Pomegranates, Snow, and the Dark Side of the Moon: Embodying Myth Through Process Drama
When and Where
Description
This hands-on workshop introduces process drama, an immersive, pedagogical mode of storybuilding, as a means of inhabiting the Greek Goddess Persephone's myth from multiple perspectives. With song, visual art, ritual, movement, and text, we will explore the current of myth that flows around us and appears in some of our most deep and visceral spaces: corporeal agency, the cycle of seasons, intergenerational womanhood (or personhood), and the profound stillness of raw inner unravelling. In other words, we will take apart Persephone's story and work together to rebuild it in a way that sits within this time, this place, and these people.
In keeping with process drama's core aims, this workshop is not about reenacting a narrative, but rather about letting Persephone’s myth breathe, giving it breath and body by lending it our own as the height of winter's presence in Toronto and Persephone's reign in the Underworld converge. This workshop calls upon conventions introduced by process drama practitioners Jonothan Neelands and Tony Goode (2000) and Cecily O'Neill (1995) as well as prolific eco-mythic voices (Martin Shaw, Charlotte Du Cann, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Marie Tatar, etc.) to enact a cyclical narrative structure that mimics the seasonal rhythms and epistemological inquiries which inspired Persephone's tale, and explores the crux between written texts and the embodied "texts" that emerge from lived experience.
Note: If you choose to attend, please wear movement-friendly clothes and footwear and bring a water bottle, notebook, and writing utensil. Previous experience with process drama or Persephone's myth is not required.
Content Warning: While themes of sexual violence do appear in Persephone's canon, this workshop will never ask participants to embody narrative aspects with which they may be uncomfortable. Ample alternative interpretations will be provided so participants can inhabit the story as they wish.