The eminent English director Declan Donnellan (The Revengers Tragedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Pericles, Prince of Tyre) will be returning to Teatros del Canal from 30 April to 3 May to present a new, modern reinterpretation of Euripides' drama connected to very current ethical dilemmas. The play will be performed in Bulgarian with Spanish surtitles, and the audience will be standing on stage alongside the actors.
Following on from his versions of Oedipus and Hamlet, the British creator is now delving into one of the most disturbing and complex characters of classical tragedy: Medea. Written in the 5th century BCE, the story tells of how a foreign woman, witch and outcast has sacrificed everything for love. Medea leaves her homeland and betrays her own family to help Jason obtain the Golden Fleece. However, once in Corinth, Jason rejects her to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon, in search of power and social stability.
Medea is utterly humiliated by his abandonment of her. Deprived of her place, her identity and her future, she decides to seek revenge in the cruellest way possible: she murders Jason's new wife and Creon himself, and culminates her punishment by killing her own children in order to inflict irreparable pain on Jason.
Donnellan's interpretation deliberately moves away from the image of Medea as a monster dominated by anger. Here, she is portrayed as a lucid, conscious and radically human woman who applies relentless logic to an extreme situation. Her violence does not arise from emotional turmoil, but from extreme reasoning taken to its ultimate consequences. This vision turns the tragedy into a disturbing contemporary warning. It forces us to remember that logic, when separated from compassion and ethics, can lead to barbarism.
Artistic credits:
Venue: Teatros del Canal - Sala Verde
- Author - Euripides
- Director - Declan Donnellan
- Designer - Nick Ormerod
- Cast- Radina Kardzhilova, Velislav Pavlov, Valentin Ganev, Asen Dankov, Yavor Valkanov, Stelian Radev, Vyara Tabakova, Radena Valkanova, Joreta Nikolova, Stafania Koleva, Elena Ivanova, Nadya Keranova and Ana Papadopolu. The children are played by Nikola Sarzhev and Petar Sardzhev (alternating with Boris Petrishki and Boyan Chelebiev)
- Translation from Greek to English - Lucinda Dawkins
- Translation from Greek to Bulgarian - Dorothea Tabakova
- Consultant dramatist - Mira Todorova
- Director of movements - Rosen Mihailov
- Composer - Julian Stoichkov
- Lighting Designer - Ilya Pashnin
- Assistant director - Rafael Bizev
- Second director's assistants - Elena Kostova and Meglena Dimitrova
- Cheek by Jowl producer - Anya Kolesnikova
Duration: 1 hour
Recommended age: 16+
Language: Bulgarian with Spanish surtitles
