PRESENTATION OF 2010-2011 PRODUCTION
suppliants - death love water life -
a one-act play by Michele Collina
taken from Aeschylus
a chorus taken from Derek Walcott
words by Roberto Calasso
thoughts by Robert Graves,
Karoly Kereny, Giulio Guidorizzi
and the never-ending presence of Samuel Beckett
Why Suppliants
It is really hard nowadays, considering what is happening in the Mediterranean countries, to talk about a work such as Aeschylus’ Suppliants without turning somehow our interest to Egypt, Libya, to what is taking place at this very moment, mainly to the occurrences Old Europe will be likely to get ready for: reception, nearness, support of the nth mass of underprivileged and people vanquished by history. Once more it is a matter of a humankind escaping from war and bloodshed, from the brutal violence of a world which, while trying to claim its thirst for greater justice, tends also to show its own intrinsic weaknesses, contradictions, tiredness and, ultimately, the burden of a history weary to bear. Obviously we feel close to everyone, namely to defeated people. Yet we have to consider a work that was initiated long time ago and was intended to point out different features of Aeschylus’ masterpiece. Suppliants tells of a nostos, of a coming back home after a very long exile, which had begun at a time before time, in a world before this world of ours. But one chapter only of the Aeschylean trilogy survived and our idea was that of filling the gap. What we have is the story of a painful decision because of which a king consults his people. And it is the triumph of reception, as that people, the Argive, are ready to face a war against an enemy thirsting for revenge, as long as they can assure the escaping Danaids a happy future. Besides all that, long analysed themes by countless preceding mise en scène and countless study pages, other forces animate a puzzling and ambiguous work as another Aeschylean one seems to be: Prometheus in Chains, one more chapter of an incomplete trilogy.
First of all, one is struck by Danaus, the king of Libya and father of the fifty maidens, who does not want to marry them off to the fifty Egyptian nephews. A father who first thinks of his daughters’ good and their happiness, rather than reason of State. A father who finally budges and manages to get them accept the wedding, gives them the dagger to behead their husbands. Then there is the wary dialogue lead by the Danaids in order to extort the right for asylum - we feel we can say that even though twisting a bit the terms of the problem - from a really undefended Pelasgo. Let us not forget the threat, following which, should the reception be refused, maidens would be hanging from the statues of the gods. The sovereign was besieged with an overwhelming awareness: his entrusting the people with the decision, sounds like the last attempt to delay, as much as he can, a choice impinging on him but leading nowhere else, once he has been dragged by the rhetorical skills of the maidens as well as a superior justice to having to offer a home to each one , a place where living in peace. Yet, once the decision has been taken, Pelasgo appears determined to have it fulfilled: his conscience seems to have achieved serenity in so far as he made the right choice, the only possible one. This is our starting point to try a reconstruction based upon the study and the interpretation of the myth and which has also produced the early part of the tragedy, when, of that myth, the onset is narrated. The marriage, which till that moment had been avoided, is performed, and the slaughter with it. Danaids are said to have been punished for that, but how? Giving life, that is to say water, to an arid land, their primary native country, Argos. The concluding words, uttered by the voice of the Myth himself, say it outright and tell about the greatness of woman’s heart, a heart of which, for the whole tragedy, seems to have been on the scene just its ambiguity. It is said at the very beginning: the war of wars was fought for Helen. Greek tragedy shows us time and again great female characters, holding a strong charge of ambiguity; they are almost always entrusted with a subversive message, but also revolutionary, as far as order is concerned. The tragedy, however, like Iliad, and the catalogue does not stop certainly here, was written by men, who, as we like to imagine, must have sensed in the woman’s smile, in her eyes, weapons much stronger than swords and spears. The warrior coming back with sweat, dust and blood spread over his body, collapsed before his woman’s eyes. Perhaps, in this silent strength he found a kind of threat to his supposed - and claimed - solidity, a threat that often will be exorcized by means of exclusion, ghettoization or maltreatment. In other instances, let us think of Dante above all, that “dangerous“ beauty has been sung saying great things of it.
To this greatness, to the courage of mothers , wives, lovers and friends - and in these days - of young female students, Antigones in Tripoli, Cairo and Tunis, this work more than to any one else, is dedicated.
