«Medea is the most disturbing and, at the same time, most complex figure of classicism. His crime cannot be dismissed, although it is perhaps the worst imaginablewith superficiality» he observes Laura Marinonia regular of the Greek heroines (Antigone, Phaedra, Andromache, Clytemnestra, Helena) and a regular of the season of Theater of Syracuse, where from May 12 brings the tragedy of Euripides directed by Federico Tiezzi (info: indafondazione.org).
Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Directed by Davide Livermore. (Photo: Tommaso Le Pera)
«She is everything: a terrible woman and a loving mother; one who loves a man beyond measure and who hates him beyond measure; it is passionate and it is rational… It is as if it contains multitudes, those multitudes that we too have inside. Some aspects are difficult to accept, but there is no light without shadow. I know from experience how “contradictory” we can be».
What is he referring to?
«I remember that, as soon as I learned I was pregnant, I cried for 24 hours: I thought that I would never be “just me” again. And I cried another 24 hours when Michelangelo (the greatest love of my life) moved to London and I said to myself: now it’s “just me” again. Children are something that belongs to us to the core and at the same time cannot belong to us, so I understand that some mothers lose their minds».
There are those who define Medea as a protofeminist.
«He certainly does not suffer and takes his life in hand, but he does it to the point of making an extreme and shameful gesture. It is interesting that she is a sorceress, which is somewhat metaphorical: all women have a very powerful primordial instinct ».
How are you preparing for this demanding full immersion?
«I am comparing translations, reading various essays and watching films: Pasolini’s Medea, yes, but above all that of Lars von Trier from 1988, from a script by Carl Theodor Dreyer».
What cut will this set-up have?
«We will see a shaman entangled in a sort of bourgeois drama, many scenes with Jason seem almost Ibsen, just as in Elena certain scenes seemed Shakespeare. Euripides was a revolutionary with his gaze on the side of the feminine in an age when women had no voice».
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