Borrowing from Shakespeare’s use of anachronism , the music Nick Brisco and I have composed for the play leaps from ancient Greek modes, lyre tunings and fragments to Middle Eastern bouzouki and rhythms such as the Ayoub and Leff, to Indian drone structures and flute to far eastern percussion elements layered over with western folk/acoustic music that almost reaches toward pop.

Marina’s song is based on Greek Lyre tunings. The knights dance makes use of the ancient Greek Olympous scale. At the heart of our explorations were the musical theories of Pythagoras from his research into “the Music of the Spheres: mentioned in the play to his experiments with the transcendant harmonies of the fifth and the octave which assisted the development of music to reach beyond the pentatonic scales of his time.

– Bruce DuBose

Director’s Notes - Pericles

Winding by the Greeks, and Gower, and Shakespeare and then into our time we are stretching toward the future, imagining like Checkov did when he wrote “in 100 to 200 years from now, how happy we will be!” Rapturous in the play of Time. Impervious to Time. Defiant. Pericles smashes Time with its own weapons. Shakespeare begins at the stone of the primitive man, moves to the sword of the Crusades, and anticipates the pistol of Chekov when in the play Thaliard says, “if I can get him within my pistol’s length”. Here is the stone that killed Abel, the sword of Christ, and the Fire-Arm of the burning God. Then the simple surrender. “Time is but the king of men.” But Shakespeare knows that only in the theater, time becomes malleable, and for the moments that we watch a play, we become the Kings of Time, and that this is one of the most profound pleasures of art