DIDO/ELISSA: A staged reading/work in progress
Text by Magdalena Zira in collaboration with the Durham University Classics Society and the cast and dramaturgs team as part of the ‘Recovering Dido’ project. The project collaborators are Dr Magdalena Zira (IAS Fellow) and Professor Edith Hall (Department of Classics and Ancient History).
An all-female ensemble tells an unknown and riveting story about legendary Carthaginian Queen Dido.
Dido has captivated the imagination of countless readers of Virgil’s Aeneid, in which she is one of the most unforgettable jilted lovers in literature. Our play, inspired by lesser-known sources that tell the life story of this amazing woman, reveals a very different version of the events, in which she is an epic heroine and a feminist role model. This Phoenician version of Dido that completely annuls the Roman propagandist love story of Dido and Aeneas, is still told by the Lebanese and the Tunisians today. The feminist poetics of this new play deconstruct the patriarchal, colonialist lines of a familiar ancient story, in order to propose a new ‘foundational myth’.
"Her Phoenician name was Elissa. Or Elissar. Or Elishat. ‘Divine.’
They called her Dido.
Some people say
this was the name given to her by the locals in her new homeland.
It means wanderer. Or migrant. Or immigrant. Or refugee."
“The story we are about to tell you weaves together history and fiction. But if we could hear the Carthaginians’ voices today, if their songs had been rescued from the fire that destroyed their city, this is probably how they would have told the story of their queen.”
Content Warning: Sexual References | Suicide References | References to Violence | References to Sexual Violence | References to Human Trafficking
