Bros | Romeo Castellucci

Twenty-three men are central to this work. There is no requirement for them to be actors, and no conventional rehearsal process for them to go through beforehand. There is only a pact: they are there to follow orders, no matter how strange or baffling these may be. A monumental farce involving free will, played out on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage.

These men recruited by Romeo Castellucci – who are dressed and act like law enforcement officers – carry out commands fed to them via earpieces throughout the performance. There is no room here for improvisation of any kind. They must obey.

As disturbing as it is ingenious, Bros unfolds within a compaction of space and time – within a boundless present and an uncharted “somewhere/anywhere”. Law itself is set up to (in)visibly star alongside the on-stage throng. Romeo Castellucci orchestrates an awe-inspiring, existential farce that spurs us to re-examine our relationship with freedom, justice, violence, personal responsibility, critical thought, accountability, and obedience. The theater stage is transformed into a metaphysical setting through which humanity parades as a kind of subservient brotherhood, ready to rip its own flesh to shreds at any moment.

• Romeo Castellucci is bringing his “Bros” to Onassis Stegi after a busy summer devoted to opera productions that saw the director stage Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and Béla Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” coupled with Carl Orff’s “De temporum fine comoedia” (“A Play on the End of Time”) at the Salzburg Festival. For the latter double bill, Castellucci worked with MusicAeterna and its conductor Teodor Currentzis, who was born in Greece.
• “Bros” had its world premiere in October 2021, in the Italian-speaking town of Lugano in southern Switzerland, as part of the FIT Festival. The production is a new version of “Buster” – a site-specific project designed for a public, outdoor space (at Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels – May 2021) reworked to be presented at indoor theater venues. More information on “Bros” is available on the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio website.
• This visionary Italian artist has presented works at Onassis Stegi another two times: first in 2015 with “Go Down, Moses”, a philosophical reflection on the evolution of the human species and the distortion of Western culture, before returning two years later with “Democracy in America”, a meditation on the attempt to establish democracy in a wilderness as yet untouched by statehood – colonial America. Both productions were hosted at Onassis Stegi as part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival.
• Romeo Castellucci first introduced himself to Greek audiences in 2009 with one of his greatest productions: his directorial take on “The Divine Comedy” (freely inspired by Dante’s colossal work) that proved an iconoclastic epic. Since 1981, his theater company – Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio – has also served up other landmark works: 1992’s “Hamlet” was an attempt to explore what it means to be an actor; Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” in 1995 marked Castellucci’s international breakthrough, touring theaters and festivals around the world; while, 1997’s “Giulio Cesare” (a version of which was presented in Athens in 2016) tackled the decline of political discourse.
• While Romeo Castellucci’s works for the stage are defined by their visual and ritual power, at core they are deeply ontological. He often enters into discourse with notions of the divine and the metaphysical, and futile aspects of human civilization. “Bros” falls into this latter category, since is explores the impasses brought on by violence and legal loopholes.