Theater

Werther

bijoux de Kant

Dates

Tickets

12 — 22 €

Venue

Onassis Stegi

Time & Date

Day
Time
Venue
Day
Tuesday-Sunday
Time
21:00
Venue
Upper Stage
Day
On Saturdays 15, 22 & 29 January 2011
Time
18:00 & 21:00
Venue
Upper Stage

Information

Tickets

22 € | Concs 12 €

General Information

15, 22 & 29/1 two performances: 18:00 & 21:00

Introduction

The ambivalence of the author (Goethe) to the creation that made his name (Werther) can be compared to a lover’s ambivalence towards the object of their passion.

Based on Goethe’s "The Sorrows of Young Werther".

“The whole thing is an explosive device”, Goethe would confess in later life about the novel he wrote in his youth which, extolling young Werther’s doomed love for the ‘forbidden’ Lotte, would win both the novel and its author overnight fame throughout Europe. Inspired in part by a doomed romance of his own and in part by the tragic suicide of one of his circle, the novel was the means by which the author cast off the ring of melancholy then tightening around his own life. As he admitted in "Poetry and Truth", his autobiography of 1809, Werther was more than a means of acquiring fame: Goethe and Werther were “two people in one, one of whom died and the other of whom stayed alive to write the other’s tale”. The author’s ambivalence towards the work that made his name (comparable to the ambivalence lovers can feel for the object of their passion) lies at the heart of the production by the newly-formed bijoux de Kant company.

The director and visual artist Yannis Scourletis and the composer Kostas Dalakouras return to the scene of the (romantic) crime they so love (having delighted Athens audiences last year with the darkly ironic "Graveyard Café Band / In Extremis" which featured texts by Greek Neoromantic poets) and present a ‘show’ for three actors which translates the contradictions and rifts that mark Goethe’s interactions with Werther, and Werther’s with his beloved, on-stage in all their complexity. With the original music and moving images (recorded and live projections) making a significant contribution to the proceedings, the production becomes a dizzying game of reflections which dissolves the distinction between the real and the imaginary, the body and the specter, life and death.
Parallel Event

After-performance talk with bijoux de Kant

21 January 2011
23:00 | Upper Stage

After-performance talk with the director/set designer of "Werther" Yannis Scourletis and members of bijoux de Kant theater company.

Moderated by: Dimitris Tsatsoulis, Associate Professor of Theater Semiotics at the Department of Theater Studies at Patras University, theater critic

Credits

Text
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Translation
Stella Nikoloudi
Direction-Set
Yannis Scourletis
Music
Kostas Dalakouras
Dramaturgy
Katerina Konstantinakou
Video-Lighting Design
Efthimis Theodosis
Costumes
Ioanna Tsami
Assistant to the Director
Pericles Pravetas
Set Design Assistant
Savas Artopoulos
Costume Design Assistant
Deo Liakoura
Communication
Aris Asproulis
Cast
Dimitris Lignadis, Dimitris Passas, Katerina Missihroni
Co-production
Onassis Stegi, bijoux de Kant