Épidaure ou la question de l’espace  : Dimitris Papaioannou et Matthias Langhoff

Abstract

This article is about the impact of the ancient theatrical place on contemporary representations of Greek tragedies, focusing on two performances created at the ancient theatre at Epidaurus in 1995 and 1997: Xenakis’ Oresteia Aeschylus suite by Dimitris Papaioannou, and The Bacchae of Euripides, by Matthias Langhoff. These two performances, with their opposed aesthetics and radically different approaches, were testament to the same sensitivity to the symbolic dimension of the place and of its potential: the first in a more plastic mode, and the second in a more political manner. The huge dimensions of the Epidaurus site, the theatre’s status as monument, its sculptural aspect and its incompatibility with the contemporary theatre are challenges to which Papaioannou responded by listening to the place, and Langhoff by adopting an almost “iconoclastic” attitude. For Xenakis’ Oresteia, Papaioannou, taking into account the bird’s-eye view of most of the audience, erected five metal towers, on top of which, six meters above the ground, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Clytemnestra, Electra, Orestes and Pylades performed; in this way, the myth played out in images on the dark page of the night, while the music rose up from the orchestra towards the audience. For the Bacchae, Langhoff occupied the orchestra with an accumulation of objects and materials which, in a “baroque” aesthetic, he organized starting from the thymele in order to generate a spiral that might contaminate the world beyond the boundaries of the stage.

Keywords

• Epidaurus
• Dimitris Papaioannou
• Matthias Langhoff
• Xenakis’ Oresteia
• Bacchae
• ancient theatre