Returning to The North Wall Lost Dog Dance presents Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me).  Milton’s epic poem is brought to life in this one-man dance theatre adaptation, featuring words, dance and an electric soundtrack.  Tens of characters and tens of thousands of lines of poetry relayed in one hour by one man who promises to dance the complicated bits…

Ben Duke tells the epic story of the banishment of Satan from Heaven, the creation of Earth, the temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden through words, music and dance. By himself. Paradise Lost follows Lost Dog’s previous literary adaptation, Like Rabbits, which was based on the Virginia Woolf short story Lappin and Lapinova, and was devised by Ben Duke in collaboration with Lucy Kirkwood (Chimerica).

Ben said “The initial thought, to create a one man version of Paradise Lost, seemed like a ridiculous idea. It is hard to know with ridiculous ideas whether they should be immediately dismissed or allowed to become obsessions. This one turned into an obsession mainly because whenever I mentioned the idea to people they would assume I was joking. If I’m honest, when I first read Paradise Lost at 19 I imagined that by the time I was 40 I’d have created a multi-million pound film version of it. Now my ambitions are more modest but still as unrealistic. What I am trying to do is impossible. So the piece is inevitably about failing, but it is also about the act of creation: God’s, Milton’s, mine.”

Performance:  Thursday 19th November 2015, 8pm 

Venue:  The North Wall, South Parade, Oxford OX2 7JN

Tickets: £15 (£13 concs, £5 students)

Buy online here or phone 01865 319450

Created, devised and performed by Ben Duke

Based on the poem by John Milton      

Light and set design by Jackie Shemesh

Artistic Collaborator Raquel Meseguer
Producer: Emily Gorrod-Smith

Running Time: approx. 80 minutes | Suitable for ages 14+

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Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZg8kF2jVkg

Co-commissioned by The Place and Battersea Arts Centre, supported by ICIA Bath University. Developed with support from The Point, Easleigh and South East Dance. Supported by National Lottery through Arts Council England.