories in a new way!), its power to re-shape preconceived ideas, to mould opinions and to ultimately change social order.
Scylla, Charybdis, Siren and Clytemnestra stand for women who were punished, ostracised and vilified for reasons that were quite absurd or short-sighted. I wonder, just because someone has been assigned the label ‘ugly’ or ‘evil’, is that good enough reason for us to continue perceiving or treating them as such?
Looking forward to welcoming audiences to our Monstrous Cabaret and to the fabulous world of these creatures!
Emily Louizou
Artistic Director
Collide Theatre
Photo by Mariza Kapsabeli