I've been a little bit in love with Dido since high school.
I first met her while translating The Aeneid for Latin
class, and found her completely irresistible, which seemed
contrary to Vergil's purpose. He was writing the great
founding epic of the Roman people,
after all, and the Carthaginians were Rome's greatest
enemy at the
time, but Dido shines through the nationalist propaganda.
She is strong, wise, and beautiful, and I think a role
model to Aeneas in a way that is often overlooked.
I have tried to bring her to life in The Ballad of Dido
in a way that she has never been. While other renditions of
the story focus on her tragic death, I wanted to explore
the triumphs of her
life, and bring to the stage the story of a woman who is both
conscious of the power of her own mythos, but still able to
function as a human being.
Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, The
Ballad
of Dido explores relationships of power, religion, and
personality in an effort to show how these themes are part of
our
founding myths as much as they were in the ancient world.
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