Orpheus & Eurydice by J.B.C. Corot - 1861

Orpheus

Text editors: John Ulreich, Jane Hipolito and Rory O’Connor.

Written: 1937
First Performance: 1948 – Sheffield, Yorkshire, England
Published: 1983
Second Performance: 2015 – Los Angeles, California, USA.

This drama was inspired by a conversation between Owen Barfield and his friend C. S. Lewis.

Manuscript detail from Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes. Paris, National Library of France, Français 12577, 18v. 14th Century.

The Quest of the Sangreal

Editors: Jefferey H. Taylor & Leslie A. Taylor.

Owen Barfield wrote the eurythmy performance piece between 1935 and 1947.

The original manuscript is held in the Bodleian Library.

Bodleian catalogue: ‘The Quest of Sangreal’, typescript copy, n.d. Shelfmark: Dep. c. 1101.

About Eurythmy

Dancers performing EurythmyEurythmy is a movement art that brings the essence of music and language to visible manifestation. Through deliberate, sculptured gestures sounds take physical form. Eurythmy is not interpretive of music and poetry. It is a true sounding or singing through the body as an instrument.

Eurythmy takes its start from the view that all art is the revelation of concealed laws of nature. The experience of the inmost soul is brought forth and unfolds in motion, gesture, colour and space.

Plate from 'Visions of the Daughters of Albion,' by William Blake, c.1795

Angels at Bay

Editors: Jefferey H. Taylor & Leslie A. Taylor.

Owen Barfield composed the play in c.1940. The original manuscript is held in the Bodleian Library.

A transcript copy manuscript is in the Marion E. Wade Center
[Reference: OB / MS 1 to 4 / ANGELS AT BAY, 163 pages.]

Photograph of a woman and a policeman at a train station by Toni Frissell, published by Harper's Bazaar in 1951

Lady, Be Careful!

Editors: Jefferey H. Taylor & Leslie A. Taylor.

Owen Barfield composed the play c.1945 to c.1950. The original manuscript is held in the Bodleian Library.

A play in three acts. The working-title was ‘Airships and Partnerships’.

The pen-names G.A.L. Burgeon & Roger Fox are a potent reminder of OB’s “Burgeon & Burden” as in Barfield’s book ‘This Ever Diverse Pair’.

The initials G.A.L stand for the names of Barfield’s children: Geofrey, Alexander, and Lucy.

Jason and Medea by John William Waterhouse. A sitted woman in a red dress adds a small bottle of some kind of liquid to a gold chalice, looking anxious. A man with a golden helmet and blue toga sits next to her, looking at what she is doing and holding a spear.

Medea

Editors: Jefferey H. Taylor & Leslie A. Taylor.

A play in verse, written 1970s-1983
The original manuscript is held in the Bodleian Library.