{"id":636,"date":"2024-12-04T12:41:34","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T12:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/?p=636"},"modified":"2024-12-17T19:40:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T19:40:14","slug":"queer-gestus-antifascist-ritualism-and-bloody-geopolitics-in-oresteia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/queer-gestus-antifascist-ritualism-and-bloody-geopolitics-in-oresteia\/","title":{"rendered":"Queer Gestus, Antifascist Ritualism and Bloody Geopolitics in Oresteia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Penelope Chatzidimitriou<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oresteia<\/em> by Aeschylus. Direction and dramaturgy by Theodoros Terzopoulos. Associate director Savvas Stroumpos. Modern Greek translation by Eleni Varopoulou. Set, costumes, lighting design by Theodoros Terzopoulos. Original music by Panayiotis Velianitis. Produced by the National Theatre of Greece, premiered at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, Greece, 12 July 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oresteia<\/em>, directed by Theodoros Terzopoulos for the National Theatre of Greece, turned from a play of resistance into protest theatre, thanks to its spectators. It showed that forging relationships is the foundation of both theatre and democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Resistance Play<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Terzopoulos\u2019 Oresteia<\/em> opens with a fly buzzing at high volume. It fills our ears, an allusion to Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s The Flies<\/em>, a WWII play of resistance against fascism and propaganda, inspired by Oresteia<\/em>. In this performance, the invisible flies irritate the old Guard (Tasos Dimas) \u03bfn the white orchestra, which is surrounded by blood-stained shrouds. The flies he tries to keep off may be feeding on dead human flesh from battlefields and civilian zones. Ragged and weary, this low-class guard has long waited for a sign of Greek victory in Troy. Terzopoulos characteristically uses refined but clear symbols to depict the necrophilia of the war machine.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The ragged Guard (Tasos Dimas) and the chorus of Agamemnon<\/em>. Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

With such class and political undertones, this Oresteia<\/em> introduces itself as a political play of resistance, an indictment of those in power, who obtain and preserve their political authority by Machiavellian means at the expense of the innocent multitude. This should not come as a surprise, for Terzopoulos is a director of freedom: from his non-realistic acting technique\u2014which aims at liberating the (post)human body from psychodynamic, socio-cultural and technological restrictions, giving it back its explosive energy and vocal strength\u2014to his Prometheus Bound<\/em>, Antigone<\/em> and so on, he creates a theatre of resistance. He focuses on the socially and politically defeated, who nonetheless attempt to destabilize the status quo in rigged political systems and impoverished existential conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A geometry of oppression in Libation Bearers<\/em>, with the blood-stained sheets lying on the ground. Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Similarly, he creates Oresteia<\/em> drawing from his arsenal of theatrical expertise in Greek tragedy, Bertolt Brecht, Heiner M\u00fcller and Samuel Beckett, and directs the trilogy as a resistance play at today\u2019s bleak moment in history. After all, in the hands of political and military leaders, Oresteia<\/em> has often served their ideological agenda of national and racial supremacy, with the 1936 Oresteia<\/em> production in Nazi Berlin being a telling example.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The power figure of Athena (Aglaia Pappa). Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Terzopoulos\u2019 Oresteia<\/em> instead takes its place among productions like Luca Ronconi\u2019 s dystopian Oresteia<\/em> (1972), Peter Stein\u2019s in post-communist Russia (1994) and Romeo Castellucci\u2019s degenerative Oresteia (an Organic Comedy?)<\/em> (1995). Such productions depict the current social and historical momentum as a troubling, controversial process.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A geometry of subjection, with autocratic Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill, center) and the chorus. Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Power and Gestus<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

As part of this tradition, Terzopoulos is merciless when it comes to the powerful political and divine figures, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Athena and Apollo. There is something expressly Brechtian in their gestus and gender performance, which demonstrates their villainy. Thus, Agamemnon (Savvas Stroumpos) is a hyper-masculine war machine, while Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill), in her black pants and arrogant coldness, is a masculine woman. Athena (Aglaia Pappa), spokesperson for her father Zeus and patriarchy, is similarly masculinized in her futuristic suit and gestus.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The \u201cred carpet scene\u201d: Captured bodies form a hubristic tapestry for Agamemnon (Savvas Stroumpos). Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One may discern a running risk of stereotyping gender here (a case also made by feminist critics of Brechtian gender performance, like Sue-Ellen Case), but Terzopoulos\u2019 choices are not superficial: he has often advocated gender rights in performances like his recent Requiem<\/em> and Yerma<\/em>. His suppression of heterosexual desire in Oresteia<\/em> can be a choice made to clarify a political reasoning and disclose the machinery of power.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill) as despotic ruler. Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The latter also accounts for the gestic queering of the coward Aegisthus (David Maltese), who in Agamemnon<\/em> is called a woman (l. 1625), and Apollo (Nikos Ntasis), whose mythological male lover is Hyacinthus. Their immaculate white suits contrast with the dark atmosphere of the performance and the blood-smeared sheets. Terzopoulos, who in his early years directed Bremen Freedom <\/em>(1988) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the postwar German film director who consistently undermined Nazi hyper-masculinity, seems to have been freely inspired by postwar films like Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist <\/em>and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned<\/em>. Like them, he feminizes the fascist evil, embracing the camp aesthetic, and changes the fascist construction of hyper-masculine virility into effeminacy. Such choices echo theoreticians like Wilhelm Reich, Klaus Theweleit and George Mosse, who see fascism as a political manifestation of open homosexuality and covert homoeroticism. Also, in the case of Aegisthus, who dexterously gestures with a red fan, the director draws from the tradition of Beijing Opera (like Brecht in the 1930s) and men playing female roles (dan<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Aegisthus (David Maltese), among the abused chorus, holding his red fan. Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
The Human Face of the Oppressed<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Contrastingly, in this performance of resistance, Terzopoulos foregrounds the natural humanity of the siblings, Electra and Orestes (Niovi Charalambous and Kostas Kontogeorgopoulos). He abandons the cold Brechtian gestus for those who are the prey of aggressive masculinity, like the mantic Cassandra (performed by the Greek-Syrian Evelyn Assouad), victim of Apollo\u2019s desires and Agamemnon\u2019s war-prize. She culminates in an Arabic threnody, a song both culturally specific and cosmic, created and delivered by the human voice. In Terzopoulos\u2019 tragedies, the aural impact is as important as the spectacle, and the tragic voice is not only rhetorical but sonic, an essential part of the tragic aesthetic experience, which extends from the body to world politics.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Agamemnon (Savvas Stroumpos) steps over Cassandra (Evelyn Assouad, bottom) to reach Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill, top). Photo: Johanna Weber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The chorus is similarly humane. Powerfully ritualistic in its geometric arrangements, strong physicality and pulsating rhythms, this is the director\u2019s signature chorus. Trained in his acting method, the twenty-two young chorus members make up a body politic, literally physical and collective, which suffers because of its hubristic ruling head. Such ritualism acts as a social bonding mechanism, giving spectators a feeling of belonging and becoming part of this theatrical project of resistance. This is very different from pathological rituals like the fascist mass meetings, inspired by Greek theatre to stage a delusion of belonging (see G\u00fcnter Berghaus, Fascism and Theatre<\/em>, 1996).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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