Pictures From Light Night

I didn't have a camera and was hiding behind a Charon mask is Dark Arches anyway, but I'm very glad some other people (people I don't know!) took photos and posted them online. I've collected the images here - if I've not attributed them properly I apologise and will correct if you get in touch with me (e.r.okell at leeds.ac.uk). If anyone would like to send me their photos, please use the same address.

Congratulations to cast members for capturing the public's imagination:
Rachel Meadows - Persephone
Rachel Elderkin - Orpheus and Eurydice
Bob Buxton - Horus
Eleanor OKell - Charon



Persephone, Quen of the Underworld, outside the Palace of Hades on the Town Hall Steps
( (c)Yorkshire Evening Post staff photographer: published 11/10/10, see http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Leeds-Light-Night-2010-City39s.6575041.jp)



Orpheus, searching the Underworld.
Does he seek Persephone to ask her to bring Eurydice back to life or Eurydice herself?
( (c) Simon Cliff: DSC_9490 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sicliff/5069556320/)

 

Eurydice outside the City Museum, waiting by the Gate of Taenarus for Orpheus to join her or to bring her back to life.
( (c) parishpics: img-9354 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/parishpics/5063736950/in/photostream/) 



Horus, preparing to weigh your soul against the feather of truth and determine whether it is righteous and you can enter the afterlife to enjoy "cakes, ale and crumpet" forevermore.
( (c) Rachel Coterill: IMG_6676 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelcotterill/5071738582/in/set-72157625015880477/)



Charon stalks the Dark Arches, looking to cross souls over the River Styx (River Aire).
( (c) Punk Rock Kicks: Death stalks the Dark Arches at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mighty-southpaw/5063779362/in/pool-lightnight)



Death stalks the Dark ArchesBy Punk Rock Kicks

Another Egyptian Journey

The British Museum exhibition


Journey through the afterlife:
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead


Opens on 4th November 2010

4 November 2010 – 6 March 2011 / Reading Room / Admission charge


The British Museum’s major Autumn exhibition, supported by BP, will present and explore ancient Egyptian beliefs about life after death. Journey through the afterlife: ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead will showcase the rich textual and visual material from the British Museum’s unparalleled collection of Book of the Dead papyri. The ‘Book’, used for over 1500 years between c. 1600 BC and 100 AD, is not a single text, but a compilation of spells thought to equip the dead with knowledge and power which would guide them safely through the dangers of the hereafter and ultimately ensure eternal life.

The British Museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of Book of the Dead manuscripts on papyrus in the world, and this exhibition will be the first opportunity to see so many examples displayed together. Due to the fragility of the papyri and their sensitivity to light it is extremely rare for any of these manuscripts to ever be displayed so this is a truly unique opportunity to view them. The exhibition will include the longest Book of the Dead in the world, the Greenfield Papyrus, which measures 37 metres in length and has never been shown publicly in its entirety before. Also on display will be the famous paintings from the papyri of Ani and Hunefer, together with selected masterpieces on loan from major international collections. These treasures will be exhibited alongside a dazzling array of painted coffins, gilded masks, amulets, jewellery, tomb figurines and mummy trappings. State-of-the-art visualisation technology will provide new ways of accessing and understanding this key source in the history of world religions.


The Book of the Dead opens a window onto the complex belief systems of the ancient Egyptians where death and afterlife were a central focus. Though the name may be familiar today, the wealth of magical images and texts is actually much richer than is generally known. Beautifully coloured illustrations graphically show the fields and rivers of the Netherworld, the gods and demons whom the deceased would meet, and the critical ‘weighing of the heart’ ritual the judgement which would determine whether the soul was admitted into the afterlife or condemned to destruction at the hands of the monstrous ‘Devourer’. Although the earliest texts appeared on the mummy shrouds of royal families and high officials, papyrus became the texts’ main medium and remained so for more than 1,000 years.

The Ancient Egyptians are covered in Key Stage 2 at schools so this exhibition is particularly relevant for this age group. The exhibition is open exclusively for school visits at certain times and there will be a free teachers’ private view, as well as an introductory film for families and schools at the entrance to the exhibition. A family trail has been created to allow young visitors to get the most out of their visit and for the first time at the Museum, a separate family multi-media exhibition guide has been especially produced in addition to the adult guide.

See the British Museum webpage for more information and illustrations.

