[Update 23rd May: All full-day spaces for this event are now filled. If you wish to be placed on a waiting list for a space please get in touch. There are still spaces available for the public event at 5.45pm.]

Registration is now open for this one-day colloquium, which brings together academics and creative practitioners working on contemporary versions of ancient myths. The event will be held at The Open University in London (1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden, London NW1 8NP) on 7th July 2016.

Attendance at the event is free but booking is essential. Places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Attendees may register either for the full event or for the public performance at 5.45pm. To reserve a place please email Emma Bridges (e.e.bridges@open.ac.uk) by Tuesday 28th June, stating whether you wish to register for the whole day or for the public event at 5.45pm only.

The programme for the event is as follows:

10.00 – Coffee/registration

10.25 – Welcome

10.30-12.30 – Session 1 (Chair: Lorna Hardwick)

Atreus, Trujillo and the myth-making of Junot Díaz. Justine McConnell (Oxford)

Border territories: transgressing ancient mythic voices in contemporary poetry. A reading and conversation with Josephine Balmer, Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos.

”There is another story”: writing after the Odyssey in Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. Emily Hauser (Yale)

Avid for Ovid: using music to enhance danced interpretations of Ovid’s mythical world. Malcolm Atkins (Open University)

12.30-1.30 – Lunch

1.30-3.30 – Session 2 (Chair: Jessica Hughes)

Twerking for Dionysus in Jan Fabre’s Mount Olympus. Emma Cole (Bristol)

A thoroughly modern maiden: Artemis myth and ritual in twenty-first century Kent. Frances Eley (Open University)

”Stranger still are waters charged”: metamorphosing Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (Ovid, Met. 4.285-388). Artist presentation by Anna Parker (Umeå Academy of Fine Arts).

Regendering Oedipus: from tragic drama to many-mouthed lyric. Poet Amy McCauley in conversation with Gareth Prior.

3.30-4.00 – Tea

4.00-5.30 – Session 3 (Chair: Henry Stead)

Where on earth did you get a story like that? Readings from a new play, Orpheus and Eurydice, presented by Sharon Jennings (playwright).

Subversive advents: exploring a Bacchic narrative in popular cinema. David Bullen (Royal Holloway)

Apotheon: redesigning myth for a video game. Maciej Paprocki (LMU Munich)

5.45-6.45 – Public event

Giving life to the Amazons via the modern female gaze. Theatre-makers Laura Martin-Simpson and Rachel Bagshaw (Blazon Theatre) in conversation, with readings from ICONS, a new play by Paula B. Stanic.