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Image credit: Bob King Creative (Creative Design) and Seamus Ryan (Artwork Photography)
This ticket is for IN-HOUSE access to this event. Doors open at 6:30pm.
In-house tickets are currently sold-out; however, online tickets are still available to purchase here.
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Sigmund Freud’s fascination with the character of Oedipus dates back to the very beginnings of psychoanalysis. Writing to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in 1897, he states that Sophocles’ play maintains its ‘universal appeal’, due to the fact that it ‘seizes on a compulsion that everyone recognises because he senses its existence within himself’. Many years before the discovery of the ‘Oedipus complex’ then, Freud recognised the illuminating quality of Sophocles’ tragedy.
In this special hybrid event, the Freud Museum welcomes visionary director Robert Icke, whose retelling of the Sophocles’ Oedipus, currently playing at the Wyndham Theatre, brings its universal quality into a contemporary light. Robert Icke will be joined by Professor Simon Goldhill, FBA, to discuss Icke’s startling new production and the enduring relevance of the Oedipus myth.
This discussion will be introduced by Professor Miriam Leonard (UCL) and the Freud Museum’s Research Manager, Tom DeRose. Tickets include a welcome drink.
This event is generously supported by University College London.
Please click here to purchase an online ticket.
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Speakers:
Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and former Foreign Secretary of the British Academy. His books have been translated into ten languages and won three international prizes. As well as studying the literature and culture of antiquity, he is an expert on nineteenth-century culture, and especially the relation between antiquity and religion. His most recent books are The Christian Invention of Time (Cambridge, 2022) and What is a Jewish Classicist? (London, 2022). He has lectured and broadcast on TV and radio all over the world.
Robert Icke is an award-winning writer and director, working in theatre and on screen. Until 2023, he was the Ibsen Artist in Residence at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. His awards include two Evening Standard ‘Best Director’ Awards, the Critics’ Circle Award, the Kurt Hübner Award for his debut production in Germany, and the Olivier Award for ‘Best Director’, of which he is the youngest ever winner. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Miriam Leonard is Professor of Greek Literature and its Reception at University College London. Her research explores the intellectual history of classics in modern European thought from the eighteenth century to the present. She is author of Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought (Oxford, 2005), How to Read Ancient Philosophy (London, 2008), Socrates and the Jews: Hellenism and Hebraism from Moses Mendelssohn to Sigmund Freud (Chicago, 2012) and Tragic Modernities (Cambridge MA, 2015). She was the curator of the 2019 exhibition ‘Freud and Egypt’, and the 2023 exhibition ‘Freud’s Antiquity’ at the Freud Museum London. Her book ‘Revolution: Modern Uprisings in Ancient Time’ is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press..
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Tickets: £25
Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price on all events, courses, conferences and On Demand programming.
The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular Government income. We are grateful to you for supporting our independent museum as generously as possible.
