In 2018 Khameleon Productions staged its BIPOC Medea in the UK to rave review. Based on the success of that production, Khameleon began working to develop an educational outreach program centered around (but not limited to) its play. Headed up by Shivaike Shaw and Avery Willis Hoffman, Artistic Direct of the Brown Arts Initiative and Professor of the Practice of Arts and Classics at Brown, Khameleon is now finalizing a film about its BIPOC Medea and a series of podcasts (including one by OSU’s Tom Hawkins) and blogs that use the myth of Medea to access a host of issues from the role of the arts in social justice movements, current debates about the identity and role of Classics, and the power and relevance of leaning on ancient material to speak to our contemporary moment. In Spring 2022 Shaw will be touring colleges and universities across the Midwest (including Kenyon, Dennison, Miami and Cincinnati), and we are hoping to bring him to OSU on April 7-8 for a workshop on the question of how modern adaptations of ancient stories impact our world.
We are planning to have two events. The first, an in-house event that will be part of the English Department’s regular Book Club series, will bring together two or three OSU scholars to discuss ‘Medea, Margaret Garner, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved’. Beloved is based on the story of Garner who came to be known as the ‘Modern Medea’, and both the novel and Garner’s traumatic story are set in Ohio. Soon after this event, we will gather again with Shah, who will present on the work that he and Hoffman have been doing with Khameleon and lead a discussion about modernizing ancient stories and the importance of diverse casting.