Booking and details
Dates Thu, May 9, 2024, 6:30pm
Tickets $25 with discounts for Folger Members and Subscribers
Karen Ann Daniels, Artistic Director of Folger Theatre, leads a discussion with Metamorphoses creative team members to discuss this new staging of Mary Zimmerman’s critically acclaimed Ovid adaptation.
She will be joined by director Psalmayene24, costume designer Mika Eubanks, and choreographer Tony Thomas.
Learn more about how this production reimagines the play’s iconic staging, what it means to examine the classics through a contemporary lens, and the enduring appeal of myths.
About the production
Ovid’s classic tales come to astonishing life in Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation where gods and mortals experience love, loss, and transformation.
Juxtaposing the mythic and the modern, the stories of Aphrodite, Midas, Orpheus, Cupid, and others are told in a whimsical and poignant fashion, reminding us of the joys, follies, and heartbreaks of being human.
Metamorphoses was nominated for three Tony Awards in 2002, including “Best Play.”
Psalmayene 24
Psalmayene 24: Folger Theatre: Metamorphoses, Director (Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Director); The Reading Room Festival 2025, Panelist. Arena Stage: Tempestuous Elements (Director), Ruined (Actor), Cuttin’ Up (Actor), Anthems (Actor); Studio Theatre: The Colored Museum (Director), Good Bones (Director), Flow (Director), Pass Over (Director); Ford’s Theatre: Necessary Sacrifices: A Radio Play (Director); Mosaic Theater: Monumental Travesties (Playwright), Dear Mapel (Playwright/Actor), Les Deux Noirs (Playwright), Native Son (Director), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence; Joe’s Movement Emporium: Out of the Vineyard (Playwright); Theater Alliance: The Blackest Battle (Playwright); Word Becomes Flesh (Director); Imagination Stage: The Freshest Snow Whyte (Playwright/Director), Cinderella: The Remix (Playwright/Director), P. Nokio: A Hip-Hop Musical (Playwright/Director), Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip-Hop Creation Myth (Playwright/Director); African Continuum Theatre Company: Free Jujube Brown! (Playwright/Actor). TV/Film: The Freewheelin’ Insurgents (Writer/Director/Actor); HBO’s The Wire (Actor). Helen Hayes and Imagination Award recipient.
Mika Eubanks
Mika Eubanks (Costume Design) Folger Theatre: debut. Classical Theater of Harlem: Seize The King; Lincoln Center Theater: Flex; The Vineyard Theatre: Lessons in Survival: 1971. Regional: Repertory Theatre of St. Louis: Feeding Beatrice; Baltimore Center Stage/Long Wharf Theatre: Fires In The Mirror; Old Globe: The XIXth; St. Louis Shakespeare Festival: King Lear starring André De Shields; Asolo Repertory Theater: Grand Horizons; Yale Repertory Theatre/CTH: Twelfth Night, for which she received the Connecticut Critic Circle Award for outstanding costume design. Film: Candace. Television: Initiative 29 (Hulu). Currently located in New York, but hailing from Maryland, Mika received her MFA in Costume Design at Yale School of Drama and holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2022, she served as the costume assistant on the Tony Award-winning Best Musical A Strange Loop. mikaeubanks.com
Tony Thomas
Tony Thomas (Choreographer) Folger Theatre: Metamorphoses (Helen Hayes Award nomination). Berkeley Repertory Theatre/ Mosaic Theatre/ Baltimore Center Stage: Mexodus (Helen Hayes Award nomination); Studio Theatre: PASSOVER, White Noise, Good Bones, People, Places, and Things, FLOW, Love, Love, Love, P.Y.G., Fat Ham, The Colored Museum (Helen Hayes Award nominations); Arena Stage: Tempestuous Elements; Imagination Stage: Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, Miss Nelson is Missing, P. Nokio, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Freshest Snow Whyte; Constellation Theatre Company: AIDA, Mysticism & Music; Joe’s Movement Emporium: Out of the Vineyard; Theatre Alliance: Word Becomes Flesh (Helen Hayes Award nomination). Film: Studio Theatre: FLOW; Constellation Theatre Company: The Last 5 Years; Arena Stage: The Freewheelin’ Insurgents. National Tour: West Side Story.
Karen Ann Daniels
Karen Ann Daniels is the Director of Programming and Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Artistic Director of Folger Theatre. A native San Diegan, she is an accomplished actor, director, playwright, vocalist, musician, and community organizer. Prior to joining the Folger, she was director of the Mobile Unit at The Public Theater in NYC, producing tours around all five boroughs of NYC bringing the tools of theater to incarcerated community through Mobile Unit in Corrections (MUiC).
In her prior role as the associate director of The Old Globe’s Arts Engagement department, she managed community partnerships, and created, piloted, and implemented cornerstone programs such as Globe for All, Behind the Curtain, coLAB, Community Voices, and Reflecting Shakespeare. She is a thought-leader, facilitator, and contributing architect for creating tools to help cultural institutions integrate anti-racism, equity, accessibility, community and audience engagement, and shared leadership as a long-term mission-oriented strategy for organizational growth. She is a 2021 Fellow at the Atlantic Fellows on Racial Equity, a network of leaders from the US and South Africa working to build expansive new futures in which Black people, and all people of color, are seen, valued, and respected. She served as chair of the City of Chula Vista’s Cultural Arts Commission, as well as the New California Arts Fund Leadership and Learning Committees, and is a co-producer and facilitator for the biannual Shakespeare in Prisons Conference and Network. In recent years, her creative work focused on co-creation as a composer/lyricist/playwright for musicals like gather ‘round and The Ruby in Us, centering the lives and stories of community.