ALL GREEKS FESTIVAL

In this special edition of Radio Insomnia, actor Willem de Wolf of collective DE HOE hosts a series of guests on a pontoon in the middle of a river. Together, they hold a (sadly) witty conversation about the tension between the tragic and the comic. Not a spontaneous conversation, but a scripted one, because DE HOE believes that we are not at our most authentic spontaneously. We only become authentic in the rewriting, deleting and rewriting again of our first meagre formulations.

Is Rhesos  a tragedy or a comedy? The members of DE HOE can't figure it out. And just that discussion - when is something tragic? - is the starting point for a conversation about fate and free will.

Isn't tragedy at odds with our unshakeable belief in the makeability of man and society? Or are we tragic precisely because of that belief? Can we still deal today with the blindness and overconfidence of a tragic hero who makes a fateful choice out of free will? If neurology and A.I. haven't unmasked free will for good, that is.

In Sophocles' mystical tragedy Oidipus in Kolonos, the blind and exiled Oidipus finally reaches the peaceful sanctuary of Kolonos after many wanderings, the end of his fateful life's journey. He sits down on a stone. Tyrant Kreoon and son Polyneikes still try to take him along to Thebes, where a violent civil war is raging. But Oidipus refuses.

Inspired by this tragedy, dancer and choreographer Lisbeth Gruwez explores the body as a place, as a Kolonos where she can transcend herself and the individualistic, human perspective. Kolonos  shows how a body dissolves itself dancing, in the midst of a world full of anger and violence. And how that body solidifies into a single movement in the eye of a hurricane. The fairy-like setting of this choreography: on steps like those of a Greek temple, by the water where a tributary of the Lys stopped flowing forever.

The cast of Elektra Unbound, the NTGent performance by house artist Luanda Casella, brings a theatrical reading of the successful play that premiered at NTGent earlier this season. The reading of the script is accompanied by the performance's matchless soundtrack and animated text projections which play the role of the choir.

In Elektra Unbound, three young actors compete for the role of Elektra during a fictional theatre audition. The audition gradually develops into a talent show as hilarious as it is uncanny: which of the tree auditioners has the most talent for tragic suffering? Thus, the play reveals more and more of the psychological drama in the lives of director, coach and actors. They all seem to be archetypes of the tragic figures you find on social media these days.

This performance takes places in the Skichalet at Blaarmeersen, the biggest open air recreation park in Ghent.

Release all apollonian brakes at the closing party of the ALL GREEKS FESTIVAL! Just like the opening parade, the party is dedicated to Dionysos, god of the collective urge to party. For some vibrant concerts and a delirious party: head to the Blaarmeersen (Skichalet) during Midsummer night!

Together with multi-talented Valentina Tóth, and theatre makers Frank Dierens (Het Scheldeoffensief) and Kris Van Trier (Comp. Marius), the visitors of Villa Voortman sink their teeth into Euripides' Bakkhai. That primal tragedy drives home the contradictions between the 'civilised' tyrant Pentheus and the 'barbaric' god Dionysus, between reason and intoxication, order and anarchy, and the patriarchal norm and whoever or whatever deviates.  The tragedy shows how violence (in the name of 'security') provokes even more violence (in the name of 'freedom').

The performance by Villa Voortman and Het Scheldeoffensief starts from a swinging, boned script, thickened with spoken word, and rousing music and lyrics by the visitors of Villa Voortman. Brutal. Brutal. Raw. Of a radical beauty. The performance continues in the recreational park Blaarmeersen (Skichalet), where a fence has recently closed off access to 'problem youth'.