A Poem and a Mistake, written by Cheri Magid, created with and performed by Sarah Baskin
Film adaptation of a theatre performance, 60 mins
Available for viewing on ACCA website 27 August – 14 November
A Poem and a Mistake is a one-person show that follows the story of Myrrha, a grad student in the classics who is grappling with how to handle the 50 violent rapes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The questions that emerge for her begin to collide with her own deeply buried personal experiences, and she finds herself in an unexpectedly vulnerable conversation with one of her male professors. When he offhandedly refers to the poem as, ‘being about love’. Myrrha becomes so distraught that she inadvertently pushes him, and suddenly, like the characters in Metamorphoses itself, the professor is transformed into a young woman who looks exactly like Myrrha. Both characters, Myrrha and Not-Myrrha, find themselves in an Ovid-like landscape where transformation is a magical and terrifying confrontation with their own gender, sexuality, and relationship to desire.
This work is part of the exhibition A Biography of Daphne curated by Mihnea Mircan.
Please be advised that this performance video and podcast conversation include references to sexual assault and other mature content.
Cheri Magid (playwright, co-creator) writes for theatre, television, film and opera. Her plays have been seen in New York at Primary Stages, New Georges, The New Group, The Women’s Project and Rattlestick, regionally in the US at South Coast Rep, People’s Light and Theatre Company, The Road Theatre Company and Cincinnati Playhouse among others. Her opera Penelope and the Geese, for which she wrote the libretto, will have performances in October 2021 at UNAM’s El Aleph Festival in Mexico City. The opera, which is composed by Milica Paranosic, has been developed at artistic residencies at Sewanee University of the South (where Cheri was the Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence) and the University of Delaware (where she was the first Susan P. Stroman Visiting Playwright), and has been awarded grants from Opera America, New Music USA and the Society of Classical Studies. BBC Radio 4 recently interviewed Cheri about A Poem and a Mistake for the series Modern Metamorphoses. She is currently writing a podcast, The Classics for Sarah Jessica Parker’s company and Audible UK. Cheri wrote for the Emmy-award-winning children’s television show Arthur and is an Assistant Arts Professor in Dramatic Writing at New York University.
Originally from Montreal, Sarah Baskin (Myrrha, co-creator) is a New York based actor committed to developing new work for the stage and screen. In theatre, Sarah has performed Off- Broadway (Roundabout, Urban Stages, 59E59 +), Regionally (Portland Center Stage, American Repertory Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre +), and with several downtown theatre companies. Recent TV / Film credits include “The Equalizer” (NBC, opposite Queen Latifah), “Gossip Girl Reboot” (HBO Max), “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon), and several independent films. Sarah recently directed her first short film, Donut Chase, which has just completed post production. Her second short, Les Calins Cheap, which Sarah co-adapted and will direct and act in, is set to shoot in Montreal in October 2021. Sarah is a company member of The Actors Center, Subway Token Films, Virago. BA: Vassar College; MFA: American Repertory Theatre / Moscow Art Theatre School at Harvard University. For more: sarahbaskin.com
Tamilla Woodard (director) is the co-founder of the site specific international partnership, PopUP Theatrics. She proudly served as the co-Artistic Director of Working Theater in New York for the last year and was the Associate Director of Tony Award-winning Hadestown on Broadway in it’s premier season. Prior to joining Working Theater, Tamilla was the BOLD Associate Artistic Director at WP Theater. Tamilla has directed at theaters nationally and internationally. Currently, Tamilla is represented online by the concert film WEIGHTLESS by The Kilbanes produced by WP Theater; Where We Stand for Steppenwolf NOW; Theater for One’s HERE WE ARE series by Nicole Salter and Delanna Studi, The Parsnip Ship and MCC’s audio sci-fi THIS IS WHERE WE GO and the audio drama The House of the Negro Insane by Terence Anthony, produced by Contemporary American Theater Festival. Tamilla is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, where she currently chairs the acting department. Recently named one of 50 Women to Watch on Broadway, Tamilla is also a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.
Stephanie McCarter (Classics consultant) is Professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. She is currently finishing a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for Penguin Classics, scheduled for release in 2022, and has recently published a translation of Horace’s Odes, Epodes, & Carmen Saeculare for the University of Oklahoma Press (2020). She is also the author of Horace between Freedom and Slavery: The First Book of Epistles (Wisconsin, 2015). In addition to her scholarly work, her writing has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Millions, The Brooklyn Rail (InTranslation), Lapham’s Quarterly, Hyperallergic, Psyche, Eidolon, and elsewhere.
A Poem and a Mistake production credits:
Written by: Cheri Magid
Created with and performed by: Sarah Baskin
Directed by: Tamilla Woodard
Myrrha/Not Myrrha/all the gods: Sarah Baskin
Voice of Professor: Grant Neal
Editor: Mac Cappuccino
Cinematographer: Drue Pennella
Production Designer and Costume Consultant: Deb O
Sound Designer and Engineer: Carsen Joenk
Composer: Milica Paranosic
Stage Manager: Taylor Steward
Production Assistants: Dana Drori, TJ Drouin, Jared Skonick
Classics Consultant: Stephanie McCarter
Produced by ShoutOut Saugerties, Suzanne Bennett, Cheri Magid and Sarah Baskin. Developed with Dorset Theatre Festival’s Women Artists Writing group and ShoutOut Saugerties with support from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, and the Society of Classical Studies’ Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative. This project is made possible in part through support from the County of Ulster’s Ulster County Cultural Services & Promotion Fund
