The performance of Burning of the Ancient Library of Alexandria deals directly or indirectly with ideas of alignment and disalignment of place, issues of freedom of speech and expression, and the rise and fall of empires.

The performance addresses the tensions brought about by huge events in history to ordinary people who happen to be there. The central figure is the daughter of the chief librarian, Hypatia, who wanted to live an ordinary simple life—but the events of her time would not let her. In the ebb and flow of history, times of cultural flourishing are superseded by times of oppression and darkness. It seems that the great library was burnt more than once.

“The loss of the ancient world’s single greatest archive of knowledge, the Library of  Alexandria, has been lamented for ages. But how and why it was lost is still a mystery. The mystery exists not for lack of suspects, but from an excess of them.” Preston Chesser, The Burning of the Library of Alexandria (2006)