The scope of the project

The core concept of this project was sparked by a news release from the J. Paul Getty Museum in California announcing its Fall 2024 Greek Theater production of a new play, Memnon. The play was written by Will Power, a well-known Professor of Theatre at Occidental College in the Los Angeles area and would be produced by New York’s Classical Theatre of Harlem under the direction of Carl Cofield. We became excited about the impact such a play might have on our local Classics community and also the students of colour in Latin and Greek classes and Classics courses. Soon colleague Andrea Craig Sansone and I discovered that we shared a common vision: helping teachers find ways to bring both the person and the persona of Memnon, an Ethiopian king and Trojan saga hero, back into the classroom in a meaningful way. We began brainstorming.

Our initial efforts only included a local Classics gathering at the premier performance of Memnon with a small offering of background resources on our local California Classical Association website. However, inspired by conversations with the director, playwright, and some cast members after various performances and student matinees, we realised this topic had potential for some real depth and impact, locally and nationally. We soon launched into planning a free webinar based on live interviews with both the playwright and director of the Memnon and an audience Q&A. Interviews were conducted by Serena Witzke (Will Power) and Katie Robinson (Carl Cofield). The webinar also included comments from Marisa Alimento of Crossroads School about her students’ experiences at Memnon and from Andrea Craig Sansone on exploring resource leads to bring more inclusive materials into our classroom curricula (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Memnon Webinar, promotional flier excerpt.

Behind the scenes, we began to gather many related references, documents, visuals, and relevant websites in preparation for the webinar. This led to the creation of a preliminary home page online and a Linktree page that also included a foundational survey document from another California colleague, an Educational Specialist at The Getty. After the webinar, the project resources continued to grow as we spent five more months searching literary databases like Perseus and ToposText, as well as The Latin Library and Lacus Curtius, exploring many museum databases and perusing some previous scholarly articles available online. A final element of the project was the successful nomination of Power and Cofield as joint recipients of the ACL Keely Lake Advocacy Award. This was an unexpected but very well-deserved honour based on their contributions to classical studies and their devotion to returning Memnon to his rightful place in the pantheon of epic literature.

This Memnon project went public in a presentation at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, during the ACL Institute ‘25 conference. The presentation summarised project updates and offered attendees a tour of the reorganised and newly published webpages of collected teaching resources maintained by the National Committee for Latin and Greek in the section covering ‘Intersections of Classics and African American Studies; African Origins’. The contents reflected an entire year of outreach, brainstorming, and collaborative work between my colleague Andrea Craig Sansone and myself as we combed through sources and shared discoveries. Tragically, Andrea passed away in May 2025 in advance of this Chicago presentation. Therefore, I have dedicated the project site and all my future efforts to honouring her memory.

Recommendations for exploring Memnon: the play and the hero

To fully appreciate Memnon – both as a play and as a legendary hero – we recommend the following approaches. By engaging with these diverse resources, teachers and students can develop a rich and well-rounded understanding of Memnon’s profound cultural and educational importance.

Our main landing page is African Origins; Memnon Webinar Teaching Resources. All folders and pages mentioned in this article are also accessible from there (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

ACL Institute Memnon presentation, slide 6, 2025.

Basic: student-centred, classroom-ready items

Who was Memnon?

• • Born demigod, as son of Eos-Aurora and Tithonus (note their own popular myth).

• • Was grandson of Laomedon, thus a nephew of King Priam.

• • Relocated with Tithonus to Susa, when his uncle Priam became King of Troy.

• • Became a strong warrior, left and established his rule amid kingdoms in ‘Aithiopia’.

• • Became an invincible warrior armoured by Hephaestus.

• • Described as a wise ruler who avoided conflict.

• • Was able to gather allied states from Africa to India.

• • Summoned by Priam to help defend the family in the final attempt to defeat the Greeks after Hector’s death.

• • Arrived with vast and glorious armies from many regions.

• • Killed Antilochus, who had killed his own comrade; challenged to a duel by Nestor.

• • Refused to fight old Nestor; Nestor called up Achilles.

• • Duelled Achilles successfully all night; both Thetis and Eos begged Zeus for victory for their respective sons.

• • Lost his life because Zeus performed a Psychostasia which determined Achilles the winner.

• • Gained a kind of immortality from Zeus, at Eos’ request.

• • Lived on in very popular stories perpetuated in ancient literature of all kinds, literary mentions and quotes, mostly lost now, such as the Aethiopis and Posthomerica epics.

For easy access to Student-Centred, Classroom-Ready Items and an online folder of resources, teachers can use these five direct links, provided below:

Memnon in Art: A Gallery Walk of Selected Artworks, a webpage with easy-to-read previews of basic art information and interpretation for classroom/student use.

On this page, teachers and students can explore captivating images and artistic representations of Memnon, spanning time – from antiquity to a few more modern interpretations. These visuals bring the hero and his legacy to life. Each image is accompanied by museum attributions and descriptive information. This Gallery Walk was one way that we felt teachers might help introduce the ‘Legacy of Memnon’ to students – perhaps just one artwork at a time, as a class opener or when a few minutes of class time allowed during a related reading in literature, or to assign to students who might comment or reflect on a particular piece. Some entries also include short slide decks or a video to show during class. We also offer some ways to use this page with students in your classroom HERE (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

ACL Institute Memnon presentation, slide 10, 2025.

Student Centered and Classroom-Ready Resources, a folder in ongoing development.

Those who read Latin or Greek in class can take a look at some handouts with excerpts from canonical literature that mention Memnon or are themed on Memnon, Tithonus, and Eos. These provide a way to compare receptions of elements of the story of Memnon and his family with paired texts, modern novels, or artwork.

We were inspired by other creative and thoughtful student projects that could accompany a Memnon unit of study and suggest to colleagues how they might also include Memnon in other myth units/projects. This folder has samples showing how some have connected with the material in this in meaningful and imaginative ways. For example, ways of including Memnon in existing projects include the Myth Mask Drama Project from Harbor Day School, and Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences shares three Greek Drama Projects designed especially for lessons centring on Getty Museum plays and Greek drama readings, such as creating critical reviews, playbill posters, and book jackets.