Loving you is the gentlest work

A delicate spin over a linoleum tile

And then you open your mouth to speak

Because you have to ruin everything

***BY POPULAR DEMAND - 7 DAY EXTENDED OPENING - MUST CLOSE 20 JUNE***

The Gentlest Work is an online performance installation that celebrates the queer in myth and queers in myth. Since our inception, By Jove have been fascinated by the ancient characters from the Oresteia: our first two projects, in 2011 and 2012, drew on the underlying myths. For the past three years we have obsessed again over siblings Orestes, Electra, and Iphigenia, as well as Pylades, the man whose life becomes so tightly interwoven with theirs. We have sought out the queerness that is latent or hidden or, in the past, actively excluded, as well as the queer pieces of ourselves we've found refracted in their stories and the history of their stories. We can't wait to let you into their world - our world - to play. There you will find the past intermingled with the present; trauma interwoven with joy; fear intercut with openness.

The Gentlest Work takes the form of a digital gallery of creative responses to the myths that you will be able to explore in your own time beginning Monday 7 June 2021 at 00:01 BST; it will be available until Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 23:59 BST and the project will culminate in a live event via Zoom on Saturday, 12 June 2021 at 20:00 BST.

Please be aware this performance includes strong language, discussions of violence and sexual abuse, scenes of a sexual nature, and extensive depiction of trauma. For more specific content warnings, feel free to contact us here.

This event is made possible through the support of Arts Council England, the Institute of Classical Studies, the Hellenic Society, SCS Classics Everywhere, the Open University, the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation, and our Patreon supporters.

We recommend this project be viewed on a computer or tablet. To experience the live element of the installation, please download Zoom to your laptop or mobile device https://zoom.us/download

The event will include captioning and audio description throughout. Feel free to contact us with any access questions here.

By Jove tell old stories in new ways. An award-winning collective of artists founded in 2011, we take myths, pull them apart, and weave them back together for a contemporary audience. With a focus on women and LGBTQ+ lives, our previous work includes: the European premiere of Margaret of Anjou, a global project to place one of Shakespeare's most complex and compelling women centre stage; Here She Comes, a spoken word reimagining of Euripides' Bacchae performed in an art gallery transformed into a forest; and a "bold and beautiful" new version of Medea, originally staged in 2017 and reimagined during the early stages of the pandemic last year for a one-off digital performance on YouTube.