Gilgamesh CON/QUEST

Re-discovered only in the mid-19th century on a set of clay tablets in a previously undeciphered cuneiform script, the epic of Gilgamesh tells of semi-divine Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who is challenged, loved and transformed by Enkidu, the part-animal man who lives in the wild. Together they vanquish Humbaba, the Giant of the cedar forest, mock the powerful goddess Ishtar and slay the Bull of Heaven she sends against them. When the gods resolve to destroy Enkidu, Gilgamesh, grief-stricken, journeys to the ends of the earth seeking to comprehend his own mortality. Gilgamesh CON/QUEST, first conceived by Mahmood Karimi Hakak and Ralph Blasting and performed as an experimental theatre piece in 1991, captures the grandeur and enigma of a civilization's epic poetry and the emotions of its gods, mortals, monsters and poets--four millennia distant from us in time and mind, but profoundly and timelessly human. Gilgamesh CON/QUEST gives us the words, the poetry, the script, the music, and the historic-linguistic and mythic/mythopoetic context of this sublime and immortal work of art.