Jenny Lewis at Mulfran Press
Pegasus Youth Theatre premieres Jenny Lewis's After Gilgamesh
After Gilgamesh, developed by Jenny with Yasmin Sidhwa, dramaturg Rabab Ghazoul, choreographer Allan Hutson and musical director Anita Daulne, was produced and performed at Pegasus Theatre from 30 March – 2 April 2011 by Pegasus Youth Theatre Companies with the Afro-pean Choir. Books were sold as special programmes, with Jenny signing copies for the audience. The book was launched at a Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival event on 10 April. The play was performed again at Pegasus Theatre on Thursday 21July 2011.
About Jenny Lewis and contact information
Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, screenwriter, singer-songwriter and teacher. Taking Mesopotamia, a poetry collection published by Carcanet under the OxfordPoets imprint, came out in March 2014. Her earlier collection, Fathom, is also published by Carcanet. Ten of her poems were chosen by Christopher Ricks for the anthology Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American. Her poetry sequence When I became an Amazon is illustrated by Tinker Mather. More information, including contact details and details of many of her published and performed works, is available on Jenny's website.
NEWS: Singing For Inanna and Now As Then
Mulfran Press also publishes work by Jenny Lewis together with Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh. See the Singing for Inanna page for more information and links to sound recordings and videos.
After Gilgamesh by Jenny Lewis
The earliest story, written thousands of years ago, still has echoes in today’s world. The tale of Gilgamesh, demi-god and king of Uruk is filled with fantastic characters: gods, heroes, wise women, courtiers and temple dancers. In an epic verse drama Captain Robbie Roberts lies injured in hospital and flits between his life as an active soldier in Iraq and the old world of Mesopotamia – from the ancient gods, barbers and weavers to the soldiers, citizens and generals in the last Iraq war. War, leaders, life and death. Has anything really changed in 4,000 years?
After Gilgamesh, Jenny Lewis
64 pages, £7.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-10-0
[also available from Blackwell's Online Bookshop]
After Gilgamesh by Jenny Lewis
The earliest story, written thousands of years ago, still has echoes in today’s world. The tale of Gilgamesh, demi-god and king of Uruk is filled with fantastic characters: gods, heroes, wise women, courtiers and temple dancers. In an epic verse drama Captain Robbie Roberts lies injured in hospital and flits between his life as an active soldier in Iraq and the old world of Mesopotamia – from the ancient gods, barbers and weavers to the soldiers, citizens and generals in the last Iraq war. War, leaders, life and death. Has anything really changed in 4,000 years?
After Gilgamesh, Jenny Lewis
64 pages, £7.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-10-0
[also available from Blackwell's Online Bookshop]
Reviews of After Gilgamesh and the
Pegasus Youth Theatre production
"The published text’s amalgam of poetry and Iraq War subject matter also has the potential to be used as a teaching aid for high school students, in both poetry/English courses and contemporary and ancient history classes. … the slang, farce and satire add vitality. The almost vaudevillian aura evoked by the boisterous market-place Ancient World scenes – and the inclusion of black and white photos of the crew and young cast in rehearsal – gives you a sense of what the play might have been like on the stage" Roberta Lowing, Mascara Literary Review
"Jenny Lewis writes with an elegance that is seamless, subtly cadenced, and full of understated lyricism. Additionaly, her expert use of formal structures and deft dialogue makes her a writer of extaordinary intelligence." Sudeep Sen
"After Gilgamesh is an unusual new play by Jenny Lewis that maps the ancient story of Gilgamesh - the God-King of Uruk who lived around 2700 BC - onto the modern story of an Iraq war soldier who lies wounded in hospital in 2005. The author links these very different lives by forcing both characters to confront the loss of a close friend." Amy Jenkins
"All in all, this piece was masterfully written, performed and directed…" DailyInfo, Oxford
"Verse drama at last! Jenny Lewis, Rabab Ghazoul and Yasmin Sidwa have achieved what many thought impossible, a breakthrough into dramatic verse... The secret lies in merging prose and verse, as Shakespeare did. Jenny Lewis et al have sent the history of verse drama since Ronald Duncan into the lumber room. .. The language operates at many levels, as verse must today. There are the strophic, Eliotine choruses and the quick, colloquial banter of terrible Gods. Yet back at the Modern level, the diction modulates to parody war-gaming vocabulary and TV reality games, an ambitious rhetoric that comes near to the achievement of Dennis Potter... In a world whose mise en scene is set by the Post-Modern disillusionment, it is promising to hear the conditionalised optimism of the closing moments of the play… After Gilgamesh is an issue-oriented piece of writing. Like Joan Lingard's Across the Barricades, its audience is the young adult." Duncan McGibbon