This project, which has iterations as a feature-length film and a series of five short films, has its origin in a 2012 performance, The End of Ten Years, inspired by the fraught relationship between Julius Caesar and the Gaulish leader Vercingetorix. The late Republic – early Empire eras of Roman history seized my imagination and have yet to let go.
The story transformed over years of exploration; Caesar mutated into the caustic and rigid Isabel, an envoy who believes in the strength and purpose of her empire, but her strategy of friendliness falters because she often resorts to violence, and this is her undoing. Vercingetorix emerged in the shape of Catherine, a royal figure of a would-be conquered land who is equally stubborn and unafraid of bloodshed. The story includes an Oracle, a romance, and a modern-day secondary plot in which a contemporary version of Catherine, who is an actor in a theater company which performs classic plays for students, finds a portal to alternate dimensions, where the Imperial struggle is intertwined with a mysterious man in red who is an avatar of her own fate and frustrations.
