John Dryden: Amphitryon; Or, The Two Sosias

• Friday 16 June 2017, 7.30PM to 10pm
• Tickets: £10 (Concessions and students £6)
  Book tickets
• Black Box Theatre, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York (map|getting to campus)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

The God Jupiter is obsessed with a mortal woman Alcmena. To enjoy her, he assumes the bodily form of her husband Amphitryon, with far-reaching consequences for both humans and mortals. The Restoration playwright Dryden reinvents this oft-recounted classical myth with brilliant comic invention and a moving sense of human lives turned awry by forces they cannot resist.

This is the latest in the popular and acclaimed series of productions by Michael Cordner of great 17th-century comedies, with student casts and production teams, professional designers and composer, and deploying the state-of-the-art technical resources of the stages of the University of York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television.

An ambitious new website will track the history of the Amphitryon story in theatre from the Greeks to today, with details available shortly.

For films of earlier productions in this series, please visit earlymoderntheatre.co.uk.

About the director

Michael Cordner is Ken Dixon Professor of Drama and one of the co-founders of the University of York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television, where he was its first Head of Theatre. His main research and teaching interests lie in English drama 1580-1737, theatre, film and television comedy, and the development of the theatre in the UK in the second half of the 20th century until today.

All his current work relates to the interaction between scripts and performance and, therefore, seeks to explore performance traditions, historical circumstances, performer training, company identities, and reception circumstances, as well as the words committed to the page by individual dramatists. In his view, study of the masterpieces of 17th-century theatre is meaningless unless influenced by practical experience of the plays in rehearsal and performance. Hence, his productions of comedies by Middleton, Marston, Vanbrugh, Shirley, and now, Dryden, in the Department over the last few years.