The innovative performance “Klytaimn\u1e17stra” by the Flemish group tg STAN, which had its world premiere at the Amphitheatre of the Old Oil Mill Factory in Elefsina on 23 and 24 July 2022 as part of the legacy project Mystery 35 AESCHYLUS project ^ of 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture, travels for the second time from 18 April to 18 May 2024 in Northern Europe.<\/p>\n
The Flemish group tg STAN, one of the most important contemporary theatre ensembles in Europe, in collaboration with the Olympique Dramatique, present “Klytaimn\u1e17stra”, a contemporary adaptation of Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon, in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Turnhout, Hassel and Amsterdam. A dramatically relevant play about contemporary gender identities, misogyny and toxic masculinity. A century-old story about honour and revenge that seeks to give voice to the silent.<\/p>\n
Combining speech and dance aligned with the Greek choral tradition, the performance creates an unexpected polyphonic ensemble that emphatically projects an important paradox<\/span> – women, who were silenced in the real world, earned a public function in tragic plays: the liberty to put their feelings, thoughts and motives into words.<\/span><\/p>\n How can modern society, thousands of years after the writing of obscene work by Aeschylus, remain indifferent to barbarism? How can misogyny remain acceptable in modern times? When does intuition trump rationality? And what kind of associations does this age-old story of honor and revenge evoke in our bodies today?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n tg STAN, one of the most important contemporary theatre ensembles in Europe, with a groundbreaking aesthetic and a long career in both contemporary dramaturgy and the classical repertoire, sheds light on a crucial figure of the Aeschylus tragedy, Klytaimn\u1e17stra. Based on an idea by Jolente De Keersmaeker, a founding member of the group and one of the “formidable girls” of European performing arts, the show approaches the three different versions of the first part of Oresteia in an unexpected way: It connects Aeschylus’ original work of astonishing poetic power with Ted Hughes’ deft translation of it into English, and grafted it onto Austrian writer Gustav Ernst’s Bath of Blood, a work of raw and dissected poetry that followed the perspective of Klytaimn\u1e17stra rather than Agamemnon.<\/span><\/p>\n The first part of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy focuses on the story of King Agamemnon and his wife Klytaimn\u1e17stra. The king decides to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to ensure a favorable wind for his ships in Troy. When Agamemnon returns, having won the Trojan War, the conflict with Klytaimn\u1e17stra will be fierce. In a story where rape and murder are omnipresent, though seemingly irrelevant, Klytaimn\u1e17stra is not just a character avenging her daughter. She is the mother of all mothers, and at the same time a scapegoat who embodies both female intuition and irrationality. Serving a critical function as both a woman and an outsider – she’s not even from Mycenae – she refuses to accept imposed stereotypes, deliberately choosing to fight violence with violence. Not out of pleasure, as in the case of Agamemnon, but because she believes it is the only way to challenge injustice against women and innocent citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n STAN, an acronym for Stop Thinking About Names, is a theatre collective consisting\u00a0of Jolente De Keersmaeker, Damiaan De Schrijver and Frank Vercruyssen. They met\u00a0at Antwerp Conservatorium in the late 1980s where tutor Matthias de Koning from\u00a0Maatschappij Discordia introduced them to a different, less dogmatic approach to\u00a0theatre. The company operates on the democratic principle that everyone\u00a0participates in decisions about everything, from text selection, set and lighting to\u00a0costumes and posters. STAN puts the performer centre stage and firmly believes in\u00a0the principle of the sovereign actor, i.e. that the actor is both player and maker.\u00a0Nothing is rehearsed in the conventional sense of the word but, rather, most of the\u00a0rehearsal process takes place around the table. Once the play has been chosen, the\u00a0text is reworked and retranslated to arrive at a new script. Only in the last few days\u00a0before the premi\u00e8re do the actors take to the stage and only when the spectators\u00a0are seated in the auditorium does the production really come into being.<\/span> A few words about the performance<\/b><\/h4>\n
A few words about tg Stan<\/b><\/h4>\n
\n<\/span>STAN\u00a0nurtures a firm belief in the \u2018living\u2019 power of theatre: the performance is not a\u00a0reproduction of something that is learned, but something that is created a new every\u00a0night together with the audience. So, a STAN performance is not a finished product,\u00a0but rather an invitation to a dialogue. STAN is synonymous with text-based theatre and has recourse to an extensive and\u00a0diverse repertoire. High on the repertoire list is the work of classic playwrights such\u00a0as Chekhov, Gorky, Schnitzler, Ibsen, Bernhard and Pinter. Texts from the history of\u00a0theatre are reread and brought into the here and now. Besides the\u00a0classics, STAN is also drawn to the work of contemporary authors including, most\u00a0recently, Yasmina Reza and Jon Fosse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n