Writer-director Emma Hawkins on the development of Persephone

My first experience of musical theatre was being taken to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when I was 3 and subsequently having nightmares about the child-catcher for weeks afterwards. Luckily it was worth it as it sparked a deep interest in the world of musical theatre. As a teenager I’d over joke about what I’d do if I wrote my own musical (a tap dance number was high up there, though sadly it didn’t work out for this show), and it didn’t take long for the joking to become a long-term ambition: to one day write my own musical and join the club of all the others I loved that had come before me.

What happened over the next 6 years, leading up to now, is all a bit of a blur. I started with a rough idea based on the Greek gods, poured over some intro-to-storytelling books and just kept writing any chance I got. It became a comforting side project to turn to when A-Levels got a bit intense, or I just wanted to get some emotion down on paper. The point at which I started writing coincided with the first of many major depressive episodes I’d come to experience over the following years, and even though I never thought of myself as a writer, I found writing something cathartic and therapeutic for those times when I was struggling to do anything else.

The original plan was to write a high-energy ensemble musical on all 12 Olympian gods, weaving their stories in a way similar to Love Actually or Gossip Girl; contemporary soap opera, musicalised. However, the first ideas aren’t always the most successful ones. I soon realised that in order to tell the story I wanted a 2 hour stage show wouldn’t fit the bill. I had to re-think. As I did many times throughout the process, I went back to square one. Many of the characters and stories I had a lot of love for had to go – (there was once a whole subplot of Aphrodite, her lover Ares and her husband Hephaestus) and I had to find a new focus. Every time I sat down to write, one goddess was at the forefront of my mind: Persephone, and so a show retelling the story of the goddess of spring came to be. Some of the previous characters still made their way into the show (Hera and Zeus’ dynamic remains fairly unchanged) but now they’d exist around the story of Persephone, as opposed to being part of a collective ensemble.

As to why I chose Persephone? Perhaps, I was subconsciously aware of the similarity between myself and the character; like Persephone I was a young woman, living a fairly sheltered life in the middle of the countryside. I was also on the cusp of adulthood and navigating all the complicated ups and downs that come with that. These points of relatability to the central character made writing the show (with it being my first ever piece of extended writing) relatively easy and allowed me to explore this narrative without too much external research into the main character’s psyche.

Looking back on this long writing process, it’s fascinating just how close my own life has paralleled that of Persephone’s. Inadvertently, many of the major plot points written into the script months or even years before, ended up becoming things I’d personally experience. While unaware of it at the time, this has given me a much deeper connection to all of the characters and has also made me realise the significance of this story for a contemporary audience: this isn’t just a Greek myth told in a contemporary world, but a story that lives true in the lives of those watching it.

There’s also something about this show that makes it incredibly poignant: it’s written by a young woman, about a young woman, for young women. Last spring we workshopped the show with a group of actors to develop the script and score. It also gave me the opportunity to talk to other people about this story. It seems to tap on a thread of human nature that is so archetypal it can be found in the lives of most people. Everyone has a Persephone, a Zeus, a Hermes or an Aphrodite in their life. Everyone can relate to exploring that grey area between childhood and living independently. Many people can also relate to many of the issues the show taps into such as sexual assault, grooming, power abuse, mental illness and abusive relationships. These topics, found in the original Greek myth, need only a contemporary lens to be brought to the forefront of the tale.

I think it’s important that stories aren’t only told about young people, but also by young people. The world seen through a young person’s eyes is rarely one we get to observe once we’ve left our own youth behind. As the writing process draws to a close, I’m beginning to see how much I’ve changed over the past 6 years. The naivety with which I began this endeavour, both relating to the project itself and my own state of existence at the time, has all but gone. I like to think, however, that some of that naivety and growth has been caught in the production, in the way many parts of myself have been absorbed into it. As I enter the next stage of production and begin directing, I hope to reconnect with that 16 year old girl and stage her story in a way that doesn’t overwrite her youthful qualities but rather, does justice to the experience of being young.

Emma Hawkins - October 2021