ALL GREEKS FESTIVAL

From her desire for truth in a post-truth society  of alternative facts  and fake news, theatre maker Pleun van Engelen delves into the myths surrounding Andromache. Opposite herself, Van Engelen places Achilles' son Neoptolemos, performed by Jonathan Michiels. The characters look back on the Trojan War very differently, balancing relentlessly on the fine line between fact and fiction. A relationship or even a conversation seems utterly impossible.

Where can we still find meaning and purpose when we constantly bump into the adamant walls of mistrust and conspiracy thinking?

As diverse as the Ghentian borough of Ledeberg itself, the music group Ledebirds delegates 15 musicians, adults and children together, for a concert at the Standaert site. The musicians lead the audience to a room where the actors of Jong Gewei, accompanied by a master of ceremony, re-enact 'death plays'.

For this performance, the makers are inspired by ancient Anatolian and Greek beliefs and rituals, as well as by themes from Euripides' tragedy Helena  such as beauty, barbarism, deceit, fate and opportunities.

For SMEEKBEDE!, choir leader Kapinga Gysel, writer Bieke Purnelle and theatre-maker Lara Staal are collaborating with a group of Danaïdes from Ghent. They are inspired by Aeschylos' The Suppliants, in which the fifty Danaïdes flee Egypt for their forced marriage and beg King Pelasgos of Argos for protection. The play provides the occasion to highlight the often tenuous social position of women, especially those from migrant backgrounds. Their shoulders bear the heaviest burdens: those of often invisible and undervalued care.

A parade from Park De Vijvers to Keizerspark is followed by a hymn that sings of women's lion-like courage and herculean strength. It is both ode and indictment. A chorus of Ghentian daughters, mothers and grandmothers finally steps out of the shadows, climbs the public stage, demands greater recognition and protection in full election time.

In the tragedy Phoenician Women, Euripides paints a haunting picture of the Theban civil war. Polyneikes goes to war against his own brother Eteokles and besieges his home town. Their father Oidipous haunts the house like a cancer attacking the city from within. The war ends with a duel in which the brothers kill each other. The parallels with Athens at the end of the fifth century BC are striking. Athenian democracy and its principles (public participation, public debate and legal certainty) were under continuous pressure from populist forces at that time.

Exactly one week before the Flemish, federal and European elections, we take Euripides' play as a starting point for a conversation about our democracy. How vulnerable is a democracy that, as a matter of principle, makes room for equally balanced debates and the most diverse opinions. Is our democracy also under threat? What does that threat look like? And how do we armour our democracy for the future?