[NEohioPAL] Performance: WordStage Literary Concerts presents The Epic of Gilgamesh at the Lakewood Public Library

[Tim Tavcar via NEohioPAL]

                               WordStage Literary Concerts presents - The Epic of Gilgamesh                                                                                                         Thursday, April 23rd at7:00 pm at The Lakewood Public Library’s Main Branch Auditorium –              15425 DetroitAvenue. Lakewood, OH.  The Performance is FREE and Open to the Public

Love, Sex, Murder,Jealousy, Heroism, Vanity, Lust, all that and more can be found in the firstgreat masterpiece of world literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh.  This sweeping saga recounts the adventures ofa legendary king and is based in all likelihood on an actual historical figure,Gilgamesh, the ruler of the Babylonian city of Uruk around 2700 B.C. Creditedwith erecting the massive wall around Uruk, the first major city, Gilgameshemerged over the centuries as the hero of a cycle of poems, and eventually ofthe 3,000-line epic, which reached final form around 1200 B.C. 

Like all ancientMesopotamian literature, the epic of Gilgamesh was lost to historical memorywith the eclipse of the ancient cultures of Assyria and Babylonia in thecenturies before Christ. Only in the mid-19th century did British and Frencharchaeologists begin to explore the mysterious mounds in present-day Iraq thatheld the remains of the first urban societies. A particularly rich find was thelibrary of Ashurbanipal, last great king of Assyria.  In the 1850s, British archaeologist AustinHenry Layard and his Iraqi associate, Hormuzd Rassam, unearthed it in the ruinsof Nineveh. 

They shipped 100,000tablets and fragments home to the British Museum, and, gradually, scholarsbegan to piece them together and decipher the ancient texts.

In 1872, the youngcurator George Smith created a sensation when he unearthed Gilgamesh's brokentablets in the museum's collection. Smith immediately perceived that thecharacter of Uta-napishtim, Gilgamesh's ancestor, constituted an early versionof the Bible's Noah—a striking parallel at a time when Victorian debates overreligion and science were at their height.

The text has beenadapted from a contemporary translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh by StephenMitchell, and a dramatic verse play setting of the legend by poet YusefKomunyakaa and Dramaturge Chad Gracia.

This performance,commissioned by the Lakewood Public Library for its 2015 National Poetry MonthCelebration, will feature actors Michael Mauldin, Dan Kilbane, Agnes Herrmann,Paul Slimak, Marci Paolucci, and WordStage Artistic Director, Tim Tavcar.  An original and multi-layered soundscape toaccompany the reading will be created and performed by master percussionist –Paul Stranahan.

For more information,please visit the WordStage web site at www.wordstageoh.com, or call us at 216-712-6926. Or visit theLakewood Library’s web site at www.lkwdpl.org, or call them at 216-226-8275.

 
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