Practitioners' Voices in Classical Reception Studies

ISSN 1756-5049

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Issue 15 (2024)

Articles are published on a rolling basis throughout the year. Follow our X feed @pvcrs to be notified when new interviews and essays are added to the journal website.

Kwame Owusu and Katherine Soper

Kwame Owusu directed Katherine Soper’s new adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae at the Lyric Hammersmith in July 2023.

Portrait photo of Kwame Owusu wearing a black turtle-neck sweater and looking straight at cameraKwame Owusu’s work in theatre as a director includes Dreaming and Drowning (which he also wrote) at the Bush Theatre; The Bacchae at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre; Othello at ArtsEd; stoning mary at Arts University Bournemouth; and The Wolf from the Door at the John Thaw Studio. He has also worked as Staff Director on Romeo and Julie at the National Theatre and Sherman Theatre. Work as an assistant director includes Closer, Britannicus, Scandaltown, and Running With Lions at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Writing for theatre includes HORIZON for the Bush Theatre.

Portrait photo of Katherine Soper wearing a black hat and yellow coat in an outdoor forest landscapeKatherine Soper’s first play, Wish List, won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2015. It was performed in 2017 at the Manchester Royal Exchange and Royal Court Theatre and has since been produced in Germany, Turkey, and South Korea. She has been nominated for the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, and won the Stage Debut Award for Best Writer. Other works include The Small Hours (National Theatre Connections, 2019), Calls from Far Away (BBC Radio 4, 2022), and The Bacchae (Lyric Hammersmith, 2023). She is currently under commission to the Royal Court Theatre. 

They were interviewed in August 2023 by David Bullen, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, originally for his forthcoming book with Liverpool University Press, Greek Tragedy as Twenty-First-Century British Theatre: Why, What, How. David had met with Katherine to discuss the play while she was in the process of writing her adaptation; he subsequently provided Kwame, Katherine, and the rest of the team with a pack of contextual information about Bacchae, ancient Athenian performance culture, and the play’s performance history.