Department Colloquium: Joseph Medeiros (Performer) "The Odyssey: Beginnings; a performance of Homer in Greek"

Performer: Joseph Medeiros, Broadway and Off-Broadway Actor

Performance Description: Who are you? Where are you from? Who brought you into this world? What necessity drove your undertaking? A mystery lies at the heart of the Homeric corpus, a mystery of identity and process, a mystery whose proposed answers are not the subject of this talk... The formulaic questions seem simple enough for anyone to rattle off well-rehearsed answers in response, but the more I’ve asked myself these questions, the more elusive the answers become. New information, new contexts, new needs, and new desires morph the landscape and sculpt new contours; the tides change; I adapt or sink. I am Joseph, son of Joe, from Modesto, CA, and I am here to perform the beginnings of the first three books of the Odyssey in Greek because it’s the best way I know to dance with the mystery of who I am, where I came from, and where I’m going.