ALL GREEKS FESTIVAL

Theatre collective Werktoneel and drama students from the conservatory KASK appear in the public space every day of the festival for a week. Always at the same moment (continuously from sunrise) and in the same places. With their visual, cyclical performance, they explore the grand, almost cosmic nature of Greek tragedy in relation to the everyday reality of outdoor public spaces. Not the plot of the tragedy is the essence of OUTSIDE ORESTES, but images and benchmarks filled with meaning, such as the moment of recognition and tragic insight that recurs in many tragedies.

A quartet of pleasantly deranged CIRQ'ers adapt the atypical tragedy Ion, a comedy of errors  including a happy ending, into an absurd puppet show with Playmobil figures. Upcycled popular culture is the name of the game. The inimitable Joost Vandecasteele provides a witty text.

Yet Ion  also has a darker side. It is a play full of gender inequality and unaccountable gods with highly questionable oracular spells, full of longing for ethnic purity and disgust for those labelled as foreigners or immigrants.

For our private lives | BEDROOM, Yves Degryse/BERLIN collaborates with Barbara Raes/Beyond the Spoken to tell an alternative version of Agamemnon's tragedy. The story is projected on an apartment building from sunset to sunrise, from 10:30 pm until 5:26am. Spectators are welcome to join the performance at any moment during the night. Afterwards, the torch will be passed to Collective HINTER, which performs its version of Offerplengsters, the second part of Aeschylos' Oresteia, in the Westerbegraafplaats, a local burial ground.

In the first part of this tragedy Agamemnon, the king is killed by his wife Klytaimnestra. Their son Orestes does not get the chance to pay his father a last farewell. In this performance, a farewell ritual does follow Agamemnon's death. Mother and son, sister and uncle come face to face in the bedroom where Agamemnon's body is laid out. We are the silent witnesses to the washing, embalming, waking and recitation but feel behind every gesture a jet-black hole full of vengeance. Not a tear is shed. Yet tragedy is lurking everywhere.

For its visual adaptation of Libation Beares, collective HINTER starts from the questions Elektra exchanges with the choir of Trojan slave girls. As they pledge sacrifices together, bent over the grave of Elektra's late father Agamemnon, they question the sense and nonsense of the usual rituals. HINTER chooses the Westerbegraafplaats as its location, another place where the dead determine the rhythm of the living. Together with a chorus of 'Groendienst' workers, who tend the place daily with their ritual acts, they make space for care and mourning. How do we as a city and society deal with violence and those who suffer from it? And how can we move forward after that?

Seven against Thebes  by Aischylos is a pitch-black tragedy. Oidipus' curse, which extends over three generations, hangs ominously over the heads of his tormented family. Although Eteokles realises that he is continuing the inherited curse by killing his brother Polyneikes, he cannot escape fate. The outcome is both obvious and inevitable.

We conclude this festival week, entirely devoted to family, with a talk on parenting and growing up. From the perspective of Aischylos' fatalistic tragedy, we ask the question: How do family dynamics relate to what we might consider (fate) today? What escapes our control? What gets in the way of our desire for freedom and autonomy? What is inconsistent with the myth of the makeability of man(kind) and society? And above all: how can we look beyond the horizon of fate?

For years, NTGent has offered local students the chance to create their own interpretation of a theatre performance or text during a 'mirror project'. For ALL GREEKS FESTIVAL, students got to work on a Greek tragedy. On four Sundays in four districts, NTGent organises a 'mirror walk': several schools show the result of their sessions with a theatre teacher. Walkers will have the chance to admire the performances at 1pm and 3pm. The walk lasts about 75 minutes.

On June 16, these schools perform: VBS Sancta Maria Gentbrugge, Wisper, Roots Compagnie (subject to change) and Luca School of Arts campus Leuven (subject to change).