Classics and the Yorkshire Evening Posts' Light Night Guide

Yesterday (30/09/10) the YEP  published its Light Night pull-out guide. This focused on "the full spectrum of history and creativity on our doorstep" and features four sets of five highlights from the "100 events showcasing the best the city has to offer - from opera to storytelling, history walks to musical theatre, heritage tours to dance".


These are sets of highlights for: heritage lovers, young families, groups and culture vultures.

Two of the 20 highlighted projects are classically based -

22 Narcissus - George Rodosthenous stages the myth of Narcissus in the University of Leeds' new swimming pool (with photo) under "Culture Vultures"

and

56 Underworlds Live in Leeds under "Groups"

A lovely demonstration that classics is:
a) alive and well,
b) considered to have popular appeal with the general public (at whom the pull-out is aimed) as well as "arty" types,
c) *definitely not* restricted to "heritage lovers",
d) a key part of "the full spectrum of history and creativity on our doorstep" in Yorkshire
and
e) is imaginative, creative and inclusive enough to attract funding not only from an HEI (22) but from the City Council (56).

These weathered Doric Columns in the former industrial area of Holbeck give a classical base to a friendly welcome.
The capitals (bits at the top) tell us that these are Doric columns and the bottoms (with no base in sight) tells us these are based on a Greek model rather than a Roman one.

Auditions have started!

So far, so good. We've seen some good people - all castable - but there are roles still available and we're auditioning for another hour. As we're likely to be a couple of people short and don't want to disappoint, we will be holding further auditions by arrangement over the next few days and on Thursday 30th September from 4pm to 6pm in Room 101, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds.

Unfortunately, using a computer with a really old version of Explorer to upload the last few scripts meant that neither they, nor the previously uploaded scripts actually appeared at all! This was because the updated page (if you're meant to be able to see it, you'll know its address) reverted to an earlier version. My apologies to anyone who couldn't audition for their prefered role because of this. I think everything is now OK, but if the script you want isn't there, please email Eleanor (e.r.okell) at her university (leeds.ac.uk) address and she'll send it you as an attachment.

For a full list of characters, locations and an indication of the amount of improvisation required, see the original audition poster.

Egyptian Stuff...

Just because material on the Egyptian Underworld isn't up yet doesn't mean that I haven't been researching it!

In fact its been terribly difficult because 'Egyptian' covers such a broad span of time and wide geographical spread. This means that ideas and worship vary a great deal, so acheiving a degree of consistency is hard. Taking our inspiration from Leeds architecture means that we'd inadvertently picked the Roman period in Egypt, while my knowledge was more of the Pharaohonic period - the pyramids to the Valley of the Kings - which is rather more what people expect. This means that for LightNight there will be some of both...

 

In the meantime, if you'd like to see some genuine ancient Egyptian textiles in Leeds, the University of Leeds International Textiles Archive has just finished cataloguing its Egyptian textiles collection and some rare examples of Egyptian costume will be on show during the exhibition: A Catalogue of World Textiles.

The exhibition runs from 5th October 2010 to 27th May 2011 and is open Tuesday – Friday 09:30 to 16:30 (except for University Closed days). The database of all the collections is searchable online too!

University of Leeds International Textiles Archive,

St. Wilfred's Chapel,

Maurice Keyworth Building,

University of Leeds,

Leeds LS2 9JT

Tel: 0113 343 3919

www.leeds.ac.uk/ulita

Psychogeography talk

I forgot to take the recorder and the PowerPoint slides reformatted themselves when I changed machine *sob*, but it went down well. I'll sort out the formatting and record myself at home and get it up here asap.

Very many thanks to the audience for being so helpful when discussing the actual map to use in the leaflet we're going to give people on the night. It's great to have a concept validated and it had been causing us real stress - imagine how much information I can't fit on 2 sides of A4 if most of one is taken up with a street map of Leeds from Temple Works to Parkinson Building!

Other than that the whole Open Media night was really interesting and we saw and heard some cool things - especially a late addition to the programme that involved taking shots of light with a digital camera while walking the same route repeatedly, inverting the colour and layering the shots on top of each other to create really beautiful abstract landscapes. It was a great visualisation of the way that events and stories layer themselves in a space, making it a place.

Highlights for me were that I've never had a question session when I was praised for my story telling and it's also the first time I've been asked where I teach so that someone could come and learn a subject they'd previously thought was boring from me! So thank you, you lovely people...

Auditions

Date and Time now sorted, so thought I'd put the poster (in Classics, PVAC and Fine Arts during Freshers Week) up here too. It gives the character's locations away, but that lets people look out for them a bit more easily. The advertising already refers to some of them anyway...

