Play by Mary Zimmerman
Metamorphoses is a play by the American playwright and director Mary Zimmerman, adapted from the classic Ovid poem "Metamorphoses". The play premiered in 1996 as "Six Myths" at Northwestern University and later the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago. The play opened off-Broadway in October 2001 at the Second Stage Theatre. It transferred to Broadway on 21 February 2002 at the Circle in the Square Theatre produced by Roy Gabay and Robyn Goodman. That year it won several Tony Awards.
It was revived at the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago on 19 September 2012 and was produced in Washington, DC at the Arena Stage in 2013.
Background.
Mary Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses" is based on David R. Slavitt's free-verse translation of "The Metamorphoses of Ovid". She directed an early version of the play, "Six Myths", in 1996 at the Northwestern University Theater and Interpretation Center. Zimmerman's finished work, "Metamorphoses", was produced in 1998. 
Of the many stories told in Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses", only the introductory "Cosmogony" and the tale of Phaeton are from the first half of Ovid's "Metamorphoses". The story of Eros and Psyche is not a part of Ovid's "Metamorphoses"; it is from Lucius Apuleius' novel "Metamorphoses" —also called "The Golden Ass"—and was included in Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses" because, as Zimmerman said in an interview with Bill Moyers of Now on PBS, "I love it so much I just had to put it in." She wrote and directed "Metamorphoses" during a period of renewed interest in the life and writings of Ovid.
Other Ovid-related works published in the same decades include David Malouf's 1978 novel, "An Imaginary Life"; Christoph Ransmayr's "Die letzte Welt" (1988) ("The Last World", translated into English by John E. Woods in 1990); and Jane Alison's "The Love-Artist" (2001). Additionally, Ovid's "Metamorphoses" were translated by A.D. Melville, Allen Mandelbaum, David R. Slavitt, David Michael Hoffman and James Lasdun, and Ted Hughes—in 1986, 1993, 1994, 1994, and 1997, respectively.
Plot synopsis.
The play is staged as a series of vignettes. The order is as follows:
The stories as they are told in the classic Ovid tales:
Plot analysis.
David Rush notes that in this case, the plot is the playwright's deliberate selection and arrangement of the incidents and actions. When "Metamorphoses" is not a conventional arrangement and has a non-linear point of view.
A linear dramatic action may be set as with the following steps:
These set of events are described as being of a well-made play and follow a linear set of actions. First one event, then the next and the following one after that and so on and so forth. "Metamorphoses" does not follow this laid out set of steps and no single analysis can make it follow this formula. However each of the separate stories embedded within the play is in itself a "well-made play" within a play. Each story can be easily followed and analyzed through a look at the seven parts already established. An example that can easily demonstrate and lay out the structure is the story of Erysichthon described within "Metamorphoses."
The seven elements of this story can be seen as follows:
Each of the stories told within "Metamorphoses" can be analyzed in this fashion and it is even worth noting the story of King Midas. His dramatic action can be followed over the entire length of the play for we are introduced to his story in the beginning and are not subjected to the resolution of his story until the end of the play and his story is actually the last one addressed in the play.
Character analysis.
Because of the mythic quality of the script, sometimes the players in the performance often resemble "archetypes instead of characters." Miriam Chirico describes the work as "enacting myth does not require creating a plausible character, but rather an emblematic figure who demonstrates a particular, identifiable human trait."
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is told twice, each to emphasize their individual stories and act like mirrors with reflecting stories of love and loss; the first being from Orpheus' point of view from Ovid's tale from 8 A.D., then Eurydice's tale in 1908 inspired by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Orpheus is an archetype for strong human emotion and expressing it through poetry and music. Music is related to Orpheus' ability to move only forward in time, along with his feelings and mortal love. Although they can repeat, as they do in the scene several times, they cannot turn back completely and be the same. Zimmerman includes with the line, "Is this a story about how time can only move in one direction?" to bring light to Orpheus' struggle.
Phaeton narrates his own story (not the case with most of the other stories). With the Therapist bringing a glimpse of Freudian psychoanalysis, Phaeton's relationship with his father can be seen in new ways: "the father is being asked to perform an initiation rite, to introduce his son to society, [and] to inscribe him in a symbolic order."
Because Midas frames the story at the beginning and returns at the end as a redeemed man, the play ends with a sense of optimism due to his transformation.
The character Eros, although he attains many of the traits of the more popularized Cupid, is meant to symbolize more. In the play, "A", Psyche, interprets why "Q", Eros, is presented as naked, winged, and blindfolded: he is naked to make our feelings transparent, he is winged so he might fly from person to person, and he is blindfolded to encourage us to see into each other's hearts. A, a narrator of the Eros and Psyche scene, says, "He is blind to show how he takes away our ordinary vision, our mistaken vision, that depends on the appearance of things."
Genre.
Since the "Metamorphoses" is derived from literary texts, productions of Zimmerman's may be classified in the genre of Readers Theater. According to Miriam Chirico, Readers Theater presents a narrative text to an audience, for instance a poem rather than action that follows a typical play script. Readers Theater generally follows the "presentational" form of theater, rather than representational, often relying on narrators to bring insight from an outside perspective to a character. The presentational aspect creates a direct link between the audience and the narrator. Readers Theater reduces theatrical devices, such as costumes, sets, and props, to concentrate on the story and the language. "Metamorphoses" follows these methods by using multiple narrators, who both tell and comment on the story, and language that is strongly rooted in the David R. Slavitt translation of Ovid.
