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Metamorphoses (Zimmerman)

Mary Zimmerman reanimates Ovid’s tales with stunning visual life. Set in and around a large pool of water onstage, this ensemble piece juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change.

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Description

  • Full Length Play
  • Drama, Adaptations (Literature), Fables/Folktales
  • 90 minutes

  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Unit Set/Multiple Settings
  • Cautions: Mild Adult Themes

  • Performance Group:
  • High School/Secondary, Community Theatre, Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups

  • Accolades:
  • Winner! Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (Mary Zimmerman) (2002)
    Nominee! Three Tony Awards including Best Play (2002)
    Winner! Four Drama Desk Awards including Outstanding Play (2002)
    Winner! Drama League Award for Best Play (2002)
    Winner! Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play (2002)
Called by Time the “theater event of the year,” Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses brings Ovid’s tales to stunning visual life. Set in and around a large pool of water onstage, Metamorphoses juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change. 

Nominated for three 2002 Tony Awards, including Best Play, Metamorphoses earned Zimmerman a Tony for Best Direction of a Play.
REVIEWS:

"Lovely, deeply affecting… it shows that theater can provide not just escape but sometimes a glimpse of the divine."

Time

"An elegant recounting of some familiar, and some not-so-familiar, Greek myths [that] contemplates – in distinctly modern, highly evocative stagecraft – the relevance of these classical tales to our contemporary world."

Variety

"Metamorphoses is perfect theatrical storytelling that never stumbles or strikes a false note. Zimmerman’s approach is painterly and literary but also acrobatically physical, and the ten-member cast bring it to life, combining athletic movement with beautifully spoken narration."

Chicago Reader

"The genius of this piece – and I think Metamorphoses is that rare work of collective theatrical genius that deserves wide exposure to a new generation – is that it does not feel so personal that you cannot find your way in, live among its stories and reboot your life."

Chicago Tribune

"Mary Zimmerman’s beautiful and deeply humane Metamorphoses… reanimates [Ovid’s myths] with a combination of agile storytelling and enthralling stagecraft. Funny one moment, achingly sorrowful the next, Metamorphoses somehow manages both to lift you out of the moment you’re living in and speak to it with piercing directness."

Wall Street Journal

"With its emphases on love, loss and the transforming powers of memory and the imagination… the production has been reducing calloused New Yorkers to sobs."

The New York Times

Premiere Production:

Metamorphoses opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre on February 21, 2002 after opening off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre on October 9, 2001, directed by Mary Zimmerman. The play originated as Six Myths at Northwestern University in 1996, received its world premiere at the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago on October 25, 1998. Metamorphoses has since been revived professionally several times with members of the original cast, including at the Guthrie Theatre on April 13, 2019.

Characters

  • Casting: 5M, 5F
  • Casting Attributes: Ensemble cast
  • Casting Notes: Optional ensemble. Expandable casting for up to 31 actors.

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