ORESTEIA by Aeschylus

Direction: Theodoros Terzopoulos

Ancient Theatre of Philippi
Saturday, 24th August, at 20.30

The Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, directed by Theodoros Terzopoulos, will be presented at the Ancient Theatre of Philippi on Saturday, 24th August, at 20:30, as part of the 67th Philippi Festival.

This iconic production, rich in intellectual and philosophical depth, marks an unprecedented artistic event and the first collaboration between the internationally acclaimed Greek director and the country’s premier theatre stage.

About the Oresteia

In 458 BC, during a time of violent social and political upheavals, Aeschylus presents the Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides.) at the Dionysia Festival, the only surviving trilogy of ancient drama and his last surviving work, composed just two years before his death, reflecting many of the rapid changes of his era.

The central axis of the trilogy is the tragic circuit of Orestes, which permeates all the characters in the drama and the chorus through successive stages: from destabilisation to impasse, to madness. Athena exploits this situation in the trilogy’s third part to institutionalise democracy by force through a dubious peace settlement.

In the first two parts of the trilogy, Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers, the murders that end the tyrannical reigns of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra mark the climax of a new period of crisis and destabilization, reflected in The Eumenides. The Furies, chthonic deities representing instincts and impulses, safeguard memory. Aware that any conflict with the gods is a predestined defeat, they revolt and threaten the city’s order. Orestes must pay, not only to punish the crime but also to ensure the memory of the conflict remains alive.

Athena strives at all costs to broker a “peace pact” between the gods and the Furies, offering them concessions and privileges. To secure their surrender, she shifts the violence into the realm of language. Her rhetoric introduces deceptive persuasion, lies, and manipulation into the political sphere. The Furies willingly submit. Adorned in the characteristic crimson garments of metics, they are declared the Eumenides and removed from the heart of the city. They are consigned to obscurity, to forgetfulness, to the depths of the earth. The democratic regime is established. But not without cost. Whatever is incompatible with the new order—the part of the living body linked to memory, instincts, and primal energy—has been exiled. The new order is imposed by the mechanisms of power in such a way that these vital forces seem as though they never existed.

Though the Furies accept their new social status as resident aliens, their internal nature remains unchanged. Like natural phenomena that do not vanish from the earth but follow a spiral path of transformation, escalation, and de-escalation, we can imagine the chthonic deities retreating and withdrawing, only to reemerge, continuously taking on new, unexpected forms.

Director’s Note

Why does the Oresteia continue to exert a terrifying attraction? One possible answer might be because there is a need for a deeper connection with Myth in humans. The myth of the Oresteia is dangerous; it belongs to the uncanny and the strange, provoking terror because it reveals the wild, the violent, and the laws of the depths that cannot be tamed. Clytemnestra invites us to break the mirror together to birth from its fragments a new nightmarish image, which will, however, retain the dark roots of the myth.

Our intention is to explore the depths of the Oresteia myth, seeking the unpredictable, the unusual, and the paradoxical. The characters offer their bodies on the altar of the unfamiliar, continually posing questions and dilemmas. The aesthetic of the performance emerges from the dynamic relationship between the Body, the Myth, Time, and Memory. We revisit the fundamental ontological question, “what is it about?”, a question that defies definitive answers but constantly drives us towards a deeper investigation into the root of sound, word, the multiple dimensions of the human enigma, and the reconstruction of a new Myth.

Theodoros Terzopoulos

Oresteia by the National Theatre of Greece

The Oresteia has been staged by the National Theatre of Greece at Epidaurus five times to date: in 1954 and 1959 under the direction of Dimitris Rondiris, in 1972 directed by Takis Mouzenidis, in 2001 directed by Giannis Kokkos, and in 2019, when Io Voulgaraki, Lilly Meleme, and Georgia Mavragani directed Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides, respectively, marking their directorial debuts at Epidaurus.