Compared to classic genres, "Metamorphoses" is a hybrid containing elements of various genres, including comedy, classic tragedy, and drama, but not necessarily limited to any of them. The play borrows aspects from opera, as it uses visual and aural illusions, and achieves them in simple ways. Joseph Farrell praised Zimmerman for capturing the seriocomic elements of Ovid's tales better than in most adaptations.
Style.
Based on myths thousands of years old, Zimmerman's "Metamophoses" demonstrates their relevance and emotional truths. The play suggests that human beings haven't changed to the point of being unrecognizable nearly two thousand years later. Zimmerman has said, "These myths have a redemptive power in that they are so ancient. There's a comfort in the familiarity of the human condition." Zimmerman generally presents an objective point of view. An example is the Alcyone and Ceyx passage, when the audience learns of Ceyx's death long before Alcyone does. In terms of motifs, "Metamorphoses" is more subjective, especially related to the theme of death and love. The play promotes suggesting death as a transformation of form rather than death as an absence, which is more typical in popular Western culture.
A non-naturalistic play, "Metamorphoses" is presented as mythic rather than realistic. The use of myths essentially "lifts the individuals out of ordinary time and the present moment, and places him in "mythic time"—an ambiguous term for the timeless quality myths manifest." The setting of the play isn't limited to just one specific location. For example, the pool on stage transforms from "the luxurious swimming pool of nouveau riche Midas, the ocean in which Ceyx drowns, the food devoured by Erysichthon, Narcissus' mirror, a basin to hold Myrrha's tears, [and] the river Styx" and that the pool, like the stories transcend realistic thinking and are "suspended in space and time."
The plot is constructed as a series of vignettes, framed overall by a few narrative devices. The opening scene essentially shows the creation of the world, or Cosmogony, not only sets up the world that the following characters will live in, but the world itself. In terms of a beginning and end within the stories themselves, King Midas frames them with his story of greed at the beginning and his redemption at the last moments of the play. After being introduced as a horribly selfish man, the other stories of the play get told and mask the lack of resolution within the Midas story. Finally at the end, Midas who is "by this time long forgotten and in any case unexpected--reappears, newly from his quest" with his restored daughter, and "on this note of love rewarded and love redeemed, the play comes to an end.". Through all the vignettes that are portrayed, the audience is meant to leave not with the story of a few individuals, but rather to know the power of human transformation in all forms.
"Metamorphoses" uses a combination of presentational and representational forms, including the Vertumnus and Pomona scene, which is both acted out and tells the story of Myrrha. Representation is used as a rendition of a story. For the most part, the play follows a linear technique by having the sequence of events in each individual story follow a rational chronological timeline. The Orpheus scene strays from this, by repeating a portion of the same scene numerous times to emphasize the torment of his loss.
Zimmerman intended the play to build on a foundation of images. In a "New York Times" interview, Zimmerman said, "You're building an image, and the image starts to feed you." She said, "When I approach a text, I don't do a lot of historical reading. It's an artificial world and I treat it as an artificial world." Miriam Chirico has described Zimmerman's plays as "theater of images" and compared to the style of the director Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, and Julie Taymor. Zimmerman uses the play as a "poetic bridge between myth and modernism" by creating a hybrid of ancient Greek and modern American cultures.
"Metamorphoses" expresses general concepts and emotions, rather than focusing on individual characters.
Theme/Idea.
The central idea of "Metamorphoses" is the concept of change. To "metamorphose" means the striking change in appearance or character of something. Each story contains at least one example.
The theme of change is expressed by the play's use of water. The set includes centrally placed pool, into which characters move and leave as they are transformed. The water is used for different functions throughout "Metamorphoses", and it is described as "the most protean (lit: diverse or varied) of elements" In transforming her early version of "Metamorphoses", "Six Myths", into its final form, Zimmerman's most significant change was the addition of the central pool. According to David Ostling, Zimmerman's scenic designer, "She was looking for the changing ability of water, the instantaneous nature of it, how it could go from still to violent and back to calm."
Zimmerman's play also examines the causes of change in persons. What can make a person become something completely different? The most frequent cause throughout "Metamorphoses" is love. At the same time, "Metamorphoses" warns of what happens when love is ignored. When Erysichthon cuts down a sacred tree, showing that he loves only himself, he is transformed into a man consumed by hunger, eventually eating himself. When the beautiful Myrrha scorns the love of her suitors, the goddess Aphrodite curses her to love her father. Discovered, she flees to the wilderness, where the gods transform her into tears.
Zimmerman has said that "["Metamorphoses"] makes it easy to enter the heart and to believe in greater change as well... that we all can transform."
Spectacle.
The primary feature of the set in "Metamorphoses" is the pool, which generally sits center stage and occupies most of the stage. The pool is central to all of the stories, although its function changes. During the production, for instance, it becomes a swimming pool, a washing basin,