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15th International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama
Τ
he 15
th
International Festival of Ancient
Greek Drama hosted theatre companies from
Greece, Belgium, England, China and Cyprus.
These stellar companies performed ancient Greek
dramas throughout the month of July at a number
of venues, including the Curium Ancient Theatre,
Limassol, the Paphos Ancient Odeon and the Ma-
karios III Amphitheatre, Nicosia.
The performances, all unique versions of ancient
Greek dramas, bore the intense coloring of the
culture of each theatre company’s home country.
Thus audiences, which included both Cypriots
and foreign visitors, had the unique opportunity of
experiencing ancient Greek drama from different
cultural perspectives. They enjoyed tragedies and
comedies as they are understood in the context of
different cultures; they were able to see how these
cultures experienced ancient Greek drama and how
they understand the universality of the human spirit
as it was communicated by classical Greek play-
wrights. All performances were accompanied by
English and Greek supertitles.
* * *
Amphiktio
Theatre, a Cypriot theatre company,
presented
Cyclops
by Euripides. Apart from its
intrinsic artistic and literary merits,
Cyclops
holds
extraordinary interest for the modern audience as
the sole complete remaining specimen of satyric
drama. The play brings the audience into living
contact with ancient customs and modes of reli-
gious worship which have long since passed away.
The spectators caught, for a moment, the real spirit
of the old Dionysian worship, with its mixture of
imagination, passion, and riotous indecency. Di-
rected by the famous Cypriot director, Nicos Ch-
aralambous, and interpreted by his inspired team,
Cyclops
opened the Festival under a starry sky at
the CuriumAncient Theatre on the 1
st
of July.
The Cultural Society Anagnosis presented
The
Trackers
, directed by Demos Avdeliodis, which
had already received enthusiastic praise prior to the
festival: “Avdeliodis follows the technique he loves,
namely popular theatre, and has produced a delight-
ful performance, full of rhythm, instincts, gentleness,
music and metaphysical comfort”. The trackers are
the chorus of satyrs who are looking for cattle; they
are amusingly dumbfounded at the sound of the new
instrument Hermes has invented. Enough of the play
has survived to give an impression of its style; it was
a genial, uncomplicated travesty of the tragicmanner.
The Zhejiang Beijing Opera Company, led by
eminent artist Weng Guosheng, travelled all the
way from China to present
Oedipus Rex
.
Among
the hundreds of forms of opera throughout China,
Beijing Opera is regarded as a national art form
and exerts the greatest influence on the genre. The
music, singing and costumes that accompanied the
Zhejiang Beijing Opera Company performance
of
Oedipus Rex
were fascinating and artistic. Full
of Chinese cultural elements, the opera comprised
unfolding stories, beautiful paintings, exquisite cos-
tumes, graceful gestures and acrobatic fighting. The
Ministry of Education and Culture conferred the
honour of “First Class Troupe” on the company.
The José Besprosvany Company of Belgium pre-
sented an extraordinary staging of
Prometheus
Bound
. Famous director and choreographer José
Besprosvany presented a version of the drama di-
rectly inspired by Far Eastern traditional arts, ancient
Greek theatre andWestern contemporary dance and
performing arts. Besprosvany blended Greek my-
thology, dramatic play, contemporary dance and hip-
hop with human-sized puppets and masked figures.
The text, dance, live music and visuals coalesced to
produce a work of unique beauty that struck a con-
temporary chord. The stage direction underlined the
thousand-year conflict that sums up the history of
humanity – the recurring struggle between power
and insurrection, between thosewho give orders and
those who refuse to obey.