ARCHIVES 2016 / Aeschylus, War Plays

With Aeschylus, War Plays, Olivier Py directs in a single movement the author's four surviving plays, not counting The Oresteia. This theatre, the most ancient we know of, unfolds around the Mediterranean and questions the foundations of democracy. The madness of power, the place of women, the question of asylum, the memory of the dead, the power of images, and insurrection: Aeschylus speaks from an ancient world that is nonetheless already ours. On a naked stage, three actors with a long experience with tragedy play gods and supplicants, kings and old men, the ocean and the crowds. 

Olivier Py
Actor, poet, director, and man of engagement: Olivier Py's research follows all possible paths, both political and poetic, in order to meet the present and try to give it meaning. In this adventure that takes him from trestles to stages, the living word plays an essential part. It is at once the question and the answer that runs through his entire body of work. He calls on that of Aeschylus, of Claudel, of Shakespeare, or on his own, in long plays that dare try everything. As director of the Centre dramatique national d'Orléans, of the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, then of the Festival d'Avignon, he has shown time and again his loyalty to public theatre and to the ideals of cultural decentralisation.

Aeschylus
Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) is the oldest of the three great Greek tragedians. Of his work have only survived a trilogy, The Oresteia, and four plays, brought together by Olivier Py in Aeschylus, War Plays. Their simple plots give centre stage to the tales of heroes, the expression of longing, and to lyricism. A veteran of the battles of Marathon and Salamis, Aeschylus is at once the chronicler, the poet, and the promoter of the Athenian democracy.