Hécube, pas Hécube
Tiago Rodrigues / Comédie-Française
A play rehearsal or a police investigation? A woman from classical Troy or a contemporary mother? Theatre and justice are key elements in a show that premiered during the latest edition of the Avignon Festival.
Tiago Rodrigues likes to address the audience directly. You may already know this if you were one of the lucky audience members at the 2019 Grec Festival who had the chance to memorise a Shakespeare sonnet under Rodrigues’s direction, while talking about memory and freedom in a show (By heart) that made you want to hug the director at the end. Today, Tiago Rodrigues is the first non-French director of the Avignon Festival, one of Europe’s leading theatre events. And he still likes to address the audience directly. He does so once again in Hecube, pas Hecube. A play within a play, it stars an actress rehearsing Euripides’ Hecuba, specifically the eponymous role of Priam’s widow. Troy has lost the war, and she will lose everything too: her husband, freedom, and children. She is a woman seeking justice, perhaps as much as the real woman portraying her, because character and actress almost mirror each other: during the production, the actress is fighting for justice for her abused autistic son. The audience will witness the play rehearsals , but also a police investigation. Will she find the justice she seeks? Will her character find it?
The intersections between the worlds of the ancient Trojan woman and the mother and actress of today will become even more evident with the set design, which juxtaposes two unsettling spaces that blur and break down the boundaries between the tragedy of the myth and the pain of real life.
This story, first director's work with Comédie -Française, marks actor, playwright, and director Tiago Rodrigues’s return to the Grec Festival in Barcelona. The former director of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon, he has worked in Belgium and performed worldwide, and in 2003, he created the Mundo Perfeito company with Magda Bizarro. Artistic collaborations and collective processes are at the heart of his works, which have recently led him to analyse historical phenomena by engaging with documents that allude to both the public and private spheres. Hecube, pas Hecube was performed last July as part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival at none other than the Epidaurus Theatre, the inspiration for the Teatre Grec that will now host new performances of the production.
A Comédie-Française production
Co-produced by the Festival d’Avignon
In collaboration with Théâtre de la Cite – CDN de Toulouse Occitanie
Discipline
- Theater
Dates and times
Tuesday 29/07 - 22:00 h
Space
Durada
Language
- Francès amb sobretitulació en català
Prices
Other criteria
- Summer nights
- Essentials
- International
Artistic sheet
Text and direction: Tiago Rodrigues · Translation: Thomas Resendes · Set design: Fernando Ribeiro · Costumes: José António Tenente ·Lighting: Rui Monteiro · Music and sound: Pedro Costa · Artistic collaboration: Sophie Bricaire ·Cast: With Comédie-Française actors: Éric Génovèse, Denis Podalydès, Elsa Lepoivre, Loïc Corbery, Gaël Kamilindi, Élissa Alloula, Séphora Pondi
The play includes excerpts from Euripides’ Hecuba, translated into French by Marie Delcourt-Curvers and published by Gallimard.
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