Alceste
A Masquerade
January 2025
in collaboration with
St Thomas' and Guy's Hospitals, London
and Musica Antica
A little known masque by Georg Friedrich Händel
Interwoven with the testimony of coma survivors
January 2025
in collaboration with
St Thomas' and Guy's Hospitals, London
and Musica Antica
A little known masque by Georg Friedrich Händel
Interwoven with the testimony of coma survivors
The Greek myth of Alcestis tells of a woman who makes a deal with the Gods to sacrifice her life in place of her dying husband's. His subsequent grief is such that the Gods take pity, and she is allowed to return from the underworld – but on condition she'll never be asked to recount what she's seen there.
The tale was the subject of a Greek Tragedy by Euripides, an opera by Gluck, and the text for a masque by Tobias Smollett (called Alceste), for which the mature Händel wrote beautiful incidental music in London around 1750. Smollett's text has been completely lost - and though highly regarded and recorded several times, Alceste has rarely (if ever) been performed within a dramatic context.
The tale was the subject of a Greek Tragedy by Euripides, an opera by Gluck, and the text for a masque by Tobias Smollett (called Alceste), for which the mature Händel wrote beautiful incidental music in London around 1750. Smollett's text has been completely lost - and though highly regarded and recorded several times, Alceste has rarely (if ever) been performed within a dramatic context.
I can't remember anything
so if you told me it was all a dream
I'd probably believe you
Susan (Bermondsey)
so if you told me it was all a dream
I'd probably believe you
Susan (Bermondsey)
After surviving a surprise cardiac arrest some years ago, my recovery included meeting other survivors of similar events, who'd also spent time in the no-man's land of a medically induced coma. In group meetings at St Thomas' and Guy's Hospitals in London, I found that besides the expected seriousness of the accounts, many of them - relating what had been 'seen and experienced' whilst unconscious - were disarmingly entertaining. Often humorous, heart-warming, spirited, outrageous and even silly by turns - they featured spies, glass elevators, magical animals, ancient histories, mafia plots, sea escapades (inspired by the NHS' aquamarine curtains) and secret messages hidden in the Christmas decorations.
I was told I would meet God
well, I say God..
I was told it was someone called Sandy
and Sandy was a Golden Retriever
Lee (Surbiton)
well, I say God..
I was told it was someone called Sandy
and Sandy was a Golden Retriever
Lee (Surbiton)
Like many cardiac arrest survivors, I had no traumatic memories of the moments immediately preceding or during the event itself. This gave me a new found respect in the capacity of the human brain and body, to numb and protect us in such moments; as well as a degree of consolation that perhaps death wasn't something to be feared after all. Such a positive outlook was rarely shared by those people who'd been on the other side though; those who'd witnessed the events, and/or sat by our sides when we were unconscious. Family members, partners and friends were often more traumatised than us patients - having observed, worried and tried to process events of which we were often miraculously, blithely unaware. It therefore seemed fitting to also gather testimony from them..
In the days after he came to
I was afraid he had dementia.
That's something he couldn't bear
because his wife had it
and he's always said
he wouldn't want to live like that,
that it's an indignity for the soul.
After she died, he told me:
'if that ever happens to me,
and I'm not able to do it myself,
book me into that clinic in Switzerland'.
I asked him not to be so morbid
but he was completely serious:
'It's all written down in a draw..
the timetables for flights to Zurich,
a special savings account to pay for it..'
I can't tell you how relieved I was
that it didn't come to all that.
Anne (Kent)
I was afraid he had dementia.
That's something he couldn't bear
because his wife had it
and he's always said
he wouldn't want to live like that,
that it's an indignity for the soul.
After she died, he told me:
'if that ever happens to me,
and I'm not able to do it myself,
book me into that clinic in Switzerland'.
I asked him not to be so morbid
but he was completely serious:
'It's all written down in a draw..
the timetables for flights to Zurich,
a special savings account to pay for it..'
I can't tell you how relieved I was
that it didn't come to all that.
Anne (Kent)
Rather than trying to re-imagine Smollett's lost play, based on the classical sources available, I thought to develop a more contemporary script - a kind of epic poem for voices, to be performed using headphone verbatim protocols. It's basis would be contemporary accounts (from the interviews conducted) of journeys into the unconscious, by those who'd returned from coma and death, like Alcestis. These would be punctuated and accompanied by accounts from those close and close-by, and medical staff.
The performance (planned for January 2025) will also have collaborative partners: the musicians and singers of the London based early music consort: Musica Antica, Rotherhithe. There's something I find so clean, clear and incisive about Baroque music; so rather than try to tame it or diminish the mystery of the masque's missing text with a straightforward narrative, I wanted to focus on the themes and feelings of the Alcestis story. Using mixed media to further enhance the directness and immediacy of these modern tales of survival - and of compassion, kindness, despair, sacrifice, love, hope and restitution - it will be more like an exploration of and meditation on the myth's central idea of resurrection; via a tour of the subterranean and mysterious realms of the unconscious mind.
The performance (planned for January 2025) will also have collaborative partners: the musicians and singers of the London based early music consort: Musica Antica, Rotherhithe. There's something I find so clean, clear and incisive about Baroque music; so rather than try to tame it or diminish the mystery of the masque's missing text with a straightforward narrative, I wanted to focus on the themes and feelings of the Alcestis story. Using mixed media to further enhance the directness and immediacy of these modern tales of survival - and of compassion, kindness, despair, sacrifice, love, hope and restitution - it will be more like an exploration of and meditation on the myth's central idea of resurrection; via a tour of the subterranean and mysterious realms of the unconscious mind.
The scientist in me does not believe in an afterlife.
I can appreciate it's emotionally helpful to believe
that there might be something on the other end
but I'm not convinced that this it's actually
a reasonable belief to hold.
So if you pinned me down and said
'do you believe in an afterlife?'
then I think that I'd say that I don't..
Tom. Cardiologist (London)
I can appreciate it's emotionally helpful to believe
that there might be something on the other end
but I'm not convinced that this it's actually
a reasonable belief to hold.
So if you pinned me down and said
'do you believe in an afterlife?'
then I think that I'd say that I don't..
Tom. Cardiologist (London)
A wobbly attempt at taking a photo of the ward's Christmas tree
From my bed in intensive care, with post coma delirium
From my bed in intensive care, with post coma delirium