It’s hard to escape ‘event art’ these days, but what’s the actual attraction? Tiffany Jenkins suspects it isn’t the art.
‘…let men first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter’.
These stirring words from the Iliad were spoken aloud last week, to an audience in the most unusual of places: the Great Court of the British Museum. The performance of the entirety of Homer’s poem about the Trojan War began under a glass roof in a space better known for its cafes and totem poles, and was epic: it took 15 hours and more than 60 actors – Simon Russell Beale, John Simm, Ben Whishaw and Brian Cox among them – to complete it, which they did, finally, at the Almeida Theatre in the early hours of Saturday morning.
In some respects, it was a brilliant initiative. Hard to miss on social media – the reading was streamed online – the performance was exciting to watch from a distance. The enthusiastic @IliadLive tweeted the essential points in 399 tweets, ending with: ‘ILIAD UPDATE: it’s finished. #iliad... Keep reading on Apollo Magazine
‘…let men first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter’.
These stirring words from the Iliad were spoken aloud last week, to an audience in the most unusual of places: the Great Court of the British Museum. The performance of the entirety of Homer’s poem about the Trojan War began under a glass roof in a space better known for its cafes and totem poles, and was epic: it took 15 hours and more than 60 actors – Simon Russell Beale, John Simm, Ben Whishaw and Brian Cox among them – to complete it, which they did, finally, at the Almeida Theatre in the early hours of Saturday morning.
In some respects, it was a brilliant initiative. Hard to miss on social media – the reading was streamed online – the performance was exciting to watch from a distance. The enthusiastic @IliadLive tweeted the essential points in 399 tweets, ending with: ‘ILIAD UPDATE: it’s finished. #iliad... Keep reading on Apollo Magazine