sibyllatheplay

[sibyllatheplay]

A monologue from Sibylla spoken in Latin dactylic hexameter, inspired by the Cumaean Sibyl in Virgil’s Aeneid. Taken from Liber IV: Descents and Ascents.

Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

[sibyllatheplay]

NOTES ON SIBYLLA: TRAGEDY AS TIME’S ETERNAL MEMORY FROM WHICH THERE IS NO ESCAPE

Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

SOURCES:

Sappho, fragment 147, trans. Anne Carson

“Agnes,” Glass Animals

Sibylla, LIBER III: Where Is Your Axe?

129A fragment, Sappho, trans. Anne Carson 

Days of Candy, Beach House

Sibylla, LIBER IV: Descents And Ascents

Richard Siken, Little Beast 

Sibylla, LIBER IV: Descents And Ascents

[sibyllatheplay]

NOTES ON SIBYLLA: TRAGEDY AS THE SELF FEASTING SNAKE OF LONELINESS WHICH RELISHES THE TASTE OF ITS OWN TAIL 


Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.


SOURCES: 


Sibylla, LIBER III: Where Is Your Axe?


Medea, Euripides, lines 255-256


The Magnus Archives, 154, Bloody Mary 


Sibylla Note, written by author of Sibylla


Philoktetes, Sophocles, lines 227-228


“home with you” FKA twigs


Sibylla, LIBER I: What’s It Like To Go Back?


Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken

[sibyllatheplay]

NOTES ON SIBYLLA: TRAGEDY AS THE FAILURE OF THE ONLY THING THAT DISTINGUISHES MAN FROM BEASTS

Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

SOURCES: 

Sibylla, General Note On Language

“i wonder with your ruin: notes on the contingent collapse of sibylla” Percy Byron

Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry 

“Futile Devices” Sufjan Stevens

Sibylla, LIBER IV: Descents And Ascents

“i wonder with your ruin: notes on the contingent collapse of sibylla” Percy Byron

Anne Carson, on writing from the margins of her mind — CBC Radio

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death

“i wonder with your ruin: notes on the contingent collapse of sibylla” Percy Byron

[sibyllatheplay]

NOTES ON SIBYLLA: TRAGEDY OF WAS, IS, AND WILL BE — DOES A PROPHET’S TONGUE SPEAK AT ALL?

Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

SOURCES:

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death

Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1080-1083

Sibylla, LIBER IV: Descents And Ascents

Iliad, Homer, I.67-70

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death

Note on Sibylla, written by the playwright

Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl, François Perrier

Aeneid, Vergil, VI.43-44

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death

[sibyllatheplay]

NOTES ON SIBYLLA: TRAGEDY AS THE DISTORTION OF THE REAL - WAS THAT STAIRCASE HERE BEFORE? 

Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

SOURCES:

Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, Section I - T.S. Eliot

Sibylla, LIBER I: What’s It Like To Go Back

Escalier et int��rieur, Sam Szafran

The Magnus Archives, MAG 38: Lost And Found

Staircase-V, Do Ho Suh

“i wonder with your ruin: notes on the contingent collapse of sibylla” - Percy Byron

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death

[sibyllatheplay]

NOTES ON SIBYLLA: TRAGEDY AS MIMESIS - YOU AND I HAVE BECOME THE SAME 

Sibylla is a four part audio podcast drama produced by dftc, available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. In the year 2030, the discovery of time travel yields a new form of research: the capability of going back in time to Ancient Rome and verifying previously unverifiable historical information. Sibylla follows the inner-lives and relationships within such a research department: Vic, the head of the department and her research assistant, Jess, John, a time travel agent and his trainee, Nate, Marianne and Chris, the operators and technicians of the time machine. However, when Nate accidentally causes a shepherd not to go to Pompeii when Vesuvius erupts, the characters’s present reality shifts, unbeknownst to everyone besides John and Nate. As John and Nate scramble to set their reality back to normal, they begin a new mission to recover a lost series of prophecies from the Cumaean Sibyl. But as they grow more desperate in their attempts to fix the present, bouncing between the past and the future, reality itself alters as the nature of time and fate begins to intersect tragically for each character. A mythological and ruinous rumination into loss, memories, and the implacably destructive nature of loneliness and grief, Sibylla examines the innate human desire to change and the aftermath when this fails.

SOURCES:

Sibylla, LIBER III: Where Is Your Axe?

Aristotle’s Poetics IV.1-4 trans. S. H. Butcher 

The Kiss, Edvard Munch

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death

“i wonder with your ruin: notes on the contingent collapse of sibylla” - Percy Byron

Dolce, S3E6 Hannibal

Sunspots (2016) - Nickie Zimov

“The Divers’ Game,” Jesse Ball’s Unnerving Parable of a Country That Feigns Innocence - Katy Waldman, The New Yorker 

Sibylla, LIBER II: Black As Death