«Consider well the seed that gave you birth: you were not made to live your lives as brutes,
but to be followers of worth and knowledge.»
Dante, Inferno, XXVI, 119-120
ODYSSEUS
Beginning with Homer’s Odyssey, the project takes the return of Ulysses as a starting point for questioning our identity and our engagement in the human community today. Continuing from our previous performances, we use the literary work as a catalyst to create our own staged images.
THE ODYSSEY, A PROCESS TOWARD ANAGNORISIS
In his wanderings, Ulysses (Odysseus) is confronted by that which could cause him to perish, lose his nature, and erase his memory or subjectivity. It is through an act of anagnorisis that, upon returning to Ithaca and in his encounter with Penelope, Ulysses finally recovers his own lost identity. In this passage from ignorance to knowledge, the encounter is fulfilled through love and the flesh. The strength of this foundational act lies precisely in its resilience and its ability to restore the internal values of a community.
The planned performance reconsiders this act in light of the discourse by a group of youth faced with the current environmental and social situation; a discourse of fear and incomprehension in relation to a human community that seems to them to be headed straight for a wall. A discourse in which their identity is in crisis, above all because they are unable to recognize themselves in their fellow humans.
This crisis situation forms the beginning of the performance and opens the work up to these questions: How can we show resilience ? How can we bring about a transformation towards «something else»?
Concept, scenography and direction
Monia Montali & Francois Bodeux
Creation and performance
Marie De Corte
Jef Stevens
Sound creation
Miquel Casaponsa
Production
Blueback asbl
Coproduction
Les Brigittines
(coproduction on going)
Premiere
Spring 2021