A careful consideration of Crimp’s choices throughout his career, especially since he expanded the scope of his work from translations to versions, adaptations and, later, libretti or “texts for music” (Angel-Perez 2014: 356), reveals that from the mid-1990s onwards he has taken a keen interest in the history of the narrative – whether as myth, dramatic text or popular story – alongside the history of civilization as embodied experience. Arguably, Crimp’s attachment to projects that could be seen as vehicles either for international directors (Benedict Andrews, Luc Bondy, Katie Mitchell) or composers (George Benjamin) has furnished the playwright with a richer understanding of how history is conceptualized as an active process in contemporary performance making, as well as of the gravitas and opportunities it carries. This is particularly notable when considering that the work of practitioners such as those mentioned above has also often operated on a delicate balance between the past and the present. Verbal and cultural sensibilities cannot be eradicated for the purposes of any new text, so a new version or adaptation cannot be dealt with merely as a vehicle for engaging in contemporary politics. That is, the older text’s rhythm, agenda and specificity cannot be sacrificed to create a reduced emergent product that only serves to vent present frustrations. Rather, the preexisting text must be paid due attention no less because allegory is a demanding process that requires sophisticated depths of mediation.