The Odyssey Project encompasses a series of shapeshifting performance works whose ocean is Homer’s Odyssey. Performances of Howl: An Odyssey, A Complicated Man, and Odd Odysseys: Queering the Classics have taken place in London, Cambridge, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Odyssey Project is an ongoing creative collaboration between Emma Henry Wolf and Evan Silver through the mechanism of the big mammal theatre project.
the big mammal theatre project is a devising organism creating multidisciplinary theatrical experiences about the creature-ness of being human and our place in the family of things. We hunt canonical texts, the natural world, the weather, dreams and each other for clues, questions, and magic.
A Complicated Man
(2019) by Evan Silver and Emma Henry Wolf Directed by Evan Silver | Performed by Emma Henry Wolf
Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe Festiival
‘How many years does it take to unspool a man?’
An odd king sails the waves of the wine dark sea in a bathtub.
big mammal reimagines The Odyssey as a queer epic of becoming.
Produced and Designed by Nic Farr
Poster Design by Evan Silver
Howl: An Odyssey (2019) by Evan Silver and Emma Henry Wolf
CLF Art Cafe, Bussey Building, London | Judith E Wilson Studio, Cambridge
A theatrical reimagining of
Homer's epic tale about a complicated king
who is never still and always becoming. This odyssey is a constellation of mythic and
mundane encounters, a shroud woven between
contested narratives, a plunge into the belly of
a whale, a prophecy strung by the wings of
birds, and an autopsy on the remains of an
ancient beast washed up on the shore.
Odysseus: Emma Henry Wolf
Owl / Polyphemus / Tiresias: Evan Silver
Calypso / Achilles / Mate: Celeste Cahn
Circe / Swallow / Mate: Nic Baird
Penelope: Simona Hughes
Argos: Mulligan the Dog
Produced by James Hardie
Production Design by Nic Farr
Music by Ursula Raasted
Dramaturgy by Mariagrazia LaFauci Photos by Brynley Davies
Circe (1889) by Wright Barker
Odd Odysseys: Queering the Classics (2019) by Evan Silver and Emma Henry Wolf
Performed by Evan Silver and Emma Henry Wolf at the Queer Art of Feeling Conference, University of Cambridge
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sara Ahmed, Author of Queer Phenomenology and Living a Feminist Life
‘Homeric sex / Feeling through fondling and fucking the classics’
A hybrid performance-lecture about queer reception, odd odysseys, and the gospel of the waves.