Photoshoot

Well, that went well! The costumes and masks looked really great - we will post pictures as soon as we have copies - so we just wanted to say a big thank you to all the people who helped out by wearing them and also to those who helped model various items while they were pinned or had elastic attached or did some sewing:

THANK YOU

We didn't quite have enough people to wear all the costumes, so you won't see The Sibyl or An Egyptian Lector Priest, who will be around for Light Night. But the picture has all the other characters you can expect to meet as part of Underworlds Live in Leeds.

From left to right: Persephone - garlanded with spring flowers and holding a pomegranate; Demeter/Ceres - a corn goddess and Persephone's mother; Circe - the goddess who knows the way for living mortals to enter the Underworld; Charon - the Ferryman who takes souls across the River Styx; Aeneas - the Roman hero who travels to the Underworld and, being alive, nearly sinks Charon's boat!;  Horus - the Egyptian god, with the feather of truth against which he weighs souls for them to gain entry to the afterlife; Orpheus - the bard, who went to the Underworld to bring his wife back to life, with his lyre; Eurydice - Orpheus' (dead) wife.

For more information on these characters, see the Denizens page.
A larger version of the picture
A version of the picture (albeit with us incorrectly identified as "Underworld Live in Leeds") is used to advertise "One of Leeds' most ambitious programmes of entertainment" - The Yorkshire Evening Post and Leeds City Council's Town Hall events series.

Characters and Scripts

Scripts - or in some cases collections of sources on which to base improvisations - are now posted here via links to documents uploaded to Scribd.

If you have access to the (unobtrusive) scripts page it is because you have expressed an interest in being a character. Please do not give the page's address to anyone else as it will ruin the "surprise" element of the night. A few more details about the characters may be found on the Denizens page. If you wish to express an interest in playing a masked, costumed character you must:

Be resident in Leeds (at least from 27th September to 9th October 2010);
Be available for auditions, rehearsals, costume-fittings and from 4.30pm to 10.30pm on Friday 8th October;
Be comfortable interacting with strangers while in character;
Not be allergic to: manmade fibres, newspaper, flour and water paste, PVA glue, emulsion and poster paint;
Have black trousers, shoes and sweater to wear as a costume base.

To express an interest - or request a script as an attachment, contact Eleanor OKell (e.r.okell) on her University of Leeds (leeds.ac.uk) email address.


Aeneas
Circe
Charon
The Sibyl of Cumae 
Orpheus (and Eurydice) (and Persephone)
Demeter (and Persephone)
Horus and the Egyptian Lector Priest
Roman Orator

Progress - Getting out and about!

Having intended to write scripts this week for the characters I've only managed three (Circe, Orpheus/Persephone/Eurydice and the Roman orator's funeral speech) but we've taken advantage of two opportunities to get the piece a bit of publicity...

1st September 2010 - Light Night publicity photoshoot, Leeds Town Hall steps.
All the characters in masks and costumes with props! This does mean I have to get them all finished by then, which will involve even more and more rapid hand-tying of "hair" onto masks (now I know why hand-tied wigs are *so* expensive), frantic carving of polystyrene, (blow-)drying of papier-mache and miles of hand sewing as my sewing machine has, probably appropriately, given up the ghost! Still, it will be worth it. Tomorrow I shop for the fabric for Charon's big black cloak...

14th September 2010 - 20 minute talk to the Leeds Psychogeography Group, Seminar Room G23, Baines Wing University of Leeds as part of the Psychogeography Open Media Night 17:00-19:00 (all welcome). Campus map of buildings: click on this link, then launch the interactive campus map, and choose Baines Wing from the list on the right. From the main entrance of the Baines Wing, go straight ahead past the reception on the right, go through the doors on the left, follow the corridor round to the left and the door to the room is on your left.

Open Media Night - running order

Oliver Neilson: Urban Photography

Phillipa Dobson: Exodus & Pigsty (films)
Diane Myers: Beating-the-Bounds (poem)
Claire Harbottle: Driving Blind (film)
Andrea Capstick: Around Leeds Market with Pam and Carole (film)
Robert Elliot and Eleanor OKell: Underworlds Live in Leeds

Robert Elliott and Eleanor OKell provide background to and a preview of "Underworlds Live in Leeds", a piece which temporarily maps an alternate universe onto Leeds' urban core.

Work on the Greek Underworld

Started by re-reading Homer in order to script the character Circe - whose mask is now painted, and looks pretty cool, if I do say so myself...

