Athens

…The best thing for mortal man is to never have been born;
the next best thing is to die, and quickly.

Parallel Octave brings TO DIE IN ATHENS, a medley of Greek choruses, to the Homewood Museum on the JHU campus, in Baltimore this August. TO DIE IN ATHENS has previously been presented in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Warsaw. The reading will take place on Sunday, August 12 at 5 PM. Seating extremely limited; RSVPs required; call 410-516-5589.

The Parallel Octave Chorus presents a concert reading of texts taken from the ancient Greek dramas and comedies. TO DIE IN ATHENS is a medley of choruses and monologues from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, set to continuous live acoustic music. TO DIE IN ATHENS is less than 75 minutes in length, free of charge, and open to all.

The Greek choruses will be interwoven with poems from other times and nations and in other languages, including poems from the time of Charles and Harriet Carroll.

Audience members will be cordially invited (but certainly not expected or required) to join in singing some very simple melodies for some of the choruses, which will be taught to the audience at the beginning of the performance. Children welcome.

The performance will be accompanied by video installations and live projections created by students from the “Auteur 101: Short Film Laboratory” course in the JHU Film and Media Studies Program.

The cast will include actors and musicians from Baltimore, DC, and New York as well as local high school students, and will feature Genevieve de Mahy as Medea, Kaveh Haerian as Oedipus, and Mark Krawczyk and Temple Crocker as the respective leaders of the Men’s and Women’s Choruses. More information: http://www.paralleloctave.com/Athens

Please note that there is extremely limited seating (only 30) for this performance; RSVPs are required. Call 410-516-5589.

TO DIE IN ATHENS has previously been produced at Komuna//Warszawa in Poland, at the Son of Semele Ensemble Theatre in Los Angeles, and at the Wheeler Arts Community of the University of Indianapolis / Indy Convergence, under the title of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS; the Greek choral rehearsal methods used in TDIA were created in homage to Łódź’s Stowarzenie Teatralne Chorea.

Sample sound from a reading in Los Angeles, on Soundcloud:
I. Take your curse and get out of our city
II. Medea chorus (Euripides)

Music for performers, on Noteflight.
On all of these, you can make the web page play it back to you by clicking on the page and pressing P. Remember; pitches are good, tempi are bad. Sorry.

Scene 3
– The “Medea theme” (Leave me! Leave me!) that plays, on violin, underneath Medea’s spoken monologues in this scene.
“Do not give the grave your love…” (Note: same melody repeats for “Go to her and tell her we will / Help her if she can be he-elped….”
Scene 5
“We swear that no man among us will ever…”

Scene 17
“Let go the future, look to now; all men die without knowing where or how.”
“Do not give the grave your love…” (same as before)