Metamorphoses

"It has been said that the myth is a public dream, dreams are private myths. Unfortunately we give our mythic side scant attention these days. As a result, a great deal escapes us and we no longer understand our own actions. So it remains important and salutary to speak not only of the rational and easily understood, but also of enigmatic things: the irrational and the ambiguous. To speak both privately and publicly." ― Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses

Mary Zimmerman is the recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Fellowship, the Tony Award-winning director of her own Metamorphoses in 2002, and the writer of acclaimed plays about myths, stories, and shared consciousness. Born in Nebraska, Zimmerman holds three degrees in theatre and performance study from Northwestern University.

Zimmerman is known for an organic, experimental and movement-based directing style, which she used to develop Metamorphoses from its original incarnation as Six Myths.

In addition to the Ovid exploration of Metamorphoses, Zimmerman's professional credits in adapting and directing include The Odyssey, Arabian Nights, Argonautika (from the tales of Jason and the Argonauts), The Secret in the Wings (an exploration of children's stories), and Eleven Rooms of Proust, a site-specific piece based on Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

She has directed Wonderful Town and The Music Man. These and other works have been performed at Berkeley Repertory, Second Stage, The Princeton and McCarter Theaters, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and many other regional theatres; and they have been produced and directed by others nationally and internationally.  She also directs opera, including five productions at the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala.

Considered to be one of the most influential poets of the Western literary tradition, Ovid lived in the Roman Republic during the reign of Emperor Augustus. Destined for a career in law, he was trained in oratory and rhetoric; but left his job as a minor judicial official to concentrate on writing. He spent the rest of his life creating a vast body of works, most of which survives till date. While there is confusion about the chronology of his early works, most scholars believe Amores to be his first published work, while his best known work is Metamorphoses, published almost a quarter of a century later. His other extant work of this period were Epistolae Heroidum, Medicamina faciei, the Ars amatoria, and the Remedia amoris, all of which reflected the pleasure-seeking society in which he moved, assuring him a place in the literary circle. However, these works might have also earned the wrath of Emperor Augustus, who wanted to establish a more moral society. Subsequently, Ovid was banished to the edge of the Roman Empire, where he lived and wrote until his death.