Circe - an immortal goddess, daughter of the Sun and Medea's aunt, who was adept with drugs and had magical powers, including the ability to turn men into pigs - gave the Greek hero Odysseus (yes, any Troy fans among you, the guy played by Sean Bean) instructions about how to get to the Underworld while still alive so that he could learn the things he needed to know in order to get home to his wife and son - ahhh!!!

We'd always planned to have Circe in the Ancient World's Gallery to give instructions on journeying safely through the Greek Underworld to participants, but now I've decided to have her perform the ritual to placate the dead on the participants' behalf and I've finished her (interactive) script - mostly lines culled from Martin Hammond's excellent prose translation of the Odyssey.

The thing that's really cool is that Circe is already in the Leeds City Museum (http://www.leedsmuseum.co.uk/). We knew a bronze statue of Circe by the sculptor Alfred Drury (who also sculpted 'Morn and Eve' - the scantily clad classical ladies with torches in City Square) was commissioned by Leeds City Art Gallery in 1894 and that the statue was once displayed in Park Square, but we didn't know where she was now. So, we were delighted to bump into her downstairs near the gift shop in the City Museum (see below) and are looking forward to bringing her life - although with more clothes - with the help of an actress for one night only on 8th October 2010. So, come and meet Circe in the flesh, get instructions to journey safely through the Greek Underworld and ask her any questions you like, but take care not to upset her, lest she turn you into a pig...

Circe with wand and potion cup (a shallow goblet reminiscent of a kylix), surrounded by boars (formerly men).
Bronze statue by Alfred Drury (1894).
Image courtesy of Leeds City Museum http://www.leedsmuseum.co.uk/
Cf. J. W. Waterhouse's Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891), Oldham Art Gallery, Oldham.

Odysseus (centre) pursues Circe (right), who has dropped her wand and potion cup (here a skyphos); behind Odysseus (left) are two men whom she has already transformed into a horse/mule and a boar.
Detail of an Attic red-figure calyx krater (a mixing bowl for wine and water used at drinking parties) by the Persephone Painter, c. 440 BCE, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 41.83.

And just to remind you that neither we - nor the ancient Greeks for that matter - take Circe entirely seriously:

Comic Odysseus (left) and comic Circe (centre), with wand (used for stirring) and potion cup (here a skyphos).
Boiotian black-figure skyphos, c.410-400 BCE, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum G259.

To read the relevant bits of Homer's account of who Odysseus meets (which might give you some clues about who participants might meet - e.g. it includes a hero who is sculpted on the side of Leeds Town Hall) see Homer's Underworld.

Starting a blog for our Light Night piece...

Well, we've just had to describe what our bit of Brookheimeresque "edutainment" is all about in 50 words. That felt kinda web-friendly, so I've taken it as an incentive to start telling people a bit more about it. This is my first blog and Underworlds Live in Leeds is my first project as an "artist", so here goes....

WHAT: Underworlds Live in Leeds: Eleanor OKell and Robert Elliott


WHERE: Leeds City Museum: Ancient Worlds Gallery and across Leeds

WHEN: 5pm-10pm in the Museum, till much later elsewhere, Friday 8th October 2010

Journey in time and space to return Leeds' forgotten Greek, Roman and Egyptian underworlds to life - complete with their myths and denizens. Meet them in the Ancient Worlds Gallery and across Leeds. Will you cross the River Styx with the Ferryman, find Persephone or let Horus weigh your soul?


Not bad - huh?

Anyway, we got asked to flesh it out, so here's a bit more detail in case I've whetted your appetite!

Underworlds Live in Leeds takes an imaginative closer look at the art and architecture of the city in which we live.

Leeds is full of references to the Greek, Roman and Egyptian past that usually go unnoticed. This performance piece / alternative walking tour brings those pasts to life by presenting Leeds as the ancients’ afterlife location and making them available to comment!

Journeys through the underworlds can be taken with the aid of written guides and verbal instructions from characters in the City Museum or from displays in various locations, which will indicate another point of interest. As well as learning about Leeds' past and the ancient underworlds you could cross the River Styx with Charon the ferryman, get a prophecy from the Sibyl, help to find Persephone, hear a funeral oration, follow the obelisk trail or even let the Egyptian god Horus weigh your soul.

For those seeking more factual information an expert will be on hand in the City Museum, there will be an exhibition in the Classics Library (1st floor, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds) and the written guides will be available for download after Light Night from Classics Yorkshire.