THE TRAGEDY OF TRAGEDIES

Politicians meet activists, war-criminals meet public heroes, ushers meet actors, lovers meet murderers. Together with a cast of professional and non-professional actors, Milo Rau stages 'The Tragedy of tragedies'.

Right from his start in theatre, Milo Rau has always been particularly interested in one specific method: bringing professional and non-professional performers together on stage to question the world. With collective theatrical retellings of classics of literature and art history, such as The Ghent Altarpiece (2018), The New Gospel (2020) or William Tell (2022), Milo Rau has created a new kind of popular theatre in which the "great narratives" are translated into the lives of ordinary people - "acts of universal humanity", as the Süddeutsche Zeitung judged Rau’s adaptation of the Swiss National Myth William Tell with 15 professional and non-professional performers.

With The Tragedy of the Tragedies, based on all 32 surviving Greek tragedies, Milo Rau explores the mythical capacity of art, the fascination for tragedy and theatre in general. As a “meta-tragedy", the production The Tragedy of the Tragedies is taking into account all kind of characters of Greek dramatic literature - from the great heroes like Agamemnon, Medea, Phaidra or Heracles to the normally unseen figures like choir-members or nurses. Why are we attracted by their stories? What does this tell about us, our society, our ways of thinking and acting out what is called “love”, “life”, “politics”? Who wants to perform these roles – and why?

In a series of castings, Milo Rau and his team search for archetypal figures: Oedipos, Antigone, Hector, Clytemnestra, soldiers etc. The Tragedy of Tragedies is not only an essay on theatre, life and the meaning of art in general, not only the depiction of a postmodern (the Greek, the European) society – it is a confrontation of our civilization with itself, a civilization on the edge of that ethical, political and ecological abyss that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides already perspicaciously described 2500 years ago.

General Info

Premiere Season 24-25 
Venues Medium and big sized 
Castings Greece (Athens) 
Languages Greek and others 
Cast & Crew 8 actresses/actors (professionals & non-professionals), 4 technicians

Credits

Direction Milo Rau 
Text Milo Rau & Ensemble  
Dramaturgy Martín Valdés-stauber 
Direction Assistant Giacomo Bisordi  
Set & Costume Design Anton Lukas 
Video Design Moritz Von Dungern 
Music Eleni Karaindrou 
Executive Production Mascha Euchner-Martinez  
Sales Sophie Vanden Broeck, Mascha Euchner-Martinez