The British director brings this winner of the Austrian Nobel Prize to the stage, recreating a cinematographic recording with actors from the prestigious Schaubühne in Berlin. What if Eurydice were to begin asking feminist questions?
In 2004, the jury for the Nobel Prize in Literature announced the concession of Elfriede Jelinek’s prize. In her native Austria, Elfriede is especially loved but also criticized. Her novels and theatre productions have, for a long time, been denouncing the dark side of a country, that according to the author, is a petit-bourgeois society that has not yet settled accounts with its recent past. Enemies of the author classify her as a radical feminist, a label which does not bother her in the slightest. It’s not strange for feminist re-readings of classical stories come from this mind. Works such as this different version of the myth of Orfeo and Eurydice which now comes to Barcelona’s Grec Festival. Here, Orfeo is a possessive, male chauvinist singer who has descended to the underworld to search for his beloved Eurydice. Both must cross long hallways, dark wells and underground streets in a long journey recreated with the help of a vibrant live video and a vivid sound space. The audience can follow the protagonist’s journey in the following plans in a film, recorded live, whose images are projected on a large screen. Throughout this journey, Eurydice realizes that, despite being a prominent author, her whole life has taken place in the shadow of this same Orfeo who has now come to save her. But, is he really saving her? She begins to ask herself whether a no-life of her own would not be fuller and more authentic in the underworld than an enslaved existence in the world of the living. An especially imaginative stage production which integrates visual and sound landscapes with a penetrating and explosive script.
Katie Mitchell stages this production. A director who has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, the National Theatre of London or the Royal Court Theatre, and has passed through numerous foreign theatres from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan to the Royal Theatre of Stockholm and who has also staged a handful of operas.
A production by Schaubühne Berlin.
Author: Elfriede Jelinek Direction: Katie Mitchell Interpretation: Jule Böwe, Cathlen Gawlich, Renato Schuch, Maik Solbach Camera: Nadja Krüger/Stefan Kessissoglou, Christin Wilke/Juliane Kremberg/Marcel Kieslich, Simon Peter (Microphone technician) Collaboration Director: Lily Mc Leish Director of Photography: Chloë Thomson Set Design: Alex Eales Wardrobe Design: Sussie Juhlin-Wallen Video Design: Ingi Bekk Video Design colaboration: Ellie Thompson Sound Design: Melanie Wilson, Mike Winship Lighting Design: Anthony Doran Dramaturgy: Nils Haarmann Script: Alice Birch
