Opened at the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj
December 12th, 2005
Deconstruction, improvisation and an adaptation
based on this growing understanding of how tragedy works in performance
– all these resulted in a radical reworking of Euripedes' great
play.
Based on the amazing variety of themes that populate
this play and its spider-web like array of oppositions (which one
critic has called "a slippage of opposites" and another:
"a choice of nightmares"), David created, with the help
of collaborator-designer Miriam Guretzky, a multi-leveled, multi-faceted,
time-fractured performance on a long, transverse stage bordered by
mirror-like cubicles on one side and a magical webbed wall on the
other. In this slippery, ever-changing space "Keener/Agaue",
the mother/killer of Pentheus, just before her exile and finally aware
of what transpired on Mount Kithairon, recreates the story and confronts
Dionysos in a futile attempt to relive the story and stop it just
before she kills her son once again.
L-R:
Keener/Agaue,the Child Dionysos, Cadmus
The
Figure-in-the-Bag
Keener/Agaue
(R) & Four Agaueson the web/wall
Pentheus
& Figure-in-the-Bag
With four other Agaues, a Chorus that doubles as
the Maenads on Kithairon, an enigmatic, androgynous "Figure in
a Bag," and a teenaged Pentheus, tormented by his unformed sexual
orientation and the unexpected need to rule, the play races toward
the inevitable horror of its ending despite all of Keener/Agaue's
attempts to prevent it from happening again. Add to this the crystal-clear
message from two millennia ago concerning the complex dangers of religious
fanaticism, and you have a strikingly modern and relevant play dealing
with the world as we know it both on the personal level of identity,
sexual and social, and on the level of fateful cultural struggles
that we are witnessing around the world these days.
Dionysos,
the Bacchantes and Pentheus
(on the web/wall)
