“It is a great honor to present a show at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus in front of thousands of people,” said the great German director Frank Kastorff last May at the press conference he gave for the long-awaited play “Medea” which is having its world premiere today (21/7) at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus. The director of the Berlin Volksbein (People’s Theater) for many years – comes to Epidaurus for the first time to present his own version of Medea, with a brilliant cast of Greek actors (Maria Naufliotou, Evdokia Roumeliotis, Stefania Goulioti, Sofia Kokkali, Angeliki Papoulia, Nikos Psarras, Aeneia Tsamatis and Nikolas Hanakoulas).

The play with the words of Frank Castorf

Unfolding his thoughts on the project, the German director asked himself: “What do you really do after reading Medea?” Euripides’ work is monumental and has traveled through time. It is like the soil that is cultivated again and again. Euripides is as important as a sphere floating in a sea of ​​mercury. No matter how hard you try to sink it, it will always come to the surface.”

Frank Kastorf will present his own Medea based on the work of Euripides, a tragedy groundbreaking for its time, as he says: “2,500 years ago Euripides presented in front of 15,000 spectators such a feminist theme. It is great that it makes us think, reflect on what it means to be a woman. A woman alone and persecuted. A woman inside this architectural structure of so many years. When I visited Epidaurus, in winter, without people, I also felt this loneliness.”

“Seneca called Medea the goddess of revenge. I see her as a woman on the chariot of her father Helios who leaves and leaves behind a world on fire”, emphasizes Kastorf.

An intellectual of the European theater

Frank Kastorf is a director who is not afraid to dare, an intellectual of the European theater. We met him at the Festival in 2007 with Celine’s “Nord” and he returned in 2017 at Piraeus 260 with “The Player”, based on the work of Dostoyevsky.

In Epidaurus, Kastorf will present a performance based on Euripides’ Medea tragedy, but combined with the words of the German writer Heiner Müller and the poetry of the “damned” Arthur Rimbaud. “We use three texts that Heiner Müller has written about Medea: the Struck Shore, which he wrote as a young man, the Medea Material and the Landscape with Argonauts as a memory in Greek antiquity,” he points out.

Five acclaimed female actresses – Angeliki Papoulia, Maria Naufliotou, Stefania Goulioti, Evdokia Roumeliotis and Sofia Kokkali – will interpret Medea, attempting to highlight the different sides and moments of the heroine. Together with them we will see on stage Nikos Psarras, Aineia Tsamatis and Nikolas Hanakoulas in the male roles of Jason and Creon.

“I met five women and felt the latent threat: who will play Medea? They will all play Medea,” explains Frank Kastorf. “In every woman there is the possibility of a Medea, because every woman, every person interprets differently and ultimately understands this role differently.”

The actors of the show enthusiastically referred to their collaboration with the German director and talked about a special job that invites viewers to be receptive to it. Maria Naufliotou said that this collaboration is the happiest moment in her professional career and expressed her joy in coming face to face with things she has never tried before. Aeneias Tsamatis referred to the dramaturgy of the show which is revealed day by day, while Evdokia Roumeliotis and Angeliki Papoulia spoke about the enormous freedom and trust the director shows them in the rehearsal, making the actors participants in the composition of the dramaturgy. Nikolas Hanakoulas referred to the deep, penetrating and magnetic way in which Kastorf approaches things, Sofia Kokkalis to his associative thinking that creates entire worlds, and Stefania Goulioti to his special way of working that is reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, where all fundamental human issues emerge.

Frank Castorf himself sums up the essence of Medea in two sentences: “The world we live in is not good, it is not beautiful. That’s why all we’re left with is a longing for him to be nice. This yearning is exactly what we call rebelliousness. Something similar happens to Medea, who reacts to the world around her. So he destroys him, leaving at the end in the chariot of the Sun in the heavens.”