Parabases: Faces of the Hero | Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers - Εικόνα

Watch Parabases live:

 

This year’s Parabases, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center’s series of semi-staged performances, will focus on the heroes of the great myths and narratives, exploring the evolution of the hero model from the ancient era until the present day.

Starting from emblematic hero figures of the ancient era (Orestes, Achilles) and looking at characteristic heroes of the Renaissance and the late Enlightenment along the way, we will arrive to the anti-heroes of the contemporary world, in an attempt to provide an unconventional narrative of mankind’s coming-of-age, as it is reflected in its stories and its myths.

Through the archetypal texts of six important poets and authors (Homer, Aeschylus, Μiguel de Cervantes, Yannis Makriyiannis, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Bernhard), we will follow the gradual emancipation of heroes from the gods and the grand narratives, and their painful landing into the contemporary world. Here, where the anti-heroes fight against futility and despair, finding reprieve either in irony and cynicism, or madness and withdrawal. Orphaned of both avengers and protectors, they desperately seek to lose themselves in a myth that will dictate their next move and their next sentence.  

Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers  

The second play of Oresteia, the only surviving trilogy of ancient Greek drama, will launch this year’s “Parabases” journey. Orestes returns after several years in Argos, and reunites with Electra. The two siblings – portrayed by Aeschylus as two innocent children encumbered with a massive debt – will add their voices to the women’s Chorus sent by a terrified Clytemnestra to offer libations at the tomb of Agamemnon, in order to appease him. Together they will summon the murdered king and the dark forces of the world, and plan their revenge.

The Libation Bearers, a play of great lyrical value,  gives us the opportunity to follow the painful but fascinating process of building a tragic hero in its entirety: how his environment and the gods force his hand, how he hesitates and resists, how he draws the strength to commit matricide, and how he ultimately comes to face his own agonizing realization and the wrath of the Furies.

 

Translation: Dimitris Dimitriadis

Adaptation - Art Director: Ektoras Lygizos

Musical - Audio environment: The Boy

Narrators: Dimitra Vlagopoulou, Stella Vogiatzaki, Sofia Kokkali, Ektoras Lygizos, Anna Mascha, Iro Bezou, The Boy

Sunday 11/10, 18.00

LIGHTHOUSE

Live streaming: snfcc.org/ParabasesAeschylus, Facebook & You Tube @SNFCC 

The themed events programming Faces of the Hero is realized thanks to the exclusive grant by Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

See also

Sunday 04/10, 19:30

The Lullaby Project: Love becomes music

More