The National Theater collaborates for the first time with the internationally renowned Greek director and teacher Theodoros Terzopoulos and presents on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 July at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus, the trilogy “Oresteia”, in the context of the Athens Epidaurus Festival. An unrepeatable cultural event, an emblematic show of intellectual and philosophical depth, which comes to expand the boundaries of art.

“Why does the Oresteia continue to exert a terrifying attraction? A possible answer could be because in man there is a need for a deeper relationship with Myth. The myth of the Oresteia is dangerous, it belongs to the world of the unknown and the strange, it causes terror because it reveals the unruly, the violent and the laws of the deep that cannot be tamed. Clytemnestra invites us to break the mirror together, so that a new nightmarish image will be born from its fragments, which will nevertheless preserve the dark roots of the myth” says Theodoros Terzopoulos in his director’s note, who, in addition to directing, also signs the sets , the costumes and the lighting of the show.

Regarding his approach, the international director points out: “Our intention is to study the depth of the myth of the Oresteia and to search for the unpredictable, the unusual, the paradox. The persons offer their bodies on the altar of openness, they pose constant questions and dilemmas. The aesthetics of the show results from the dynamic relationship of the Body with Myth, Time and Memory. We ask again the fundamental ontological question “what is it about”, a question that does not admit of definitive answers, but constantly activates us in the direction of ever deeper research into the root of sound, the word, the multidimensionality of the human enigma and the reconstruction of a new A myth”.

“Oresteia” has been presented by the National Theater in Epidaurus five times to date: In 1954 and 1959 directed by Dimitris Rodiris, in 1972 directed by Takis Mouzenidis, in 2001 directed by Yannis Kokkou and in 2019 with Io Voulgarakis, Lilly Meleme and Georgia Mavragani, who directed the plays “Agamemnon”, “Hoiforoi” and “Eumenides” respectively, in their first directing presence in Epidaurus.

The translation is by Eleni Varopoulou. The original music composition is signed by Panagiotis Velianitis and the videos by Nikos Pastras. The show will have Greek and English subtitles.

Starring: Evelyn Aswad (Cassandra), Tasos Dimas (Guardian/Promoter), Konstantinos Zografos (Pylades), Elli Inglis (Trofos), Costas Kontogeorgopoulos (Orestes), David Maltese (Aegisthus), ‘Anna Marka Bonisel (Prophetis), Nikos Dassis (Apollon), Dinos Papageorgiou (Kyrikas), Aglaia Pappa (Athena), Savvas Stroumbos (Agamemnon), Alexandros Toundas (Oiketis), Niobe Charalambous (Electra), Sophia Hill (Clytemnestra/The Idol of Clytemnestra) etc.

For the Oresteia

In 458 BC, in a time of violent social and political upheavals, Aeschylus presents the “Oresteia” (Agamemnon, Choiphori, Eumenides), the only surviving trilogy of ancient drama and his last surviving work, composed at the Dionysian festival just two years before his death, reflecting many of the rapid changes of his time.

The central axis of the trilogy is the tragic short-circuiting of Orestes, which spreads to all the faces of the drama and the dance through successive stages: from destabilization to impasse, to madness. This situation is exploited by Athena in the third part of the trilogy, to institutionalize democracy by force, through a controversial peace treaty.

In the first two parts of the trilogy, “Agamemnon” and “The Fields”, the murders that end the tyrannical powers of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are the climax of a new period of crisis and destabilization that is reflected in the Eumenides. The Erinyes, the chthonic deities, representing instincts and impulses preserve memory. Knowing that any conflict with the gods is doomed defeat, they rebel and threaten the city’s order. Orestes must pay so that not only the crime but its repetition is punished, and the memory of the conflict is kept alive.

Athena tries at all costs to conclude a “peace pact” between the gods and the Erinyes, offering exchanges and privileges. To achieve capitulation, he transfers violence into the realm of language. Her speech introduces deceitful persuasion, lying and deception into the political sphere. The Erinyes submit of their own accord. Wearing the characteristic purple clothes of the residents, they declare themselves Eumenides and move away from the core of the city. They are driven to obscurity, to oblivion, to the bowels of the earth. The democratic state has been established. But not painlessly. Everything incompatible with the new regime—the part of the living body associated with memory, instincts, animal drive—has been banished. The new order of things is imposed by the authoritarian mechanisms in such a way that these vital forces seem as if they never existed.

The Erinyes compromise and accept the social status of their partners, however their internal structure is not altered. Like natural phenomena that do not disappear from the earth, but follow a spiral course of metamorphosis, escalation and de-escalation, so we can imagine chthonic deities retreating and withdrawing, only to re-emerge, constantly taking on new, unexpected forms.

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