Metamorphoses

Walter Borden brings Metamorphoses to the Bus Stop Theatre Co-op at 2203 Gottingen Street in the North End, with the run opening Tuesday, September 29 and continuing through October 4. It's a world premiere one-person show, and Borden carries the whole thing himself.

The premise is a bit of a stretch in the best way: Borden takes Ovid's Metamorphoses, that epic poem from two thousand years ago, and weaves it together with real-life episodes from more than eight decades of his own life. He's not just reciting the classics; he's threading his own story through them, so the ancient myths and his own memories end up sitting side by side on the same stage. It's an intimate setup, with Borden as the sole performer, and the two threads—the poem and his life—running through the whole thing.

Borden is an African Nova Scotian trailblazer and a theatre giant here in the city, and that's a good way to think about the scale of the piece. He's drawing on over eighty years of living to hold up his end of the conversation with Ovid. The show is billed as a raw dive into human transformation, framed as a story of radical change and a reminder of the constant mutability of the human condition. It's a lot to pack into one person, but that's exactly what he's doing.

Metamorphoses is co-presented by the Prismatic Arts Festival and 2b theatre company, and it runs from September 29 to October 4 at the Bus Stop Theatre Co-op, 2203 Gottingen Street in the North End.