The Paris-based SIWA platform - 'laboratoire artistique itinérant des mondes Arabes contemporains' – invited three directors to tackle Aeschylus’ Oresteia. The plan is to do this in stages with short and longer workshops each leading to try-outs. They in their turn may eventually lead to a more final presentation. The first try-out was on June 28th.
The Iraqi director and actor Haythem Abderrazk concentrated on part one of the trilogy, Agamemnon, while Célie Pauthe, director and artistic director of the Centre National Dramatique de Besançon, got to grips with part two, Sacrificial Women. Mokhallad Rasem turned his attention to part three, Goddesses of Vengeance. Closeted in a studio in Besançon for ten days, they set to work with two French actors, three Iraqi actors (male and female), two Iraqi musicians and two interpreters.
Haythem and Célie worked with all the actors and musicians exploring several crucial scenes from parts one and two of the trilogy in which the cycle of crime and revenge inflicted by the gods is eventually overturned by the establishment of a civilian court.
Mokhallad took a different tack: instead of staging a play himself, he interviewed all the participants at length and recorded those interviews on video: what is the place of violence and revenge in society? Can it be overcome, avoided? What causes this violence?
If Oresteia is about bringing an end to the obligation to seek revenge imposed by the gods, thereby heralding the beginning of justice, then Mokhallad’s questions opened up this theme to the here and now. His edit of all the interviews proved a fascinating document of balanced views ranging from the ubiquitous violence in Europe and beyond, through the context in Iraq (from a dictator to the current chaos), through identifying global market mechanisms which may be a new variant of the inescapable gods, to highly personal answers to the dilemmas facing the characters in Oresteia. The dramaturgy of the project suddenly unfolded in images, and immediately provided great insight into the themes and scope of the project, not only for the outsiders present but also for the actors and makers who saw their answers reflected and supplemented by those of the other participants.
To be continued, without a doubt.