Billy Corgan Announces He Has Written A Musical About Ancient Greece

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has written a short musical. And, The Music Theatre Company of Highland Park will perform it as a part of their annual “48 Hour Musicals” workshop this December, Pitchfork reports.

Corgan’s musical – entitled “Pretty Persephone” – is a 20-minute stage adaptation based on the myth of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, the god of the Underworld, according to The Chicago Tribune. It also touches on the Eleusinian Mysteries, a series of ancient Greek religious rites, which were annual initiations for the cult of Persephone and her mother, Demeter, in the ancient city of Eleusis.

The Mysteries represented the three cyclical phases of Persephone’s abduction from Demeter by Hades. According to a French to English translation of Sergey Uvarov’s “An Essay on the Mysteries of Eleusis”, these rites had been major festival during the Hellenic era, and had later spread to Rome. But, he notes that pinning down an exact year within that period remains difficult. Historically, the Hellenic period is defined as being from the year 507 B.C.E. when democracy was first introduced in Athens, Greece, until the death of Alexander the Great in the year 323 B.C.E.

The world premiere production of “Pretty Persephone” at The Music Theatre Company of Highland Park is directed by Co-Artistic Director Jess McLeod and has been choreographed by Jessica Beth Redish, the Theatre’s Founding Artistic Director.

In addition to the musical, Corgan has been busy with Smashing Pumpkins this fall. Since October, the band has released announced tour with members of Rage Against the Machine and The Killers. And, they have released four new songs – “Being Beige”, “One And All”, “Tiberius”, and “Drum and Fife” – from their upcoming December 9th release Monuments to an Elegy.

Lastly, Pitchfork is reporting that Corgan has severed ties with Resistance Pro, a company that he founded in his native Chicago. They cite the following tweets from Corgan that were posted on November 15th, 2014.