Doesn’t it feel like 2020 is the result of mythological Fates standing over a cauldron stirring the pot of chaos as they use their knowledge of the future to toy with and destroy human beings?
Playwright, filmmaker, and performance artist Keegon Schuett certainly uses mythology to explain our fate at the moment in his original new work.
“This play is about how difficult it is to be isolated,” says Schuett of Goddess of Tears, which was written over the course of two months within quarantine.
Facebook/Voices of the South
As tears go by — Niobe is the Goddess of Tears.
The play reimagines Greek gods and goddesses as overwhelmed people working in the digital Cloud of Olympus and isolated from each other. Each has their own staggering department, but maybe none as staggering as Niobe, the goddess of tears, forced to approve or deny access to every single teardrop on Earth. Niobe cannot cry herself and goes on a journey to rediscover herself and her own fate.
“It is hard to make theater in Zoom,” Schuett says. “It’s just weird. But in those restrictions, there are freedoms.”
One of those freedoms is access to actors from all over the world. This performance features a team of actors from Memphis, New York, and Chicago collaborating across time zones. Some familiar names will be in this Cloud of Olympus, including Alice Rainey Berry, Ron Gephart, Christina Hernandez, Jenny Odle Madden, Gloria Swansong, and others.
Will Niobe conquer her passionless immortality? Let us see what the Fates have wrought.
Goddess of Tears, Online via Zoom from Voices of the South, voicesofthesouth.org, Saturday, Sept. 26, 7 p.m., $7-$20.