Journey into the Underworld

In many ways, the myth of Persephone is emblematic of Greek mythology. Epic, otherworldly, allegorical – and deeply problematic. The daughter of Zeus and Demeter becomes the unwilling bride of Hades through abduction, a scene tellingly known in much of Western art as "the Rape of Persephone". When Zeus demands that she be freed, Hades ensures that she will return to him through trickery: by feeding her pomegranate seeds, the food of his domain, she is compelled to spend every winter in the underworld. And so, each year, her mother despairs and the sun grows cold, until Persephone returns in the spring.

As a metaphor for the changing of the seasons the myth has endured for thousands of years, always casting Persephone as a tragic figure, a damsel in distress controlled by fate. It's a characterisation created in antiquity – which is where it should probably stay.

When Megan Lewicki and Evangeline Crittenden first tackled the myth while studying at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), their dissatisfaction with Persephone's lack of agency was mutual and immediate.

"The Persephone myth is so evocative," Lewicki explains, "the only part we weren't fans of was the kidnapping. We were really interested in developing a more evolved perspective on her story. In the original myth, she's tugged around like a puppet – you never hear her voice. She's rarely even mentioned in other myths. She's such a mystery in the whole canon."

As such, Persephone turned out to be a perfect creative blank slate. What began as a course requirement on using objects to tell stories—"We told the story of Persephone using toy birds and a storage unit," Crittenden recollects—forced them to confront the problems of a character that not only employed sexist tropes, but probably did a great deal to cement them in our culture. Their solution was sheer elegance in its simplicity: Persephone isn't kidnapped. She chooses to go with Hades. Choice changes everything, and Pomegranate Jam is the proof.

A magically beautiful "shadow ballet", the play is told through a mixture of dance, music and shadow puppetry – a love story of dark, graceful figures caught between worlds of hazy, shimmering colour. The masterstroke of Pomegranate Jam is to reimagine Persephone as a rebellious and romantic young woman, a figure fully in control of her own destiny. As such, when she is courted by Hades, the ultimate bad boy with a heart of gold, it is her decision which sets in motion all that follows.

This core alteration of the myth allowed the rest of the production to fall into place. "It gave us the freedom to explore what it is to find your own agency and identity," says Lewicki. "Moving out of one realm and into another."

Crittenden expands on the theme: "It's the struggle between where you're coming from and where you're going. Everyone has that struggle."

What remains from the original narrative is the pain of Demeter losing her daughter. To Crittenden, who also plays Persephone's mother, this was a major, much-overlooked aspect of the story. "It's not just Persephone's struggle between worlds," she says, "but a mother's struggle to let go. We have the term 'empty nest syndrome', but we have so few stories that acknowledge what that really means. If you do your job right as a mother, it has loss written into it. In our simple way, without words, we were interested in exploring what that means."

Then again, Crittenden is completely aware of how much Pomegranate Jam is a fantasy. "There's a moment where the puppets say goodbye, and Demeter gives this little gesture of acquiesence. In rehearsal, I always joked about that – as if your mother could ever really let you go. But I'm not a mother – yet."

As multilayered, provocative and experimental as Promegranate Jam is, it was always the intention of the co-directors to create something accessible and relatable to all ages. "We really want more children to see it," enthuses Crittenden. "I think it's a wonderful story for kids. They can really surprise you with what they can appreciate."

A tale of young love conquering the odds has an obvious adolescent appeal as well. "Yeah, it's a great romance for teenagers," says Lewicki. "When we were digging dramaturgically into Persephone as a character, we figured out that she's rebellious. She wants more out of life, and so when Hades appears and they have a 'moment', she decides to descend into the underworld. That choice is a rebellious choice. It says: 'I don't want to be up here'."

The play does not feel like a radical reinterpretation – in fact, it feels considerably more natural than the original myth. This is partly because Persephone has become a far more convincing, compelling character, and also because there was never a moment in Pomegranate Jam's development when her agency was not of paramount concern.

Crittenden's reasoning is uncomplicated and unwavering: "I'm not interested in stories that propagate female helplessness."

"We are part of this crazy medium that says we can tell whatever story we want," Lewicki continues. "We can take a myth that is common enough that everyone knows it, and make it better."

"My experience of the canon is that if you passively accept it, you are reinforcing centuries-old power structures," argues Crittenden. "We're not here to accept something. We're here to create something. From the beginning, we wanted to retain the beauty and poetry of this story, and remove the problematic elements. Once we did that, the adaptation was somewhat effortless."

Lewicki smiles mischievously. "So effortless, it's almost as if this was the story that was meant to be told..."