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The Odyssey ‘Round the World was a collaborative public reading of Homer’s Odyssey published on YouTube in December 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coming from the larger Reading Greek Tragedy Online initiative and organized by the Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies, the reading featured performances of every book of the Odyssey by students, faculty, actors and laypersons from about twenty countries. The contributors were encouraged to perform in their own language, but they could also use the Ancient Greek, or any other language; the text could have been read, recited, sung, acted. The result, still available online, is briefly described here. Reflecting on the event I notice that public readings and YouTube videos are, as genres and cultural activities, rarely included in surveys of Homeric reception. The Odyssey ‘Round the World event is distinguished by its prominent diversity; in this way, the event connects with current debates on “Classics” as an academic discipline and with the theory of multiform, diachronic development of Homeric poems. The event also demonstrates both advantages and limits of the technology, and, most importantly, it makes us aware of the distance between Homeric poems as performance in ancient Greece and the usual way we deal with them as our reading matter.

In Chile, street protests and COVID-related public health emergencies have ravaged live theatre over the past year. While the political protests starting in October 2019 simply “limited” live theatre programming, the pandemic forced actual cancellation of whole theater seasons. As a result, theater companies and individual artists were forced to consider technology—Zoom readings, filmed Master Classes and video recordings of earlier productions. Beyond aesthetics, for many theatre people these projects became another chance to continue working. In this situation, what role does theatre criticism play? In times of catastrophe, can any critical judgements be ethical?

What did they need protection from? Because of the pandemic and the need for theatre to survive and thrive online, I have discovered how essential it is for artists to build best practices of safety and consent for virtual intimacy directing. [...]each of the women shared their concerns directly; there was a lot of anxiety around what the rape scene would look like. Since this was unknown territory, I decided to get even more information from the actors. In order to build Consent and Choreography from the Five Pillars, I asked: “What will feel safe and respectful to you?” I also focused on Context, another one of the five, asking an actor, “What does your character do?” Through this project, it became clear that virtual intimacy directors are protecting the psychological safety of actors. The director suggested the sunglasses in an email in which she shared her concerns, and it worked well as an anchor for calling attention to the character, yet helping the actor to feel safe. Since listening is crucial to intimacy work, I used the director’s feedback to build the choreography.

According to Christopher Innes, and following Craig’s own testimony, it was only after Craig had read Janvier’s article on the Comédie Française’s productions of Oedipus and Antigone, staged in the ruined Roman theater in Orange, that he really began to understand the “possibilities which are opened by height, space and background to the stage” (p. 26). [...]the same is true for “A Hum drum noise”—how do you sound monotony? is it meant to sound once or repeatedly? when? and why?—though about “Twangtwang twang,” partial answers are provided. [...]incomplete material will offer only partial answers to the questions asked of it, but what there is here still offers a fascinating insight into how a dramatic monologue might operate theatrically. [...]though on the one hand the dramatic monologue represented the stage’s demise, on the other it conceivably helped guide Craig to the manner of the stage’s revival.

Miss Kelly has embarked a considerable capital in the purchase of property, and in erecting a small but commodious theatre, attached to her own residence, in which talent may be cultivated and practical knowledge advanced, by Courses of Lectures, daily readings, and stage studies. [. . .] [...]far Miss Kelly has, by her own unaided exertion, and with no other funds than the thrifty savings of her professional life,28 surmounted every difficulty, and prepared for the public operation of her Plans; and willing to abide the test of an honest intention and earnest activity, ventures once again before the Public as an humble, but faithful, labourer in the Dramatic Art, with those who would recall the stage from a state of degradation to all its intellectual and moral usefulness.29 Apparently, the earliest announcement of the completion of the theatre's building itself was published on 21 March 1836. [...]the committee withdrew from and cancelled the benefit by tactfully announcing its postponement.92 Apparently Dickens's active involvement on behalf of Miss Kelly ended with the cancellation of her benefit. [...]the distinction of being 'the first such institution to offer acting tuition'99 belongs to Miss Frances Maria Kelly's Dramatic School. 1 Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905), stage name of John Henry Brodribb, manager of the Lyceum Theatre. 2 John Lawrence Toole (1830-1906), comedian and close friend of Sir Henry Irving. 3 'Miss Fanny Kelly', 23 December 1882, p. 661. According to 'Items', The Stage, 24 November 1938, p. 11, the Southern Cross Players would perform The Milkmans Round by E. Savage-Graham. 98 Mander, op. cit., p. 403.

[...]both poems use their spinning cylinders to depict orality: the skein whirling off the winch pelts the bird’s “músic,” and the skeins winding onto two spools “tell” and “groan.” The lines, each comprising eight stresses, are so long that none of Hopkins’s manuscripts and few published versions can fit them between a page’s margins without fracturing them. [...]to emphasize continuity of text not just across these lines but between them as well, Hopkins enjambs nine lines of the sonnet (over 60 percent), including the audacious enjambment, midword, of “as- / Tray” (PW, p. 191). Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, laments in Biographia Literaria that “now, partly by the labors of successive poets, . . . language, mechanized as it were into a barrel-organ, supplies at once both instrument and tune. [...]even the deaf may play, so as to delight the many,” which alludes to the barrel organ’s ability to replay but not record. F. R. Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary Situation (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932), p. 182. Because Leavis is attuned to Hopkins’s sounds and materiality, he counters the idea of a relineation like Culler’s.