NTGent / Milo Rau
Orestes in Mosul
Regisseur Milo Rau maakt een hedendaagse bewerking van de Oresteia. Deze klassieke trilogie is een van de grootste tragedies van de mensheid, het werk geldt ook als stichtingsmythe van de westerse beschaving. Aeschylos verving het beginsel van de bloedwraak door een principe van rechtspraak, integratie en verzoening.
Inleiding om 19:15 uur
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Deze voorstelling is onderdeel van onze Wereldklasse Toneel en Dans
“Groots en belangwekkend theater” (…) “Orestes in Mosul is een nieuwe maatstaf voor moderne bewerkingen van klassieke teksten.”
NRC Handelsblad ★★★★
“Een vernuftige verweving van fictie en realiteit” (…) “Met Orestes in Mosul verknopen Rau en zijn dramaturg Stefan Bläske op kristalheldere wijze de tragedie van toen met het Mosul van nu.”
De Standaard
“Orestes in Mosul is in dat opzet alleszins geslaagd: aan de hand van een oertekst legt Milo Rau de hedendaagse tragedies van deze wereld bloot. (…) brandend actueel.”
De Morgen
Noord-Irak
Regisseur Milo Rau kreeg het idee voor deze eigentijdse versie van Oresteia toen hij in Noord-Irak, aan de frontlijn met IS, onderzoek deed voor een toneelstuk. Met zijn ensemble van Europese en Iraakse acteurs stelt Rau in Orestes in Mosul de vraag wat de klassieke tragedie ons vandaag de dag kan leren.
The Oresteia
The Oresteia is not only the one single trilogy that has come down to us from classical antiquity and one of mankind’s greatest tragedies, but it also represents the myth of the foundation of civilisation, whereby the principle of the blood feud, the never-ending cycle of revenge, an eye for an eye, was replaced by the principles of justice, integration and reconciliation. Milo Rau will stage this tragedy with a mixed ensemble of European and Iraqi actors, including research and activities in Mosul, where the Jihadi califate of ISIS was declared in 2014 – the modern version of the antique system of cruelty and blood revenge.
Northern Iraq
Milo Rau had the idea of staging Aeschylus’ Oresteia for the present day while he was doing research for his play EMPIRE (2016) in northern Iraq on the frontline facing ISIS. ‘It is as if you were in a television scene and in a classical epic at the same time,’ as Rau himself puts it. How is it possible to stop the never-ending chain of violence in which the parties of the Syrian-Iraqi civil war and their Western allies find themselves? In the first two parts of Aeschylus’ Oresteia there appears to be no way out: death has a domino effect – Orestes is pursued by the goddesses of vengeance after he murders his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. He did this out of revenge because the two of them killed Orestes’ father, Agamemnon (and his mistress Cassandra). For her part, Clytemnestra murders her husband Agamemnon out of revenge because he sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia to the wind to go to war against Troy. The only one who can stop this violence is Athena: she calms down the goddesses of vengeance by allotting them a place in society. Where hate has not helped, the loving embrace now succeeds.
Present-day issues
Milo Rau retains the ancient grandeur of the tragedy, but links it to present-day issues. What does it mean: being “civilized” in a globalized world? What is, on a general level, the relation of the so-called West and the regions in the Middle East that is fuelling our oil-based economy? What is the responsibility of artists in doing international projects? What can, what should be done in the wide field between colonialism and ignorance? What can be a revisited ORESTEIA for today?
