1 week ago
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I person had the large pleasance of surviving and working successful Shanghai for the past three months. Together with my exceptional Greek collaborators – Alex Drakos Ktistakis, Patricia Apergi, Eva Manidaki, Vasiliki Syrma, and my adjunct Alexandros Panou – we are preparing “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes astatine the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, with a formed of 18 Chinese actors. While this is the archetypal clip I person been commissioned to make a accumulation successful Chinese with a Chinese ensemble, it is not my archetypal brushwood with audiences successful China.
In June 2024, astatine the Aranya Theater Festival adjacent Beijing, we presented a caller site-specific version of “Hippolytus” (in Greek) for 4 actors – Orestis Chalkias, Giannis Tsortekis, Elena Topalidou, and Maria Skoula – and 1 musician, with the people performed unrecorded by the production’s composer, Alex Drakos Ktistakis. The show took spot successful a striking, unconventional venue resembling a temple, acceptable connected a vast beach. We performed 4 times, and connected the last evening there was standing country only, arsenic enthusiastic word of rima had spread among festival audiences. What impressed us astir was however galore young radical were successful the assemblage – the mean property seemed to beryllium betwixt 25 and 28 – arsenic well arsenic the attentiveness and responsiveness with which they followed the performance, contempt its density of text.
Later successful 2024, we were invited by 1 of Asia’s oldest and astir prestigious festivals, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, to contiguous “Hippolytus” successful its archetypal Epidaurus version successful their main theater (1,200 seats). We traveled with a team of 35 people, successful a co-production betwixt the National Theater of Greece, the Athens Festival, and the taste enactment Lykofos, and performed implicit 4 days. The accumulation was very warmly received; I peculiarly retrieve audiences waiting for us extracurricular the theater and engaging successful long, thoughtful conversations. As past Greek play is seldom staged successful Asia, there was sizeable involvement successful some the signifier and the contented of the work. Many spectators remarked connected however strikingly modern Euripides felt.
We are experiencing something akin present during the mentation of “Lysistrata,” successful our discussions with the formed and colleagues here. They are struck by however unfamiliar Aristophanes’ style feels, however bold the theatrical signifier is – with its fusion of speech, song, and creation – and by the crisp governmental critique embedded successful the text. Equally compelling to them are the ideas expressed astir the relation of women successful society, arsenic well arsenic the information that Aristophanes – a antheral writing for antheral actors and a antheral assemblage – places a woman astatine the halfway of the play, equipping her with the wisdom and strength to resoluteness a long-standing governmental situation and bring an extremity to a devastating war.
It is besides worth noting that, implicit the past 5 years, feminism has begun to asseverate a visible beingness successful China’s sociopolitical sphere and mundane life, peculiarly successful Shanghai. In this context, our modern staging of “Lysistrata “has taken connected an astir revolutionary dimension. We are present successful the last signifier of rehearsals and eagerly anticipating the premiere connected April 11, on with the discussions that this archetypal presumption of the play successful China is expected to generate.
Over the past three years, alongside my directing work, I person had the grant of being invited to large festivals successful China arsenic some a assemblage subordinate and a speaker, addressing issues of taste strategy arsenic well arsenic past drama. In each talk connected the subject, I brushwood a singular eagerness among the younger procreation of Chinese artists to prosecute with this genre and research modern approaches to staging it.
Katerina Evangelatos is simply a stage manager for theater and opera.
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