Issue 12 (2021)

Natalie Haynes

Natalie Haynes is an author, broadcaster, comedian and classicist. She has published several books, including a retelling of the story of Oedipus and Antigone (The Children of Jocasta) and a novel centred on the women of Troy (A Thousand Ships). She has also made numerous television and radio appearances for the BBC, including the radio series Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics. In this interview, she discusses her bestselling book Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, which retells the stories of several women from ancient Greek mythology.

This interview with Jan Haywood was recorded on Zoom in December 2020.

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Kimathi Donkor

Kimathi Donkor is a contemporary artist and academic of Ghanaian, Anglo-Jewish and Jamaican heritage. His paintings focus on the history and myths of Africa and its global diasporas. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and Camberwell College of Arts, and was awarded a PhD by Chelsea College of Arts in 2016 for a thesis titled ‘Africana Unmasked: Fugitive Signs of Africa in Tate’s British Collection’. He currently teaches Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts, London.

This is the full transcript of an interview with Emma Bridges which took place at Kimathi Donkor’s studio in London on 17 September 2021 for a film discussing his 2011 oil painting, The Rescue of Andromeda. The film itself forms part of the materials for the Open University module Greek and Roman Myth: Stories and Histories.

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Tom Littler

Tom Littler is Artistic Director and Executive Producer of Jermyn Street Theatre. He has over fifteen years’ experience directing new plays and revivals throughout the UK and Europe. He teaches 18th century English Literature at the University of Cambridge, where he is also writing his doctoral thesis on constructions of female desire and sexuality in literary love-letters. In this essay written for Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies, he discusses the theatre-on-film project 15 Heroines, which he produced, commissioned, and co-directed for Jermyn Street Theatre, London, and Digital Theatre in 2020.

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Mimmo Jodice

Mimmo Jodice was born in Naples (Rione Sanità) in 1934. He began experimenting with photography and creating his first conceptual works in the early 1960s, and in 1967 he had his first major exhibition in Urbino at the Palazzo Ducale. From 1970 to 1996 he was Professor of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where he directed Italy’s first university course in that medium. Over the course of his career he has worked with many international artists and writers, including Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, and Robert Rauschenburg. His exhibitions include ‘Il ventre del colera’ (Milan, 1973), ‘Napoli 1981’ (Villa Pignatelli; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco), ‘Mediterranean’ (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995), and ‘Les Yeux du Louvre’ (Louvre, 2011). In 2003 he was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize, becoming the first photographer ever to win this prestigious award. In 2010, two large retrospective exhibitions of his work were held, in the Palazzo delle Esposizione in Rome (where his photographs appeared alongside the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico), and in the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. In 2016 the MADRE museum in Naples held a large retrospective exhibition entitled MIMMO JODICE, ATTESA / WAITING (1960-2016). Mimmo Jodice lives in Naples with his wife and collaborator, Angela Jodice.

This conversation with Jessica Hughes took place (in writing) between December 2020 and January 2021.

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