ACORN, a Modern, All-Female Take on the Myth of the Underworld Comes to the Courtyard Next Week

Maud Dromgoole's Acorn radically reimagines two mythic women in a play that explores the power of stories, and how we come to write our own. Combining dark humour with lyricism, fury and wit, projection and an original score, Acorn is an all-female underworld myth for a modern age.

"I am not going to live happily ever after. That's not my story." Eurydice is getting married, and impatiently waiting for her life to begin. Persephone works hard and keeps the world at bay - it's the way she knows how to survive. But death's about to bring them together.

Using two ancient myths, Acorn analyses and evaluates the ever-changing role of women in the modern world, as well as challenging perceptions of medical care around the end of life - an especially timely subject in light of the continuing dismantling of the NHS.

How is myth preserved in modern culture? How does it still shape our lives? What power do these stories still have over our ideas of life, death, and what it means to be a woman? How can they be re-written?

Maud Dromgoole's first play Blue Moon showed at the Courtyard Theatre in 2015. She has had several short plays performed, including Cake at the Cockpit Theatre and Tristan Bates Theatre, and Selkie at the Southwark Playhouse.

Director Tatty Hennessey trained at LAMDA, and has directed for Pint Sized, Theatre Renegade, Not Too Tame, The Reversed Shakespeare Company and the Miniaturists. She is an associate director with Merely Theatre, and has been an associate director at the Lyric Theatre, Park Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe.

Acorn will be performed by Lucy Pickles and Deli Segal, who had a sell-out run of After Penelope, a new play about women in wartime, at The White Bear Theatre in London, which they co-wrote with their all-female theatre company, Spectra. The play went on to be performed at The Rome International Fringe Festival 2015 and then again at the RADA Festival in London. Spectra performed their second play, Harry's Girls last summer; a modern re-telling of the story of the 6 wives of Henry VIII at the RADA Studios and Upstairs at the Gatehouse.

"Maud Dromgoole's script is witty and dark with plenty of depth" (Female Arts on Blue Moon)

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