Venus and Adonis

It's 1593. Theatres are closed, players out of work, houses bolted, people terrified by the touch of another's skin, the breath of another's air.

Shakespeare, syphilitic and dangerously bored, publishes a scandalous response to the pestilence—an epic work about the very things lost to us, like intimacy, identity, and the erotic freedom of touch.

His searing poem, Venus and Adonis, rips and tears at the founding myth of why human beings are cursed to love each other, in every form—him and her, her-as-him, him-as-her, love as equal and unequal, obscenely arousing and utterly destructive.

Fanning the flames, he stages this hot work of scandal at court before Queen Lizzie the 1st, and puts a rival and a revelation in the leading role—Emilia Lanyer, the woman who would become the first professional female poet ever published in the English language, and perhaps Shakespeare’s most significant, yet least celebrated, rival.

From Sport for Jove's Damien Ryan, this new original play is Lanyer's incredible story—and that of a company of players seeking a new fix, rehearsing and unlocking history’s most influential masterpiece of intimacy, copiousness, and copulation. "And in a world fucked by plague, death, and isolation, intimacy is a rare gawd."

Released as a feature film in 2020 and finally making its world premiere on stage, Sport for Jove's Venus and Adonis is about the need to love, the right to speak, and the power of the printed word. It is a passionate cry from the soul on behalf of artists and their eternal value.

Book your tickets for Damien Ryan's Venus and Adonis today.

Image credit: photo Andre Vasquez, graphic design Sean Dowling