Prométhée Enchaîné & Les Suppliantes
by Aeschylus / Olivier Py
September 23 at 2 pm
September 24 at 5 pm
Butler College Amphitheater (rain location TBA)
Princeton University
Duration: Prométhée Enchaîné 50 min.; Intermission; Les Suppliantes 45 min.
Performed in French (with English Subtitles)
Special thanks to Athens & Epidaurus Festival and to Leonidas Karatzas
Tickets are free but must be reserved – click here to RSVP
Photos by Christophe Raynaud de Lage / Festival d’Avignon
A god tortured by gods for having loved man and condemned by Zeus for having offered them art and fire, Prometheus embodies disobedience and challenges established power. He is among the most cited figures in literature from Aeschylus onward, and in this play the Titan is opposed by a cast of divine lieutenants including Hephaistos, Apollo, and Hermes. Because any such play is fundamentally political, the piece offers, according to playwright and director Olivier Py, a “lesson in insurrection.”
Actor, poet, director, and public intellectual, Oliver Py does his research by whatever means — political and poetic — to make sense of the present. On stages large and small, the spoken word retains what he perceives as an essential role: it is at once the question and the answer to all his work. Py incorporates many notable words of Aeschylus, Claudel, and Shakespeare, but he also formulates his own words into stream-of-consciousness plays. Py has progressed from heading the Centre Dramatique National d’Orléans to directing the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe theater in Paris and the Avignon Theater Festival, but he has never stopped proving his commitment to public theater by promoting its diffusion and decentralization.
Prométhée Enchaîné & Les Suppliantes premiered at the 70th annual Avignon Theater Festival on July 6, 2016.
