What Lies Beneath
Explosives Factory until 18 October
Book tix
Equal parts celebration and lamentation, What Lies Beneath reimagines the Persephone and Demeter myths through primordial chants, ritualistic dance and a deep reverence for the cycles of life. Writer and producer Sarah Miller credits her journey through perimenopause and cervical cancer with inspiring this experimental descent from the abundant above to the shadowy unknown below. Gendered and environmental violence ripple through the work, while the goddesses affirm: “Death is but a doorway to new life.”
White, translucent canopies – courtesy of Louisa Fitzgerald – hang from the ceiling, and a distorted mirror stretches along the centre of the stage, inviting reflection. Cassandra Fumi’s direction is brimming with energy and powerful imagery. Fumi realises Miller’s poetic language with an intensity that makes every word and gesture resonate, and Rosa Voto’s choreography speaks as emphatically as the text itself. The symbolic nature of the piece leaves much open to interpretation, but intention radiates through each movement nonetheless.
The world of What Lies Beneath is inseparable from Ria Soemardjo’s composition and sound design. The haunting moans of the dead plead, multi-layered voices buzz like a swarm of bees, and the war-cries of grieving women reverberate through time. Soemardjo’s evocative soundscape pulses with the voices, drumming and body percussion of the three performers, for whom rhythm is like a native tongue.
Three generations of women grace the stage. Daphne Gerolymou-Papadopoulos embodies Persephone, a girl on the threshold of womanhood, whose first bleeding signals the beginning of her journey. As Miller notes in the program, this retelling honours the earliest iterations of the myth, emphasizing Persephone’s voluntary descent to the underworld rather than an abduction that strips her of agency. Even so, her mother Demeter – played by choreographer and masterful drummer Voto – feels the same devastating grief. Hekate, the goddess of thresholds, guides both Persephone and the narrative itself, and a quiet wisdom grounds Clare Larman’s performance. “The ancient stories tug at our skirts and at our skin”, Hekate tells Persephone, and this line captures the very essence of Miller’s piece.
An ode to the seasons, to becoming, to womanhood, What Lies Beneath channels ancestral voices to bridge past and present. The show culminates in a stirring call to arms, as Persephone, streaked with pomegranate juice, addresses the audience: “I rise—and you rise with me.” Demeter and Hekate look on with pride.
