Classical representations in Syracuse

On May 9, the season of Classical Performances will begin at the Greek Theater of Syracuse which will run until July 6th.

The face, the bodies, the voice of women as a single cry of protest against all wars. The unreserved condemnation of all conflicts, their senselessness and the anti-heroic face of every war will be protagonists in the 55th Festival at the Greek Theater of Syracuse, which will have its common thread in the mask of pain of women or being themselves victims of the war and protagonists of the opposition to every conflict.

The 2019 season will revolve around the theme “Women and war“. There will be two tragedies of Euripides, “Le Troiane” and “Elena” and the Aristophanes comedy “Lisistrata” the three new productions entered by the Inda Foundation in the calendar of the 55th Festival at the Greek Theater of Syracuse. The titles chosen for the most participated Prose Festival in Italy focus on female protagonism and express deeply different ways, plots and characters, a criticism against all wars entrusted to a collective of women won like the Trojans or to single heroines such as Lysistrata or to a Helen made of air, so vainly did she fight at Troy.

“Le Troiane” by Euripide, which will be staged for the fourth time after the editions of 1952, 1974 and 2006, is one of the most heart-rending and choral tragedies of all ancient drama and brings to light the drama of Trojan prisoners, made slaves and subjugated by the Greek heroes who won the Trojan war, whose destiny, however, promises to be just as tragic. The pain of the most illustrious Trojan women, Ecuba, Cassandra, Polissena, Andromaca explodes in distinct episodes and highlights the inevitability of the destiny of death and violence with which the will to power that dominates the male universe has crushed the feminine universe .

“Elena“, staged only once at the Greek Theater of Syracuse, in 1978, is instead a sui generis tragedy, not without comic elements, in which Euripides proposes a disturbing dialectic between true and false, between reality and appearance telling a story parallel to that narrated by Homer where the real Elena was taken by Hermes to the island of Faro in Egypt and it is only “his image” that went to Troy with Paris. A very strong representation of the “useless massacre” of the Trojan war.

For the second time at the Greek Theater in Syracuse, after the 2010 edition, the comedy Lisistrata will also be staged, where the protagonist rises to the role of heroine and bearer of peace, inducing Athenian, Spartan, Theban women to a sex strike and forcing men to make peace.