The emblematic tragedy “The Suppliants” by Aeschylus, directed by the Artistic Director of the Theatre of Art, Marianna Kalbari.
A performance about the deep roots of patriarchy and the way it has shaped the position of women in society from ancient times to the present.
Lena Papaligoura and Loukia Michalopoulou, along with Giannis Tsortekis and Akis Sakellariou, make up the excellent leading ensemble of a performance that marks the return of the prominent Greek tragedian Lydia Koniordou to the Argolic theatre.
In the Epidaurus performances, Marina Satti appears as a soloist, along with the choristers from her female choir group CHÓRES, who participate in the impressive fifty-member Chorus.
The Performance
“The Suppliants” is the first and only surviving play from Aeschylus’s tetralogy “The Danaids.” The protagonist is the Chorus of the fifty Danaids, who, along with their father Danaus, seek asylum in Argos—the place their ancestor Io once fled from, pursued by the “gadfly”—in order to escape from their cousins, the fifty sons of Aegyptus, who demand to marry them by force.
The myth raises the issue of the identity and status of women in society, while also recounting the history of migration and the dominance of the Greek race in the land of the Pelasgians, the so-called “Proto-Greeks.”
“The Suppliants” speaks of the needs that drive people to be uprooted from their land, the harsh fate of the refugee, the value of justice, and the principles of democracy. Above all, however, it speaks of the struggle of Women against Men who seek to impose themselves on them by force.
Wishing to reintroduce to the audience the largely unknown myth of the Danaids as well as the fascinating text of Aeschylus, the performance aims to speak about the coming of age and the longing of every person for freedom and justice, addressing major contemporary issues, such as refugee crises and gender-based violence, which this poetic yet deeply political work explores. The performance unites the voices of ancient heroines with those of modern ones, bringing for the first time to the orchestra of Epidaurus a Chorus of fifty Danaids from the Chóres choir, the Drama School of the Theatre of Art, and the dance-acrobatic group “Ki OmOs Kineitai” (“And Yet It Moves”), as well as a similarly composed group of seventeen “Danaids” for the touring performances.