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.