Metamorphoses

Ovid’s narrative poem centers on a specific category of Greco-Roman mythology: those tales where mortals, through the intervention of capricious gods, are literally transformed into other things, like animals or trees. Zimmerman’s adaptation, uses the inherent plasticity of theater as an analogue to the stories’ common themes. Everything in Metamorphoses is changeable: the cast of 14 actors moves fluidly among multiple roles, as the lights, sound, and costumes signal shifts of location and mood.

The large wading pool in the middle of the set is filled with real water, and though sometimes it is just a pool, it may morph at any moment, in the blink of a lightning cue, into a raging sea, a smörgåsbord, or a carnal bed.